Loitering with a tent

Me and Mao

2009-09-28T03:01:00.000-07:00

Daring to go where few freedom loving loiterers go, LWAT v Mao, smack down in T Square.
Perceptive viewers will note the disapproving grimace on my face which clearly indicates my disapproval for the Communist ideology which holds oppressing the masses for the benefit of a few as its guiding philosophy, and hence my separati, and hence my separation from the vanguard and hence need to eradicate me. Note also the Free Tibet t-shirt cunningly displayed beneath my shirt !!!
And no, the narrow eyes are not imitation - it was a bright day.

Welcome to China (Beijing, 25/08)

2009-09-28T02:53:00.000-07:00

Spotted this little beauty in front of a new pedestrian mall in the middle of Beijing.
From best I can work out it is trying to say the following, from left to right:

No East German Trabants
No bicycles (We are capitalists now)
No wheelchairs
In either direction
No dogs (uncooked)
No war
No love
No bad card tricks
No ice skating
No drop punts
No vomiting
No surfing
No Falun Gung
No faiths of multiple Gods (Damned Hindus)
No flying a kite
No sleeping on top of each other in tents
No P-ing
No fires - especially under jugglers (Take note street performers)
No mixing food and music
No people (Every quasi Communists dream !!!!)

Back from the (blogging) wilderness

2009-08-30T07:38:00.001-07:00

As you prescient readers have noticed I have laid off the blogging for the last little while. There are two reasons, firstly I basically travelled halfway across the globe in the last two months - from Cairo to Bangkok (almost all over land, including a 7,000 km long train trip) via Istanbul, Helsinki, Moscow, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. Secondly, I have taken up a couple of new occupations, as the photos show. For a while I became a Finnish potato farmer, and when I got bored of that I decided (or it was decided or me) to become a Major- General in the Russian Army !!!

Sadly I had to retire from both these occupations on the grounds of lack of work ethic.

Anyway, as you can imagine from my usual blundering ways, there have been plenty of adventures along the way, and I am in the process of getting them up on the blog. Today I have put up a few posts about the Syria to Russia part. Hopefully in the next couple of days I will get the Russia and China posts up.
Next I am off to Indonesia for a few months of surfing, and sadly (I am sure you lament it more than me) the trip will reach its end and I will slide in to Melbourne in time for Christmas and the summer holidays, inshallah.

The Great Big Transsiberian Escapade - Introduction

2009-08-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

By methods fair or foul (I suspect bribes of free computer lessons were involved) my parents managed to get my little story about Damo and I climbing Mt Kilimanjaro published in the local Anglesea rag. This has upped the ante somewhat, driving me to find another adventure as exciting in the doing and the telling as climbing Africa's highest mountain. To my loyal readers I humbly submit that I have found such a story - to be told in four parts - the Great Big Transsiberian Escapade. I beg you to remember that truth is a relative concept, but everything I describe did actually happen - well everything I describe in the photos.

You can click on the links below to get each part as its own page:

Part I The Beginning
Part II Set and Cast
Part III Day by Day
Part IV After

Enjoy !!!

The Beginning of the Great Big Transsiberian Escapade (Part I)

2009-08-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

I arrived on the outskirts of St Petersburg just as it was getting dark (around 10pm) and suddenly we went from a narrow, pot holed goat track on to a brand spanking new raised highway. The highway seemed only to take us threw the completely dilapidated parts of town, lots of dark, empty lots, with big bits of rusty machinery or haphazardly stacked shipping containers surrounded by weeds growing through the rusted holes. Eventually it spat us out near to the centre of town, and as we worked our way through the main streets I couldn't help notice the contrast between the huge, old Soviet era buildings - a grey, concrete monstrosity of a factory, walls ten metres high, with only a line of small windows running along the length of the wall at the top, the building stretching monotonously three blocks along, and a old faded neon sign that read "XXX Factory No. 2" (Making me wonder how big Factory No 1 was) making me think inhumanity in a building; or old, fade clay red brick chimneys reaching to the sky dwarfing everything around them - and the new, flashy strips of shops, many simply old buildings converted by a new lick of paint, a balcony here and there, draped with banner advertisements and flashing neon signs.

We arrived at Baltisky station, an ornate, white, classical building, all cornice and balcony which testified to the grandeur of St Petersburg or its revolutionary buildings. Everyone but myself and one other guy got off, and after the drivers had smoked a few cigarettes we set off for the bus station. We finally arrived at 10.30 and it was now quite dark. I managed to find out there was a bus at 11pm to Moscow despite the ticket sellers simply staring at me blankly when I asked if they spoke English, and I set off to walk the couple of kilometres to the train station for Moscow.
The air smelt of the sea, and I as I followed a canal along the streets were relatively empty. Despite the guide suggesting that in the Putin-era Russian streets were relatively safe (apparently the thieves are interested in bigger fish) I felt a little apprehensive wondering what lurked in the dark, my mind throwing up images from all of those Soviet era spy books and movies I had seen of secret police hiding in dark alleyways. I soon hit a main, well lit dual carriageway street, allowing me to relax a little and observe Russian in their natural setting. In the half an hour it took to get to the station every person I walked past had a bottle or can in their hand - granted it was Saturday night, but it appeared as though without a drink in his hand a Russian man was unbalanced and was liable to topple over - and I saw a few who had done this. I finally managed to find the station, which wasn't so much a station but a small city within a big one - a series of buildings off the main street, first I got lost in the Metro building, then I found the main station - a huge building housing the waiting trains, a huge, two story marble waiting hall with shops and restaurants lining either side, then an endless series of stalls running the length of the building outside, and then another huge building with a sign saying Ticket Hall No. 2.

Armchair expert

In the three weeks I spent waiting for my visa I became something of an armchair expert on Russian trains. I learnt about the various routes, the various trains, the various classes, the scam of selling all the tickets to agencies to sell on to tourists. I learnt to read Cyrillic in order to be able to check the availability of tickets, and then to sign up to the site so that I could buy tickets on-line. (Frustratingly I wasn't able to complete the purchase) Through all this I discovered that in peak season it is impossible to get a ticket on the three most famous train routes (TransMongolian/Manchurian/Siberian) as all the tickets were sold to agencies or filled with Russian tourists, but that there were other trains that went along the same or similar routes that weren't famous and thus didn't attract many tourists. For these trains there were more tickets available as they could only be bought directly from the train company and I was only competing with Russians. So I looked around and decided on the train to a place called Blagoveschensk - a six day ride almost all the way to Vladivostok, to a town that was on the river that is the border between Russia and China. Once I had worked out exactly which train I was able to take that allowed me to get out of Russia before my visa expired, it became a first thing in the morning and last thing at night to check how many places were left on the train. The months of July and August are the peak periods for catching trains in Russia, lots of Russians' summer holiday consists of catching a train somewhere for a week or two, and lots of city dwellers return to where there are originally from the enjoy the brief period of warm weather - so most guides suggest buying tickets at least a week or two in advance, and to buy tickets through an agency unless you could speak Russian fluently and be able to do with the rather erratic queuing that goes on it Russian train stations. . Having left buying the ticket until the last moment I was unable to get an agency in Finland to buy the ticket for me (and they all charged 60 or 70 Euros for the service anyway), so I started to get a little worried when the two third class carriages went from having around thirteen places each left, to six places left, to one carriage being completely full and six places left in the last carriage, within the space of five days. I had worked out a backup plan of sorts, catching another train on the same day but it only had a couple of places left as well. When I was last able to check availability, in Estonia before I caught the bus to St Petersburg, there were no tickets left on my backup plan train, and only three tickets left on the train I wanted to catch. The LP guide also suggested that the ticket office closed at 8pm so I was anxious about whether I would be able to buy a ticket - even if by pure chance there was one available.

He's got a ticket(s) to ride

Having finally got around to reading the guide I had I discover to my relief that there was an agency at the station that was open 24 hours, had English speaking staff and could book tickets for a small fee. When I entered the waiting hall I followed the Information sign in to a narrow corridor that had a number of different windows that were all closed. The woman behind the one window that was open didn't speak a word of English so just pointed me around the corner. I walked around the back of the hall and then up the stairs to the second floor and stumbled upon the office of the agent mentioned in the guide. Rather than an agency it was actually a luxury waiting room, with couches for relaxing, computers for the internet and a rather dodgy looking massage parlour. I wandered in only to find that none of the staff actually spoke English and had no idea what "book a ticket" meant. Thinking I was in the wrong place I wandered about for a little longer and found a Booking Office, which turned out to be a hotel and rental car booking office, and despite finding someone who could speak English all I learnt from her was that she didn't know where the office the guide mentioned was. I walked out rather frustrated and depressed and began wandering around the station so distracted that even following the Ticket Office signs I was unable to find a place that was open and selling tickets, I began to notice that everything seemed to be dull, as if the lights were only on half power. Somehow, walking out the side door of the station I managed to stumble across another building with the sign reading Ticket Office No.2, with the lights on, if a little dim, the doors open and people wandering in and out - a shimmering oasis in the sea of my despair. Once inside the door, I found to my amazement 50 different windows, each with a different description in Russian specifying who could buy tickets at each window. (Apparently there are windows for veterans of the Great War, cosmonauts, widows, members of the Party, shoe shiners, dancing minstrels etc etc)
The other curious thing was that each window also had a list of opening times, and from what I got to see, they were only open in fifteen or twenty minute blocks, meaning that waiting in a line could be a very frustrating and pointless exercise, and I saw no point in joining any of the six or seven queues that had formed.

After wandering around in circles growing more and more confused, without even a helpful look from anyone in the place, I finally spotted an information window. (It seems that from my appearance that Russians presume that I am a Russian, each time I asked people whether they spoke English they seemed quite surprised that I would ask such a question) Fate then smiled upon me as the woman behind the counter understood a little English and seemed to understand the concept that I had come to the ticket office to buy a ticket for the train, despite my inability to speak Russian. I gave her a slip of paper with the destinations, Moscow and Blagoveschensk and train numbers written on them and she checked on the computer and found to my great surprise and relief that there were still places available (I managed to peek through the perspex to see that there was one spot left on the train to Blago) She even understood my request to find a cheaper class for the St P to Moscow leg, and told me that they were all fool. She wrote down the details in Russian on a chit of paper and then sent me to window 45, suggesting the women there spoke English. So I joined the relatively short queue for window 45, put down my backpack and wondered what would happen next. The queue moved quite quickly and after ten minutes or so it was my turn, so I smiled my best innocent abroad smile and handed over the chit of paper and my passport. Meanwhile the old man who had been served before me started asking the woman a few questions, she started talking to him, then disappeared out the back of the office and then returned in conversation with another ticket seller, finished answering the old man's questions, checked my Russian visa and typed out my name in Cyrillic as written on my visa, let out a loud sigh and said "Mamma mia", her only display of English, and passed the tickets through the window to me. Confused by the speed, complete lack of interaction and the grim look on the woman's face which suggested that I was without luck, I stumbled away with the two tickets in my hand. When I check the tickets I find that indeed I have exactly what I needed, and I think to myself walk in the park, even a bumbling fool like me can do what the guides suggested bordered on the impossible.I walk away with a smile on my face big enough to fit a train in to !!!

Off to Moscow

About an hour later I found my carriage, and discovered I was sharing the compartment with a young girl of five or six, her father/grand father and her gran - an old babushka, dressed all in black. They were most welcoming despite my inability to understand anything they said, or say anything they could understand. After a few failed attempts at communication the young girl spoke to the man then asked me in flawless French, Parlez vous Français ? It turned out she went to a bilingual school in St Petersburg so using my rather rusty French was able to find out that she was off to Moscow for a holiday with her grandparents. After being shepherded out of the compartment so Gran could get changed, I made up my bed and fell asleep almost immediately. In the morning we had a couple of hours before arriving in Moscow and Pops was quite impressed by the places I had been. After several attempts he had managed to get my name right and seemed to be obsessed with it, constantly using it as he told me, sometimes through his grand-daughter, sometimes directly to me in Russian, how he had been to Cuba and Angola during the Soviet times. Finally our train rolled in to Moscow and we bid our farewells and I started to feel as though perhaps my negative prejudices about Russians were a little off the mark.

Moscow, Moscow, city of the Russian tsar

Coming out of the station at 10 in the morning the sky was a dull grey, the ground was still wet from earlier rain and despite the sun trying to break through the clouds the cold was still a little nippy. There are three big train stations piled next to each other and I managed to navigate my way to where my train left from, find a left luggage place (Four different windows each with different closing and opening hours) and then set off to spend the three hours I had before my train left doing Moscow. On the street outside of the station there were quite a few people milling around and I began to notice that Russian came in every stripe and colour - from your white as the driven snow, blonde hair and blue eyes variety (aka Dandy South white Russian/ Baltic Kev), to dark, leather skinned, squat Mongolian looking, to straight up, short, black haired, narrow eyes and small nosed Chinese looking, and everything in between.

Walking away from the station, being Sunday morning there wasn't many people or much traffic about on the wide streets. On my way to Red Square I passed a mix of relatively few old buildings (almost all of Moscow was completely destroyed when Napoleon took it back in the day) lots of Soviet concrete behemoths all grey, symmetrical and bland - built for use rather than looks, a few experimental Soviet buildings - still grey concrete but strange angles smashing in to each other, and surprising a lot of new glass and metal buildings shimmering under the weak sun - either completed or under construction. I also walked passed the New Moscow - a covered walkway of exclusive boutiques, an Italian sports car parked out the front for sale, loud plastic pop music blaring away and all the glamour and glitz you could imagine. The security guards glared at me as I crossed the road to get a better look, clearly I wasn't part of the in crowd.

Arriving at the Red Square the first thing I saw was the Kazan Cathedral, a striking reddy brown building, all triangular towers and silver spires. However as I entered the vast expanse of the square, the walls of the Kremlin on the right, the endless windows of a Soviet concrete monolith on the left both running the 500 metre length of the square, there sits the most bizarre, colourful, swirling shaped fantasy church I have ever seen - St Basil the Fools. Walking the length of the square, like a marching soldier on parade in front of the Party Chairman, the church only became more and more impressive and unbelievable the closer I get. Built in the 1550's for Ivan the Terrible, who wanted to leave a legacy other than the worst nickname in history, it is supposedly the symbol of religious Russian architecture.
Staring at it from up close is hard work, the eye never wants to rest, jumping from one part to the next, and then back again, trying somehow to form a single image that takes in everything - and you have to fight off the thoughts that perhaps those domes are actually big lollies. The photos simply don't do it justice. Standing behind the church, looking at the square, the church, the Kremlin (the walled inner city sanctum of Russian power) and the river behind me I couldn't help but think of the book Gorky Park, and the part where the detective wanders about in this part of Moscow in the middle of winter in the freezing cold trying to make sense of what has happened. In such a historical place, that I have seen through so many images, both photos and descriptions in books, it is hard not to feel a sense of history and perspective. I also notice is that despite the rough cobble stones every women I have seen is wearing high heels, some look precarious on their six inch stilettos (with matching track suit) but all manage to pull it off without falling - perhaps Russian women learn to walk that way from childhood.

I wandered back around the other side of the square passing Lenin's mausoleum, running out of time I want to see how long the queue is. I discover however that Lenin remains very popular and rather than running just the length of the square, the queue snakes its way along the entire length of the church, then further along through a park on the left, so I don't even bother trying to find the end let alone joining it. In the square there a bunch of Russian soldiers wandering about, a guy with a couple of monkeys in leather jackets, a group of look-a-likes - I recognise Lenin, Stalin and Yeltsin but there are four or five more generals - you can have your photo taken with them.

As I wandered out of the square I come across a group of elderly people milling about, a few stalls with pamphlets and lots of hammer and sickle flags. A group of them are standing on the steps of the statue of Marx singing the Internationale. A Spanish tourist is busy filming them with his video camera, and I figure them to be part of the majority of Russians who long for the social security and global reputation of the Soviet days.

The Great Big Transsiberian Escapade - Set and Cast (Part II)

2009-08-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

The set

When I returned to the station a little late in Moscow I found that my place was in carriage number 1, at the far end of the train next to the engine. This meant that I had to walk the entire length of the train, seventeen almost identical green and white wagons and a dining car to reach my allocated place, and that I got to check out the entire train and all its occupants.
The little engine that could - notice that it is an electric engine - unbelievably the entire Transsiberian route (all 9,000 kilometres) is electrified. We went through about two of these a day - we would stop for about 10 or 15 minutes and the engines would be changed over

Train 350u in all her glory - the full 17 carriages plus a dining car and a carriage for the drivers.

My home for the next seven days - platskartny class. Each little section has six beds - four full sized beds in the part on the right side (2 up and 2 down) and two beds for the vertically challenged on the left side (1 up and 1 down) I got the last ticket on the train so of course I was on one of these dwarf beds. On the right side there is a small table, on the left side you have to fold up the bottom bed to put out the table.There is plenty of room for bags on the shelf above the beds or under the beds on the right side.
The seats are then cushions, leaning against laminated walls so they get uncomfortable after sitting on them for more than an hour so there is a fair amount of wandering.

This is the small small compartment at the end of the carriage with a rubbish bin and door to toilet between the door at the end of the carriage and the door to the smoking area with the exit doors on either side and the space between the two carriages. The compartment was often full with people as there were two power plugs and people seemed to constantly need to charge there phones.

The toilet - which was actually kept quite clean for the entire seven days by the diligent attendants. You had to judge your runs carefully though as the door would be locked 10 or 15 minutes before the train pulled in to a town, and stay locked whilst we were at the station.

There was also another toilet at the other end of the carriage, and a samovar (the hot water heater for making all of your food) but no shower.

The cast

The truth about riding on a train is that you don't actually get to see all that much, little snatches of the landscape, what provides the real interest is the view you get in to the lives of ordinary Russians. There is no travelling experience like it - getting to spend seven days with a complete cast of strangers.
The Russians took a little while to warm to me, but I will briefly introduce them at the beginning so you know who they are when they play their parts.

This is me, early on in day one before the grime started to mount up, the sweat forced me to go Baltic and the lack of deep sleep caused my eyes to almost close over during the middle of day.

Perhaps the most important person on the train, the provodnitsa or "she who must be obeyed. Responsible for everything from checking tickets, providing linen, keeping the place clean, making sure the toilet door got shut, making sure none of the passengers failed to get back on the train after it stopped and to keep the hot water hot.
There was actually two provodnitsas - the other was a younger, bleached blonde glam puss who wore a matching tracksuit when not in uniform.
They were both amused by my inability to speak or understand Russian, and kind of just pushed me around when I was doing something wrong - using the toilet at the wrong time, sticking my head out the window etc etc

The student, on his way back home for the summer holidays. He was the first to take interest in the foreigner and used his laptop with a translation program to try and work out what the hell I was doing on the train.

The Wharfie and Wife - somehow salt of the earth look the same world over. He was a shipyard worker with the tatts on his hand to prove it. She was as skinny as a rake and didn't get out of bed much - neither seemed to understand, even after seven days, that I couldn't understand a word of Russian.

Ms Short Shorts - what more can be said than how short are those short shorts

Mother and Family - mother and two girls going home to Blago after visiting family in Moscow. Mother was in the bed below me (that folded up in to a table) so she wasn't too happy when the drunks started hanging around my table at the beginning, but she showed me how Russian women deal with drunks (they seem to get a lot of practice)

The Grandma - travelling alone she bought almost everything on offer, she seemed worried that I was travelling alone and so protected me from the bandits and even made sure I found a taxi at the end.

The Drunk - actually there were four of these guys, but two got kicked off on the first night. The other two were either drinking, drunk, asleep or eating the entire time (five days) they were on the train. He was so out of it that he was bossed around by all the women on the train, and constantly made fun of, even by the kids. The Drunk slept opposite me and snored louder than the train, but always managed to be up before everyone else in the morning (and drinking) and after every stop he would saunter back in to the train with new bottles of beer and vodka.

Grandma and the Kids - Gran was the babushka of the carriage, and looked like she had been through a few wars. The kids were returning home after holidays, and were quite well behaved, which meant Gran let them have the run of the train.

The Army Boy - I met Daniel on the fourth day when word had spread far enough on the train of my presence. He spoke very good English, which he had picked up spending months on end on a remote Russian military base on a island near Japan.

The Army Team - these were Daniels' soldier mates and the Major General (who so nicely leant me his hat for that fantastic photo) They were on there way to Blago to sit an exam.

The Uzbeki - he only joined us on the fifth day (after short shorts got off) but he could speak a little English and liked to talk about his homeland. He was going to Blago to visit his sister.

The Great Big Transsiberian Escapade - Day by Day (Part III)

2009-08-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

There is almost no other journey with quite the cache and renown that the Transibberian holds, the mere mention of the word Transsiberian causes a hush to fall over backpackers dormitories all over the world. Train-nerds will tell you that technically there are three Trans trains - Transmongolian, Transmanchurian and the mother of them all, the 9,289km seven day long Transsiberian - Moscow to Vladivostok. (Interestingly Russia only has the second largest rail network at some 85,000km of track, whilst there are more than 228,000km of track in the US) Unfortunately I was not able to get on any of the Trans trains, so instead I took an ordinary train going to Blagoveschensk, a mere 8,500km.

This train is bound for.... Blagoveschensk

After half running half walking at a brisk pace the length of the train I was confronted with the bull of the woman who was to be my provodnitsa - guarding over the door of the carriage like a lion over its prey - there was no way anyone was getting on to that carriage without a ticket. However once I produced my ticket, and passport and she had checked those over and looking back and forth between my passport photo and myself to make sure it really was me (two years of loitering must have really aged me) she tore the edge of my ticket, smiled a churlish smile as if to say, You have no idea what you are in for, and ushered me on to the train with the nod of her head.

My allocated seat was at the other end of the carriage, meaning I had the opportunity to walk the entire length of the carriage and check out my fellow travellers. Barely had I time to find my seat, get my bag on the shelf and cop a few stares from my curious co-travellers when without fanfare and on time the train pulled away from the station and we were off and the journey had begun. Despite thinking that I look rather foreign and quite international backpackerish everyone seems to presume that I am Russian and in the initial few conversations everyone speaks to me in Russian at full speed. I am sharing my cubicle with the Wharfie couple who sleep on the right side opposite me (him up, her down), Ms Short Shorts (down) and the Drunk (up) on the left side opposite me. Below me is the Mother (of the two daughters) but her daughters have the beds in the next compartment along so she shares that table (with the Grandma) whilst I get the table where her bed folds up alone. The Mother eventually concludes that I am not Russian, and despite trying to tell her I am from Australia I hear her refer to me as Americainey when talking to the others. It seems most people are sceptical that I can't at least understand Russian, but I overhear the kids practising phrases in English to each other like "What is your name ?" but none of them are game enough to try them out on me yet.

I climb up to my bed and try to stretch out to find that even if I sleep with my head in the corner my feet still hang off the edge and in the aisle, clipping a few people in the head as they walk past. Although it doesn't appear that way, the lateral beds are actually quite short. Unfortunately every single bed in the carriage (and the entire train) is taken so I just have to get used to it. A couple of hours in, after a small power nap we stop for the first time, and I get to get off the train and stretch out a little on the platform. An hour or so later, in the twilight of the late evening we stop again in a small town and this time everyone puts on their coat and heads for the door. Upon climbing down from the carriage it seems the entire village is on the platform with something for sale -there are wheelbarrows filled with soft drink, beer and vodka (Beer comes in huge two and a half litre bottles - like soft drink) buckets of wild berries, trays filled with dried fish, pickled vegetables, meat patties, boiled vegetables, loaves of dark bread that is almost black wrapped in tea-towels, salami and cooked sausages, lots of different vegetable fritters and ice creams. Curiously Russians also call a slab of ice-cream between two biscuits an Eskimo - and I buy one only so that I can tell people I have eaten ice cream in Siberia. We wait around for half an hour during which the engine is decoupled and shunts off the be replaced by another blue beauty. The provodnitsa herds us back in to the carriage as two men with mallets walking the length of the train and tapping the wheels (which give off a gentle metallic tone as if they were tuned gongs) and the brake boxes, and after an initial jolt we are rolling again.

A History Lesson

It wasn't until as late as the 1840's that the Russian started to take an interest in the huge mass of land that lay to the east despite its proximity (the Scramble for Africa was going on at about the same time) The adventurous governor of Siberia surveyed the area and noticing the Chinese hadn't occupied a large chunk of it he redrew the border with China, nicking some land in the process. As with most industrial development the main driver of the trans-Siberian railway line was the desire to exploit the resources of the huge territory and to exert de facto sovereignty to back up paper claims. Prior to the railway being built is was quicker to go the long way around - from Moscow head to the Atlantic Ocean and sail across it, then traverse the American continent, and then sail across the Pacific Ocean. In the late 1880's work commenced on the railway line, and several parts were constructed simultaneously. It would have been tough work, whilst most people know Siberia gets bloody cold, it also gets bloody hot - 40 degree plus temperatures in summer are not unheard of, and all the water means plagues of mosquitoes. Using imported and forced labour and working at a furious pace, by 1916 it was possible to take a train all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok without getting off - it was possible to go overland earlier than this but such a journey required getting off the train and sailing up rivers and across Lake Baikal. Ironically because of the speed of construction of the line and the narrow gauge, it was only possible for the trains to travel at 25 kilometres per hour meaning that it was still quicker to go the long way round. It wasn't until the Soviets took power that the line was upgraded to a double line with a wider gauge and bridges were reinforced that trains could up the speed. Electrification was started in 1929 and finally completed in 2002, meaning trains could be longer (and heavier) and faster.

Drinking Russian style

When I applied for my visa in Helsinki I picked up a copy of the City-In-Your-Pocket tourist guides for St P and Moscow, and they both had a section about drinking in Russia which started our with "Stereotypes about Russian drinking habits are mostly true". So I wasn't surprised when my first drinking session started about six hours in to trip, not long after the second stop. I was standing in the small compartment at the end of the carriage, sitting on the rubbish bin waiting for the toilet when Sasha (the Drunk no. 2) lurched in from having a smoke outside and took a sudden interest in me when I answered his comment to me in Russian with "Sorry I don't speak Russian. I don't understand). Despite his inability to say much other than Hello and What is your name ? in English, he took it upon himself to give me a proper Russian welcoming. After working out what each others' names were, he signalled me to wait and disappeared in to the carriage and came back with two of the biggest cans of beer I had ever seen. He seemed to apologise that the alcohol content was only a miserly 6.4 percent, opened both cans, said the equivalent of cheers in Russian and made sure I started drinking. A few moments later he made a face like which seemed to say, What was I thinking ?, again he disappeared in to the carriage and returned with a bottle of vodka and an apple. At this point I was starting to get a little nervous, but I like to try new things, so I watched as he showed me how to drink vodka. Basically it involved taking a large swig straight from the bottle (he had proudly showed me this was 60 percent proof) and then bite the apple. He insisted I have a go, and the vodka was actually quite palatable, and chewing the apple did distract from the gentle burning sensation in my stomach. When he insisted that we continue drinking the vodka this way I was a lot nervous. Fortunately we ran out of apple after three or four rounds - leaving about a quarter of the bottle left - so we had to console ourselves with drinking the weak beer. Whilst all this was going on he was nattering away to me in Russian, and growing of tired of repeatedly telling him I didn't understand, I just started nodding and smiling. Eventually we ended up back in the carriage at my seat and the hospitality continued - he laid out all the different food he had bought at the stop and was a little upset that I couldn't eat much of it due to it being meat. I am sure his continual talking to me in Russian only helped convince my fellow travellers that I did indeed understand Russian, but after a while he needed another drink and when he disappeared to get one I took the opportunity to lay out the bed and then lie down on my own.

The noise of the train is actually quite loud, and initially the rolling from side to side of the carriage makes getting to sleep a little difficult. The fluorescent lights that remain on all night shine right on my face and I have put up the straps in the middle of the bed to stop me from rolling out, so wedging myself between the window and the straps, and constantly changing between bending my knees and curling up my legs or trying stretching out my legs and trying to find somewhere to rest my feet on the edge of the bed eventually wears me out and I fall asleep.

A slight thawing on day two

Inside the train it is actually quite warm with most of the windows being closed, and all the sleeping bodies pumping out heat. The thermometer at the end of the carriage reads 25 degrees, so during a stop in the middle of the night I take the opportunity to get outside in the fresh night air, and have a stretch as the bed is a little cramped. Eventually I do manage to get a bit of sleep, most of it in the early hours of the morning. When I finally get out of bed the Wharfie opposite me says good morning and then using hand signals asks if I had slept well. The roving drunks had clearly been up for hours and where already under the weather - walking around struggling to stay upright against the roll of the train - I later discover that they get up very early and start drinking.

The view out of the window is quite limited, it is pretty much lines of trees on both sides of the track, with the odd clearing with a few dachas (summer houses) every now and then. From time to time we rumble through a city and all the concrete blends in to a single building.

Food on the move

I had prepared for my seven day adventure by finding two bowls in the camp ground in Helsinki, the gift of a therms flask from Sari, a dozen packets of instant noodles, some old freeze dried army hiking food from Sari's brother's time in the Finnish army - sachets of pasta, soup and apple and cinnamon drink, some salt, pepper and plastic cutlery borrowed from the boat to Estonia, a loaf of bread and packet of porridge from Estonia and the need to lose a bit of weight after being fattened up in Finland. Whilst their was a restaurant car on the train, and a couple of times a day the waitress would wheel a trolley with food on it around, the constant availability of boiling hot water allowing me to cook up soup, noodles and pasta and the food available at a lot of the stations we stopped at meant I never used these services. It was a bit of a lucky dip each time we stopped as to what would be available - I scored boiled potatoes in a garlic sauce a couple of times, a very tasty loaf of dark bread, prepared salads with beetroot and carrot, beans and peas, blueberries, raspberries (twice) mandarins, tomatoes and cucumbers, corn on the cob, pine nuts and plenty of biscuits, sweets and of course - ice cream. There was also plenty of meat on offer - Russians really love there salami and other processed meat, they also go in for the garden variety sausage, and big, fat greasy meat balls - one of which could smell out the entire carriage. When we went around Lake Baikal we had an onslaught of smoked fish sales people board the train - and the fish was surprisingly good (although possibly radioactive)

As the confusion of time and boredom started to grow on me meals where pretty much what marked out the day - breakfast everyday was porridge with some home made blueberry jam I picked up on the first day, lunch and dinner were more varied and depended on what I picked up during the day. My fellow travellers were always intrigued by what I was trying to whip up in my bright yellow egg shaped bowl, and I guess they started to feel sorry for me or maybe curious and would send random ingredients my way as gifts. Surprisingly many of them survived almost solely on pop-noodles - either the cup variety or in a container - which were available at every stop and even from the provodnitsa.

Russian women in action

Somehow Drunk no 2 managed to remember me from the first day, and when he got bumped from his table he moved the little birthday celebration he was having for one of the women in the carriage on to my table - I couldn't say no as I didn't realise what was going on until too late. Not long after we pulled in to a station for a half hour break and I though it would be a good chance to escape, but he caught me on the platform and I became his porter as he set about buying beer, vodka and almost every item of food he was offered. When I returned to the table my fellow travellers were surprised as I was to see me loaded up with provisions. When Drunk no 2 returned he insisted I have a beer, and then started pouring everyone vodka shots. It was early in the afternoon by this time so the Drunks were quite pissed, rocking around with the movement of the train spilling their drinks and food. After an hour or so it was becoming a little tedious and I was looking for an out when suddenly the Mother sprang in to action and move them on. I couldn't understand a word of what was said, and you could imagine how drunk four men in a bar in Australia would react to being told what to do by a woman, but they actually cowered - not only did they move on, they also cleared up the table before they left. It was interesting watching how Russian women deal with drunken men, they seem to have a lot of experience. Meanwhile, the men seem quite harmless, they bumble around, never really talk above normal volume, are courteous to everyone and other than making the odd mess they don't cause much hassle. In fact they are often the butt of a lot of jokes - especially Drunk no 1 (Alexei) who constantly struggles to get up to his bed. However by the end of day day the party of four are down to two - Drunks no 2 and 3 disappeared on the second night with all their luggage - I never managed to work out quite where they went. Alexei spends the entire time he is on the train drunk or asleep - his routine for the entire trip is to wake around 6am and start drinking - usually in the dining car. He would then return around 10am when everyone else was getting up and have some breakfast and a few more drinks and then he would hit the sack. He would wake again in the early afternoon, have a drink and then have some lunch and then head off to the dining car for some more drinking. By around 9pm he would return and scramble up in to his bed and snore like a trooper for the whole night, only to wake early the next morning to do it all again.

Passing the time

I spend a lot of the day reading (I have brought along Crime and Punishment) and staring out the window. Train windows don't give you much perspective and the landscape remains flat, covered in trees, with the odd river or lake and big towns that appear and disappear with equal rapidity. Sitting is actually quite uncomfortable - the thin cushion under me and the laminated wall behind me aren't really designed for comfort, so at every long stop I take the chance to get out and walk around and stretch. Inside the train the temperature is warm - somewhere in the mid twenties, causing the Baltic male gene to express itself - lots of guys take their shirts off to expose there white beer guts, and the rest are in singlets. I succumb to the peer pressure and put on my blue truckie singlet and get a few nods of approval.

Day 3 - Curiosity gets the better of shyness

By day 3 I can see that curiosity is getting the better of my fellow travellers, the kids are responding to my winks when they walk past. The Wharfie lets me know when when a long stop is coming up and we head out of the train together and stand around together on the platform. I meet the Student - Maxim, who brings his laptop over to my desk and uses his Russian-English translating program. Everyone crowds around and it handles the basics - so they get to find out that I am from Australia, a lawyer, no wife or kids, on holiday, not able to speak Russian, on my way to China and a vegetarian. The Wharfie's wife gets Maxim to ask me whether my mother misses me, and so I go through the whole 15 kids and grandchildren explanation - but I don't think they really believe me. As the questions get more complex the translations stop making any sense - Maxim types in something to do with me doing something about the drunks because I am a lawyer and it comes out as complete garble - so I laugh and we give up.

The Kids now see me as fair game and they ask me if I want to play cards. They deal out the cards - a Russian version of gin rummy, and I don't really understand the rules so they have to tell me when I play the wrong card. They don't seem to mind that I can't understand the rules or anything they say to me. They are three brothers travelling with their babushka and seem to enjoy the attention from an adult that has some very childish mannerisms. They try and think of what they know in English and all they can come up with is "I'll be back" from Terminator. They are so impressed by my Arnie impression that they run off to tell everyone about it and walk around all day saying "I'll be back" every time they see me. After a while I get bored with that so I say the only other line from the movie I can remember "Hasta la vista, baby" and they are even more impressed.

Later in the afternoon Maxim helps me buy some potatoes and some sort of fish patties when we stop and then he buys me a beer (1/2 a litre of 7.4 percent) and we eat dinner together, sharing what we have bought. Maxim then explains the rules to me and we end up playing cards with the Wharfie and a couple of other guys until late. The other kids in the carriage start to spit out a few words in English to me, and the Mother's two daughters even find a page on Australia in a learning English book they have. The Mother even says 'Thank you' when I get her mattress down off the shelf, and then 'Goodnight' when I get in to bed. I struggle to get to sleep, and discover that drunks can be annoying, as Alexei snores so loud all night without a break even my earplugs can't keep me from hearing it. I make the mistake of going for a stretch when we stop in the middle of the night. Outside it is quite chilly and I don't really get back to sleep until the early hours of the morning.

Day 4 In a Russian

We must be late because this morning the driver is going hell for leather, causing the train to rock from side to side. This makes my attempt to keep sleeping impossible, so I get up and manage to accomplish the challenge of making and eating breakfast as the train rocks without spilling anything. The Kids come back for some more cards and then we end up playing Russian Chinese checkers. I beat the three brothers (gotta take whatever victory you can) and so they recruit an older kid to play me. Turns out the Russians have different rules - like jumping forwards and backwards, and kings being able to move the entire length of the board - which I only find out when I make a wrong move. Needless to say the kid beats me, and I lose interest.

Communicating Russian style

The train had 17 carriages, and they were all pretty much full, so at a rough guess there were about seven hundred people in total on the train. In my carriage alone there were sixty passengers and not one spoke English, and I guess this was true for the entire train. However that didn't stop people trying to communicate with me - even on the fourth day, knowing I spoke not a word of Russian, they would still speak at me at full tilt in Russian, perhaps hoping that I would miraculously understand. Russians seem to have that same defect as English speakers who presume that really everyone innately speaks their language and if they keep at it long enough they will be understood. Sadly for the Russian there aren't that many non Russians who do actually speak Russians. What made it even more difficult was that unlike the Arabs who I had spent a while with, Russians use almost no hand movements or facial expressions - they would just stare at me and expect me to understand. I guess the education system during the Soviet times didn't place much emphasis on learning the language of the capitalists, and Russia still remains very proud of their own culture and a little inward looking.

Also, for those of you who have been subjected to my Russian accented English, ("Victor, you are a very unattractive man") just wait to you hear me now. What I found out whilst being around Russians is that my accent was actually way,way too subtle, and that in Russian all those back of the throat sounds are actually pronounced very,very strongly. So when I thought Russians might take offence at me doing my silly pronunciations of place names like Blagoveschensk or Krasnoyarsk, in fact rather than getting in to trouble I was offered a drink and encouraged to say it again.

Police checks

After the drunks had disappeared a few times a couple of uniformed police wandered through our carriage - each time they would check the passports of the two Chinese guy sitting behind me. Perhaps not recognising that I was a foreigner they passed by me each time, however once when I was waiting to go to the toilet and speaking a little English with Maxim two cops walked in and looked at me a little strangely. Luckily the toilet door opened at the same time so I disappeared out of view. When I came out they were gone, but Maxim told me not to worry. However, I explained to him by showing him my passport that whilst I did have a valid passport, my visa was due to expire on the last day of the train trip - so I needed to go straight from the train station to the port to catch the boat to China. Maxim said "Hmm" and then was distracted by the other visas in my passport.

Staying clean

One thing that the house on wheels lacks is a shower. Apparently tickets in the higher classes give you access to running water, but down in platsky all we get are a toilet and a basin. However, even for a renowned ablutions avoider like myself, after even a day of living in close quarters with sixty or so other people, at an average room temperature of 25 degrees, with the few open windows allowing in all sorts of air-born dust and not really displacing the pungent combination of smells arising from the mix of seemingly always garlic heavy food and sweaty bodies, I needed a wash. I observed how every once in a while one of my fellow travellers would toddle off to the toilet and come back looking, and smelling, a little fresher than the rest of us. The Wharfie even bought some shampoo for his wife, took some hot water to the shower and helped her wash her hair. So with the small, white hand towel that came in my linen package, and some Finnish wild smelling soap I headed off to to see if I could rid of the rising smell and thick layer of dirt that was building up everywhere on my exposed skin. As you can see from the photo of the toilet, there wasn't really much room to swing a cat, combined with the constant rocking and unpredictable violent lurches (the door to the toilet is locked when we are stationary) and the small basin and low tap, it took a few attempts before I worked out that the best clean I could get was to completely strip off, and throw the freezing cold water over myself using my handy yellow bowl. Then I would lather up, and at this point things got tricky because any slip I would have ended up sitting in the toilet. So I would quickly get as much water on myself as I could before I took a fall or the cold water caused my circulation to completely stop. Drying myself was an equally difficult challenge, and I have to confess that a number of times I left the toilet less than bone dry.

All this had to be accomplished in a relatively short time, for the sake of being a good neighbour to your fellow traveller (only 2 toilets between 60 people - which were also the only place to shower and wash food, plates etc) and in fear that the provodnitsa would start banging on the door to vacate the toilet so it could be locked as we approached a station. By da
y four I had worked out that late at night and just after the lunch rush were the best times to try and get a wash in. However, as the days passed the build up of the small amounts of dirt and scum that these rushed and precarious showers were removing only encouraged me to give up on cleanliness and accept having a layer of scum between myself and the surrounding air. You can almost see the layer in this photo taken on the sixth day !!!

Day 5 A change of scenery across the twilight zone

On the morning of the fifth day I woke at 3am Moscow time, which was around 5 or 6 am where we actually were, to see the (still) flat landscape covered in a thick fog. I went to the toilet and the wind coming in the window was biting - it was getting cold. The strange thing was that I had slept in my singlet and shorts, using only a sheet every now and then to keep me warm - one of my fellow passengers had borrowed my blanket - but I wasn't cold. In the morning the Wharfie told me about how cold he was (because his wife had nicked his blanket), so I started wondering if there was something wrong with me - not feeling the cold when Russians who live in Siberia are complaining !!!

Despite the Transsiberian travelling across six different times zones, and the existence of 11 different time zones in Russia, all train timetables in Russia, and all clocks at train stations across Russia are on Moscow time. So, for example, when the timetable says my train will arrive in Blagoveschensk at 11.25am, it is actually 5.25pm local time - something which nearly got me in trouble with Russian immigration. Initially I thought such an idea was a hangover from the Soviet days, imposing uniform human will onto variant actuality, but after thinking about it for a while it actually makes a lot of sense, to solve what could be a rather difficult problem. (Unlike the Chinese, who have only one time zone for the entire country - meaning the middle of the night is the middle of the day in the far eastern regions). Think of the chaos and confusion that would prevail in trying to organise the huge rail system that requires strict co-ordination of time to ensure that no two trains are on the same track at the same time and that replacement engines and carriages are available when the train rolls in to town. A single time across the entire network seems like a simple solution to a lot of problems.

The time zone conundrum is also confronted of a personal level - when exactly should you change the time on your own watch. In the beginning, when the difference is slight there isn't much to notice - get up at 7am - really it is 9, or go to bed at 9pm - really it is 11pm. It is dark when you go to bed, light when you get up, and the day just drags through the middle. However as the difference gets bigger, and the monotony of constant travel and an almost unvarying landscape pushed me toward using the hours as a way of breaking up the day and pretend I was civil - get up before 9am, lunch at 2pm, go to bed after 9pm, I started getting confused. Did I get up on Moscow time or local time - I had to wait until it was light. What time exactly did I go to bed ? or Why am I eating lunch at 5pm ? And perhaps as a combination of sleeping a lot on the train, the odd hours I was keeping, and the fact that it was dark at 5pm and light at 1am, made me feel as though I was suffering from jet-lag (on a train) !!!

That is where the tourists are

In the late morning on the fifth day we arrived at Irkutsk - formerly known as the Paris of Siberia - a city of half a million people, 5,200 kilometres from Moscow - and about halfway to the Pacific !! At the station I witnessed the de-training -from first class of course - of a bunch of tourists with their Russian tour guides - all who had spent their time together in their little cabins, to be met by their local guide at the station - off to their hotels with their huge packs and suitcases - and bags filled with supplies - enough to keep a Russian family fed for an entire winter. My fellow travellers watched on as the tourists were shepherded around by their guides, all heading off together. When I got back on the train I suddenly smelt the mix of body odour and food that permeated the carriage (and that the guide books warned off) - but I quickly became reaccustomed to it and it disappeared as we headed off.

Lake Baikal

Seventy kilometres past Irkutsk, Alexei the Drunk of all people started wandering up and down the carriage looking intensely out the window, and the word Baikal started being murmured up and down the carriage - making me rack my brains to think what Baikal actually was. We caught a few brief glimpses of Lake Baikal through gaps in the trees, the world's deepest lake, from high above it, and we then slowly wormed our way around bend after bend until we rounded one last bend and a panoramic view of the lake revealed itself to us, glimmering below us in the bright mid-day sun.

Originally it was too expensive to build the line down to and then around the lake so ships were used to ferry the carriages across the lake, however this proved ineffective during storms and when the lake froze over. During the Russian-Japanese War engineers even laid a track across the ice, but the first train across sank and so that idea was abandoned and the cash was shelled out to lay a line around the southern shore of the lake. Amazingly, Baikal holds one fifth of all the world's unfrozen fresh water and is also home to the world's only fresh water seals. The lake stayed with us for an hour or two as we slowly descended down to its shore, where we stopped for a while. The train was then flooded with smoked fished salespeople, many trying to sell fish through the window. The smell was pungent, but when Grandma offered me some of the couple of bags she had bought, the taste was delicious. We continued to work our way around the lake, and every now and then we would catch beautiful vistas of it from the shore, passing numerous groups of Russians picnic-ing, sunbathing and even swimming !! It was a nice change to have something to look at out the window.

On line shopping

The appearance of the fish-sellers were only the last in a long line of on-board (the original on-line) vendors that traipsed up and down the train selling their wears. As many Russians only get out of where they live once a year they snap up the bargains for local products or simply enjoy being able to buy something they can't get at home. From the time we set out from Moscow various men and women, usually dragging big, woven plastic bags, offered differing products coming from where they got on the train for sale. There was a women with furs hats, a few women with knitted cardigans and jumpers, a guy selling plants (Grandma bought a huge stalk, about 4ft long wrapped in newspaper) quite a few people selling lots of different outfits, plenty of people selling home made food, a deaf guy with a whole tray of different toys including a spinning toy whose flashing lasers turned the carriage in to a disco. There were also plenty of vendors exploiting the boredom angle, selling newspapers, gossip mags, crossword puzzles and colouring books for kids. Every purchase usually attracted the attention of all and sundry and usually involved a lengthy bargaining discussion, and then once the sale was made the goods would be passed around to be inspected by all the closet experts.

At last, some English

By the fifth day word of my presence got far enough around the train for me to get to meet Daniel, the army boy. He wandered in to my carriage late on the fifth day with some of the kids from the carriage and when they pointed me out he asked me whether I spoke English. We had a long chat (I hadn't really spoken to anyone who could understand me for five days) about what I was doing and where I was going. He told me how he was off to Blagoveschensk with his team mates to sit an exam. He had been living for a year on one of the islands off the north of Japan that is Russian territory, and as it is so cold you can't go outside in winter he spent most of his time reading books in English. He became the de facto translator for all the pent up queries that my fellow travellers had built up over the previous five days - and there was a lot of hmmmings of understanding when he translated my answers.
He invited me to come and meet his team mates the next day and it dawned on me that I hadn't left my carriage the entire journey, so I jumped at the chance.

Day 6 Chita - off to China

Early in the morning of day six, 6,200 kilometres from Moscow we lost about a quarter of our fellow passengers at Chita, the point where the line splits, heading south to China or continuing East to Vladivostok. Most of the departing passengers cleaned themselves up before getting off the train, but the most impressive change was Alexei the Drunk, who shed his dirty tracksuit and singlet and had a new matching green jean suit on, slicked back hair and the ability to walk in a straight line. Everyone bid each other farewell and Alexei walked off with his bag in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other, the the shakes of the head and tuts of those staying on the train.

The very model of a modern Major General

Daniel came and collected me in the morning and as we walked the twelve carriages back to his I noticed that compared to the other third class carriages ours was the oldest and in the worst shape - the others looked much newer, cleaner and more comfortable. I also checked out the restaurant car, with its red vinyl rows of seats, bar and TV in one corner and kitchen at the other end. Reaching second class was an eye opener - carpets on the floor, plush red felt on the walls with gold trimmings and even lace on the curtains, Daniel later explaining that the Army paid for the ticket, and you got to ride second class if the journey was over five thousand kilometres !!! I met Daniel's team and the leader, no less than a Major General, who insisted that I put on his uniform for the photo. Showing the generous Russian hospitality that was now getting used to, and despite the early hours (one of the benefits of the confusion of a single time zone system is that you can justify drinking at any time because you know somewhere it is a reasonable hour to begin imbibing) we all shared some beers and the smoked fish they had bought the previous day at Baikal. They were all very proud of Russia and its diversity, repeatedly assuring me that they were all Russians, despite the difference in appearance. (They thought it hilarious that I thought one of them Japanese and another Mongolian) They generously donated me a Russian army hat from their kit, which I wore all the way back to my carriage eliciting a lot of stares and laughs from other passengers on the way back, and a lot of questions from my fellow carriage mates.

New passengers

After losing some passengers at Chita we gained a few more in dribs and drabs, and hence I got to meet Jamal, the Uzbeki, who was on his way to visit his sister in Blagoveschensk. Jamal travelled with only a small suitcase the size of a laptop bag, which put my huge backpack to shame. He spoke a little English and explained that he fixed mobile phones for a living, and he tried to get me to read the thick tome on electrical engineering he was carrying around. Perhaps because he spoke Uzbeki as his first language, he much better understood the idea of trying to communicate without a common language, and I soon found out that he had a Russian wife and two kids and that he was a Muslim. (My journeys through the Middle East and ability to recite the call to prayer in Arabic impressed him greatly - but seem to raise a little suspicion with the others in the carriage)

Russian bandits

Being so proud of my new hat (with the Soviet star and all) each time we got off the train that day I wore it out, which even got the provodnitsa laughing at me. It did however cause a bit of a problem - having seen me in my new hat, other soldiers on the train in a nearby carriage figured it was a way to make a bit of money. A couple came in to my carriage and asked if I was interested in Russian army stuff. I nodded to agree in the abstract - a little worried as to what would happen if I said No, I wasn't a big fan of the Russian army. So they began by offering me a pair of boots, which must have weighed at least five kilos, then jackets, pants. I tried to explain that I couldn't carry any of the things they were offering, and was a little worried when the Wharfie mentioned the word contraband - but the offers didn't stop coming. I finally agreed on a belt, with a huge buckle of the Soviet Union and I gave my belt in exchange, still not having realised what their real purpose was. They seemed happy and left our carriage only to return about half an hour later. In broken English they said something about vodka and I thought they were offering to buy me a drink, but what they actually wanted was me to buy them some. As soon as my new friends heard this they interceded - telling the soldiers that I didn't have any money and that I was a poor traveller. When the soldiers try to persuade me to come with them to their carriage, just for a short while, my friends repeatedly told me not to go and got rid of the soldiers.

Day 7

Finally the last day of the trip rolled around. I had finished Crime and Punishment which left me wondering if all Doestevsky's protagonists ended up in Siberia. It was hard to believe that by the end of the day we would be rolling in to Blagoveschensk and that I would have effectively crossed Siberia.

Punctuality

Next time you are waiting for a train that is late, just think that the Russian manage to run trains that travel for seven days and still arrive exactly on time. So when the timetable says that if you step on a train at 1.23 pm on a Sunday you will be get off seven days and more than 7,000km later at 11.23 then you can bet your bottom rouble that you will be at your destination at 11.23. Train drivers salaries depend heavily on being on time (but then so does the whole system) and so timetables over estimate the time required, which leads to the ironic practice of sometimes just sitting in the middle of nowhere for a while so that the train arrives at the next station on time. However with so many trains running back and forth I guess being on time is an imperative. Sadly as I was about to find out being on time wasn't going to help me.

Making an elephant from an ant

General discussion on the train had moved on to where people were going and after talking with Maxim about my need to get to China that day, I realised I had a big problem. (Having foreseen the possibility of not being able to get out of Russia before my visa expired I checked on the internet to see if others had a similar experience. It turned out that some had, and at the border they had been sent back to Moscow to get the situation regularised and pay a big fine, so I knew I needed to do all that I could to make sure I got out in time) Rather than arriving at 11.25am (Moscow time) in Blagoveschensk, we would actually arrive at 5.25pm (local time). The last boat to China sailed at 5.30, and the ticket office closed at 5, and the next day was Sunday meaning no boats would sail. After much discussion between themselves it was decided that I would go and stay with Maxim and get the boat on Monday, explaining to immigration that my train arrived late. Fortunately Daniel showed up at this time and did some quality interpreting. He explained that I could actually catch the last boat by getting off the train in Belogorsk - about 120 kilometres before Blagoveschensk at 3pm and then take a taxi to Blagoveschensk and arrive there at around 4.30. My friends continued debating the point for quite a while, but Daniel told me that they were just making an elephant out of an ant, and so I quickly got packing. Whilst I was doing so my friends swung in to action, helping me collect up all my stuff and get it in to my bag, trying to offer me some money and posing for my last minute photos. Just as I was putting the last things in my bag we pulled in to the station and as I headed for the exit I did a rapid series of goodbyes - all hugs and kisses, impressing my new friends with the one Russian word I had learnt to pronounce correctly - dasvidanya.
Daniel, Jamal and Grandma joined me as we ran the length of the platform, through the station and out on to the road to find a taxi. Unfortunately I needed to take a taxi to the taxi spot out of town and Grandma gave the driver a bit of paper which explained where I had to go and in a hurry and paid him the fare. I jumped in the taxi after quickly farewelling my friends, and watched out the back window with a heavy heart as they receded in to the distance, regretting the all too often farewells wandering about the planet causes, and without any time to think about the 7,900 km train journey I had just completed.

After The Great Big Transsiberian Escapade (Part IV)

2009-08-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

The silent ride

The taxi driver took me through town and there were a lot of people wandering around, it being a Saturday. We stopped at a taxi rank and it took him a little while to round up a taxi driver. I transferred my bags in to one of the Soviet era great engineering masterpieces, the Lada sedan, and we set off for Blagoveschensk. The driver pushed the Lada up above 100 kilometres per hour (that was as far as I could see) and we were rocking from side to side more than what the train did. For the entire hour and a half we were on the road the driver said nothing to me, other than offering me a cigarette. The view out the window was more expansive than the train however there wasn't much to see - flat, muddy grasslands to the horizon.
We rolled in to Blago, a big, dirty industrial town that looked all the more ominous with dark rain clouds hanging over it. The taxi driver had some trouble finding the port and then tried to rip me off with the fare but my friends on the train had insisted that I not pay more than 250 roubles so I was ahead of him on that one.

Customer service, Russian style

I walked in to the ticket office at 4.40, twenty minutes before it closed, however there were still a couple of surprises in stall for me. Reading the notice next to the ticket window I noticed to my alarm that the ticket was going to cost me 1500 roubles - alarming because that is the equivalent of $US50, and I only had about 600 roubles left. The ticket woman barked passport at me before I had time to say anything, and had printed out my ticket and boarding pass before showing me how much I had to pay with her calculator, through the plexiglass. Every time I bought something in Russia there was a barrier between myself and the person serving me, normally with a very narrow slit to speak through and a chute at the bottom for passing things through - it was as though there had been a lot of hold ups at some point. I handed over what I had and she punched in how much more I needed, so clearly I wasn't going to get a discount. I tried showing her my credit card and she just shrugged her shoulders. I said ATM, and made an inserting the card action and she said "Hmmmph". She took the ticket she had printed out and threw it in the bin and then walked away. At this point a little frustrated with the help I was getting, and very worried that I was in a Russian border town, not able to speak a word of Russian, needing about 800 roubles to get out of the country before my visa expired, not knowing where either the town or an ATM was, and having roughly 20 minutes to buy my ticket before the office closed. I can't remember exactly but I think I said something along the lines of "Shit, shit, shit" to myself as I walked away across the big, open marble floor towards the door. I was about to approach a guy standing to the right of the door speaking on a mobile phone - I was running out of options - but decided against. I turned to look back at the ticket window, and there - ten metres in front of me, unable to be seen from the ticket window because it was to the right and behind a wall was an ATM machine. I wandered over, it was on, in service, and it gave me 1000 roubles. I went back to the ticket office and waved about the 1000 rouble note in front of the woman - who said nothing. She reprinted my ticket, took my money and gave me the change and my ticket - without a smile of course.

Interrogation

I then managed to find the entry in to the port and then had to wait a couple of minutes for the x-ray machine operator to appear and send my bags through the scanner. Whilst I was waiting a couple of women working in immigration sauntered past, and they looked exactly the same as the woman who had stamped my passport when I came in - bleached blonde hair, 3 inch heels, and the 1950's futuristic blue with gold trimmings uniform. My bags were scanned and I handed over my passport to the woman (behind the window) in a small booth and she checked my passport, my visa and then my Tourist Card.

At this point I should probably explain some of the finer points of visiting Russia. Everyone who visits Russia needs a visa, and in order to get a visa you need an invitation from somebody inside Russia - a hangover from the Soviet era. In this the capitalist era hotels/hostels and travel agencies simply charge you $30 for such an invitation. Once you arrive in Russia you are required to register in any place where you spend more than three consecutive nights, not counting Saturday and Sunday. Registration is actually done by the people at the place you stay, and again there is another charge of $30. The law is a bit vague about what you are supposed to do if you are like me - spending all your nights on a train, but since you don't spend more than three nights in any one place supposedly you don't need to register - supposedly.

After all her initial checking the woman makes a call and a couple of minutes later a guy in uniform with one of those crazy peaked caps arrives and looks over my passport. They have a brief discussion and then she makes another call and a couple of minutes later a third guy in uniform, with an even bigger crazy peaked cap arrives, looks over my passport and has a conversation with the other two. Needless to say, by this time I am starting to get a little worried - clearly something is wrong, and I have visions of being thrown in the clink and then sent off to Siberia (technically I am already there) and spending the rest of my days working in pointless building operations attempting to write long and involved novels about the human condition. The guy with the bigger peaked cap steps out of the office and asks me if I speak Russian. I tell him no, and he asks me to sit and wait for a moment. About five minutes later another woman appears, she is an older woman, sensibly dressed in flat shoes and a skirt and jacket. She has a brief conversation with the other three and then says to me "You have not registered" showing me the empty side of the Tourist Card. A little relieved, I explain to her that I have been on the train and then frantically search my pockets, money belt and bag to find my tickets. I show the tickets to her and she says OK, and then asks me to wait again. Five minutes later she reappears, has a brief conversation with the initial immigration woman and then heads off. I get my passport back, and the guy with the bigger hat leads me out the door and points me down the stairs towards the boat. I walk over to the boat not really believing that I have managed to pull it all off, and actually get out of Russia on time. I think to myself that if that is the hassle I get when I leave on time, imagine what would have happened if I had overstayed.

Across the river to the future

The boat is very empty - there are only two or three other people on board and it leaves a little after 5.30. It takes us less than twenty minutes to cross the river, but I get a good view of Blagoveschensk as we move away from the bank. And then I focus my attention on China, and soon I recognise the huge, shiny glass and steel building rearing up before me as Chinese immigration. And I can see into the future - but that belongs in an entry about China.

Back to the eighties in the Baltics

2009-08-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

I knew it was time to leave Finland because grey skies had set in and whilst I was in Helsinki waiting for my Chinese visa it actually rained two days in a row, and I was still stinging from the blow of the cost of the Russian visa - my most expensive yet - 85 Euro (or $7,995 in real money)
One of the things you miss out on when you spend most of your time travelling in the third world is fashion, however hanging around in Helsinki for a couple of days I was a little disturbed to notice that the eighties was back in fashion. We had a late evening picnic in a park in town and where joined by a couple of groups of teenagers dressed up like they were in Bon Jovi - leather jackets, big hair, white gym boots. I felt like yelling at them, "Stop it ! Stop it ! I was there the first time and it was bad enough then, why do you want to do it again !!" From Helsinki I headed to Estonia with a boatload of Finns heading to Estonia to buy cheap booze and bring it back to Finland, but many had already started to knock a few back on the boat ride over. They say that with fashion if you wait long enough whatever you wear will always come back in, and based on that principle the Estonians are finally getting their turn. It seems most of them never actually managed to get around to changing their eighties wardrobes, and now they would have young hipsters offering them big bucks for the shirts of their backs. You can picture pale white skin, bleached blonde hair and mullets (or just ridiculous bits of hair hanging down the back), plenty of shiny tracksuits, high heels for the ladies, beer guts and trainers for the blokes, lost of gold medallions, and plenty of guys with their shirts off in the soaring 20 degree heat.
Tallinn, the city, was a big contrast to Finland, immediately on arrival you could notice that you were entering part of the former Soviet block, lots of big, grey, concrete tower blocks with tiny little windows all built using the exact same plan. Plenty of industrial use of concrete - large warehouses and factories, but all looking in the same state of disrepair and disuse as the rusting silos, cranes and other large machinery that sat on weed infested open lots. The sky was grey, and it rained every now and then, making it easier to see how depressing actually leaving in the Soviet bloc must have been.

I spent most of my time in Estonia stressing. The train I planned to catch to Moscow was full, and there wasn't any space on a bus to St Petersbourg until 2.30pm, meaning I wouldn't arrive until around 11pm. Compounding the stress was that I had read that the train ticket office in St P closed at 8pm and when I checked on the internet all the tickets for my backup train had been sold and there were only 3 (out of 100 or so) tickets left on the train I needed to catch the next day in order to get out of Russia before my visa expired and saving me from being sent off to Siberia for a couple of years of hard labour. (I had previously read on the net that Russian immigration officials take great pleasure in catching out those who overstay their visas, and can send you all the way back to Moscow to get the matter fixed) At one point I started searching for flights to Asia and was thinking about skipping the whole Transsiberian affair. However I thought it was too great an opportunity to miss, so I threw caution to the wind, and bought a bus ticket, figuring I could take on those Rusky bastards, and that if I failed and ended up in Siberia it might just be the one chance I get in this life to write a great novel !!!

So trying to put the whole thing out of my mind, Sari and I headed in to the old town to have some lunch and see the sights. Tallinn had the good fortune of not being too badly destroyed during the War, so a great deal of the old city is quite picturesque - a thick 3 metre high wall with round wooden towers looking out over the city, cobbled streets and narrow walkways. We had lunch at a pub, it was the nearest thing open when it started raining and it was so cheap compared to Finland Sari insisted we eat there. After drinking a small beer (small in Estonia means 1litre) I was almost ready to hit the road, so we wandered back to the bus station, bid our farewells and I stepped into the breech - Russia here I come.

I had a good introduction to Russians with the passenger sitting next to me, a surly middle aged Russian guy who said nothing to me for the whole eight hour journey, and alternated between knocking back pre-mixed vodka drink after drink then sleeping (and snoring) then waking up again to continue drinking. After about two hours on the road we started passing trucks parked bumper to bumper in the emergency lane and I knew we were getting close to the border. However this actually went on for around another thirty, yep thirty kilometres before we reached the border - one can marvel at the efficiency of Russian customs service. We reached the border and handed our passports over to the Estonians and after twenty minutes or so we had them back and were on our way to Russia. As we arrived at the Russian border post there were a bunch of immigration officials milling around outside, mainly women they were all dressed in their blue uniforms all shiny buckles and gold stripes, they had on their small blue hats with straight peaks along the middle of their heads, balancing on almost uniformly bleached, permed and teased blonde hair. All were wearing high heels, and they reminded me of images of those 1950's movies with futuristic waitresses - the look was very Soviet, trying to be at the vanguard but looking like a future from the past. The bus stopped and we all had to get out and drag our luggage through the small building that held two opaque cubicles from which more blonde haired, blue uniformed Russian women processed us. It took each person no more than a minute to get the required stamp and within twenty minutes we all piled back on the bus again and were motoring in to Russia.
The first thing I noticed was the terrible state of the road, as I was thinking, it feels a little like cheating for it to be so easy to get in to Russia so easily. From the Blind Traveller in the 1800's to the Soviet days (as described in all the spy books I have read) it always seemed near impossible to get behind the Iron Curtain - and live to tell the story. And the more difficult or impossible it was to get in to a place the more appealing it is, so despite my normal dummy spitting, which holds that filling in an application form is way too much, I felt a little let down. It was easy (if costly) to get a visa, there was no interrogation at the border, no bag search and I was in, perhaps I was just born a little too late !!!
The countryside looked similar to Estonia, which looked very similar to Finland - very lush and green, forests of trees lining the road on both sides, with the odd cleared field and a few small wooden cottages grouped in twos or threes here and there. Most of the cars of the road were newish looking Japanese or European models, driven a little bit more erratically on the cracked and potholed roads. Every so often we would pass a huge, old seemingly abandoned factory, and a town which seemed to consist solely off ugly, concrete tower blocks which all looked the same. As it began to grow dark, around 10pm, we arrived on the outskirts of St P.

Finnish for beginners

2009-07-25T21:48:00.000-07:00

Finnish sounds completely different to - apparently it has completely different roots. When you see it written it looks like a language invented by a bunch of drunk linguists sitting around the table - each daring the next to through in a few more constants or double letters in to each word. Many words are long compounds, most being made up of lots of short vowel-consonant-vowel strings with almost all words ending in a vowel, and the Finns have a penchant for throwing in repeated double letters where ever they can. So sometimes listening in on Finns it sounds like a muffled machine gun of sounds being spat out with an underlying rhythm. Many words sound very similar, so that if you remove just one of the letters out of a double letter the meaning completely changes - a lesson I soon learnt.

Being the culturally sensitive traveller I am I thought I should give it a go, and I started learning a few basic words and trying to get both the pronunciation and rhythm right - needless to say I didn't do very well, particularly as most Finns are such competent speakers of English. However I did find that some Finns are a little shy about speaking English, perhaps as they don't get much practice, so I learnt the phrase for "Don't be shy". One day, Oscar a six or seven year old boy who lived next door came for one of his regular visits and seemed a little frightened of the strange speaking, bearded foreigner. Trying my best to put him at ease I said what I thought was "Don't be shy" which caused everyone in the room to dissolve in to fits of laughter and saw Oscar bolting out the door. When the laughter finally subsided I asked what I had said, and it turned out by not pronouncing one syllable correctly (of course it was a double letter) I had actually said "Don't take a shit !!!"
One can imagine Oscar running home to his parents saying the strange foreigner told me not to go to the toilet. After that I pretty much lost my desire to learn any more Finnish.

So you think you know sauna ?

2009-07-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

The Finns invented the proper sauna and they take it very seriously, from the pronunciation ( it is SOW NA not SOR NA) to the temperature (at least 60 degrees but 80 if you are really serious, not like those wussy Swedes who have 40 degree saunas and sit inside reading the newspaper for a couple of hours) to the array of flavours - standard, wood, smoke. Almost all Finnish houses have their own sauna, a summer cabin isn't a cabin unless it has a sauna and even apartment blocks have communal saunas. Sauna is a way of life, and there is none of that new age mumbo-jumbo spiritual jumping about the place that some saunas have become associated with.

My first sauna experience was in a new house in the city belonging to a couple of friends of Sari. The sauna was located upstairs to the side of the bathroom and the women got to go first. When it was our turn we got fresh cold beers and headed upstairs and began to get ready. Whilst I was familiar with the concept that the sauna required you to be naked, I was a little unsure of the practicalities and a little nervous about being naked in front of a man I had just met. He went out to the bedroom the change I after using the toilet I started to take of my clothes, but when he returned in a dressing gown I was still in my underwear wondering whether it would be a faux pas to be completely naked, but a little wary of him thinking I had the usual Anglo hang-ups about being starkers. Whilst Finnish people may be a little shy about talking to you they are definitely not shy about getting naked in front of strangers, so Juko dropped the dressing gown to shower, advising me that it was best to get wet before getting in to the sauna. The ice was broken, so I dropped my strides, got wet and headed in to the sauna, which was only about wide enough to sit two people and not much deeper. The inside was entirely covered with pine decking, and in the corner there sat what looked like a wood heater, the top covered in a layer of rocks that were glowing red hot. Behind the heater, running the length of the sauna was a second level, upon which there was a bench for sitting on,
As soon as I closed the door I could feel the heat, and I was glad to sit straight down on the little towel that made sure my ass didn't get burnt from the hot timber decking that was the seat. I checked the thermometer and it was a cool 80 degrees, and pretty quickly my entire body was covered in sweat. I began to recline against the back wall but immediately jumped forward as the wood was too hot to touch. Gradually I began to get used to the heat - the cold beer helped immensely, but my body was completely covered in sweat, and the hot water left in my hair from the shower was dripping on to my shoulders, each drop stinging me as it fell. Then Juko threw some water from a pail between us on to the hot rocks and after a moment I found I could no longer breathe. The water immediately turned to steam and rushed to the top of the room, and seemingly straight down my throat, burning all the way down. I clamped my mouth shut and when I started to run out of air I sucked it threw my closed lips so that it only burned a little. Slowly the air cooled and I could open my mouth, and next time Juko threw water on I was prepared.

After what seemed like quite a while but wasn't much more than 15 minutes we got out and showered, wrapped ourselves in a towel and then headed outside (for Juko to have a smoke) and stood on the back porch in the rain - and I felt fantastic. The heat coming from inside my body kept running in to the cold from outside, and as I sucked in deep breaths of cool air the drops of rain were stinging my skin in a painful but enjoyable way. My senses were heightened, and I could feel every square millimetre of my skin, millions and millions of nerve fibres twitching, sending a flood of neurons bouncing along to my brain. Juno told me that it is even better in winter when you can jump in the snow !!! Before we got cold we headed back inside, and then back in to the sauna, and despite the initial shock of the heat again I felt comfortable much more quickly. After another 10 or 15 minutes Juno announced that he could feel his heart beating in his ears which was a sign to get out, which was just fine by me as my temperature was going through the roof and I was feeling a little uncomfortable, but I didn't want to seem like a wuss and get out first. After showering and cooling down somewhat we headed back downstairs for another beer, and despite feeling a little flustered and still quite warm, my skin felt very soft and I felt clean and tired. The ride back to Sari's house by bicycle in the rain was almost as refreshing as I could feel the rain and the wind on my skin all the way home.

My second sauna experience was in Sari's grandparents home. This was a much bigger sauna of the wood variety, attached again to the bathroom, but big enough to fit in maybe four or five people. Gramps lit the fire, and then Sari restocked it with wood about half an hour later, and about another half an hour later it was ready to go. The heater looked almost identical to the previous one I had seen, a metal box with rocks on top, but it had an empty chamber below in which you lit the fire. Gramps and Gran went in first, during summer they sauna twice a week and during winter it goes up to three times a week. Sauna really is a way of life and I could imagine how pleasant it would be to escape the monotonous cold of winter (it gets down to -40 !!!) by stepping inside a sauna a couple of times a week. When it was our turn the heat in the sauna had peaked but was still around 70 degrees. It was, however, far more comfortable because the burning wood gives off moisture (or something like that). It was much easier to relax and I lasted much more time, even throwing a bit of water on to the hot rocks myself. When we came out for a break I cranked the water up to full cold and it was absolutely freezing, and despite it initially feeling quite painful, it was actually enjoyable, feeling the contrast between cold skin that was turning in to goose bumps and a core temperature that was still high. (Sari later told me that when you go ice swimming, which is common in winter during sauna the water is about the same temperature.)

My third sauna experience was what the Finns consider to be the Rolls Royce of sauna, a smoke sauna, at the cabin in the woods. The sauna was a separate building itself, constructed out of logs, about the size of a small room. Inside there was a much stouter looking heater covered in hot rocks.
I admit that I only half paid attention to how the smoke sauna works but it involves enclosing the sauna and then burning wood which smokes up the room and heats up the rocks. Then you let the poisonous gases out, wait a little while, and voila, you have a sauna with the air that tastes like a mix of smoked salmon and a dark, rich bottle of red wine. Inside it was quite dim, but the temperature was only around fifty or sixty degrees, so you could sit around for longer, or indulge in another favourite Finnish pastime, whipping yourself with a bunch of branches of birch strung together just for the purpose. (Still no so convinced on that one) After a while when we grew too hot, we could simply amble out of the sauna, down the path for twenty metres or so and jump in the river, and have a swim until we started to feel the cold. We would then head back to the sauna and do it all over again. It was so enjoyable we ended spending almost all evening in either the sauna or the river, only stopping when after we watched the sun go down around 11pm. The other cool thing about the smoke sauna is that it stays warm for a longer time, so that we could even have another go the next morning !!

I got so used to having saunas whilst I was in Finland it was one of the first things I missed when I left the country. Starting to think maybe I could build one at home !!!

Let there be light

2009-07-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

When someone says to you that during summer in Finland it is light nearly 24 hours a day (if you go above the Arctic Circle then t is actually light 24 hours a day for a while) it sounds impressive, but we have long days in summer and what are a few more hours of light anyway. Well, quite a lot actually, when it is almost light all the time strange things start to happen.

When I got to Finland I had the good fortune of arriving in the early hours of the morning when it almost becomes dark, and having had a few bottles of red wine so I quickly fell asleep. However, on the first day as it got late in the afternoon and I hadn't yet left the place I was staying I started to get jumpy and felt like getting outside and going for walk. I procrastinated for a while and then began to notice that as it got later - six o'clock, then seven, then eight - it wasn't actually getting any darker. When I finally did get out for a walk, it was still light when I returned at eleven, and I found myself eating dinner well after midnight. The strange thing is that whilst the sun slowly marches across the sky, and finally sets at around 9.30 or 10, the sun's arc is almost parallel to the horizon rather then perpendicular, so whilst out of sight it is tottering along just below the horizon it is still light enough to read a book outside pretty much all night.

This is around 12.30 am one night in Lapland.

Over the next five weeks, especially when I went further north and got even more daylight I started to realise the effects of constant daylight. The most obvious is that it is quite difficult to sleep when the sun is still shining. (It reminded me of when was a little tacker and Dad sent us to bed at 9 o'clock during summer and it was still light. The Morgans from over the road came and tapped on the window and made fun of us because we were in bed before dark !!!) Even when you do get to sleep it never seems to be that deep so a lot of the time you wander around during the day a little like a zombie. As a consequence the Finns are some of the biggest consumers of coffee in the world, needing a jolt of caffeine a few times a day to keep them awake.

The other thing about constant light is that it really throw your sense of timing across the day out of wack. I would wake up in the morning feeling as though it was 6am and it would be well past 11, or I would go out for a walk in the afternoon and when I got back it would be almost midnight. With the sun moving across the sky so slowly, and not much variation in the light levels almost every hour of the day felt the same, and I soon started to lose that reflex of having to do things before the sun goes down - because it never really does. For a while this meant that the days started to get a way from me, but it is hard not to do lots of things when the day is 20 hours long. Finns also know that the dreaded winter, with its almost light free days is on the ominous and unrelenting march towards them so they take full advantage of the light and spend a lot of time out doors. And I must say whilst I enjoyed the constant light I don't think I would be so keen on its constant absence.

Introducing..... Finland

2009-07-16T03:51:00.000-07:00

If you know more about Finland than it is the home of Nokia, then you probably have been here.

If you think Vikings - that is Denmark, if you think ABBA, Ikea and all blonde and suntanned - that is Sweden, If you think North Sea oil, whale hunters and too snobby to be in the EU, that's Norway. For almost 600 years the Finns were ruled by the Swedes, and then the Russians took over. During WW2 there was an epic mid Winter battle between the Finns and the Ruskies and despite the bravery of the Finns, the Russians won, after which they stole a big chunk of territory and exerted their influence all threw out the Cold War. As a small country, there are 5 million Finns, wedged between the devil and the deep blue sea, the Finns might just be happy that no one notices them and they are left alone to be their happy little Finnish selves.

In Zambia I met a bunch of Finns there on a University exchange program. I had the good fortune of running in to one of them again, Sari, in Malawi and she kindly invited me tod she kindly invited me to come and visit Finland to see what it was really like. (Perhaps Finns are secretly a little upset that they don't get many tourists)

When I arrived in Finland begin to see why else Finland flies under the radar of most people. In Helsinki all of the buildings are new, with modest architecture, they are drab and grey and nothing stands out. (Almost everything was destroyed during WW2) The streets are clean, as is the air, and you can even swim in the sea and lakes in Helsinki, and there are trees and parks everywhere. There is no flashy advertising to assault the eye, and when you do see advertising it contains very ordinary people, in ordinary clothes, doing ordinary things - no using sex to sell everything here.

All this is very characteristic of Finland, all very plain, the people beavering away doing the write thing socially, environmentally etc etc, and to be honest, it is a little boring and predictable (The most surprising thing I can tell you about Finland is that I got a suntan there - for the five weeks I was there it rained twice, and every other day it was over 25 degrees !!) Everyone is polite - if perhaps a little too polite - in general most Finns are quiet and reserved. They even make sure all the public signs and government documents are printed in Finnish and Swedish so as not to upset the Swedish speaking minority who are left over from Swedish rule. They all ride a bike or use public transport. Everybody recycles - there is a container deposit system (Oh you don't have that in Australia - we have had it for ever !!!) People conserve energy (even though most of it comes from hydro power) and all houses are buildings use double glazing and are well constructed, so when you sit inside it is almost silent. However even when I am outside I notice that it is fairly quiet as well - the background noise of snarling traffic and screeching tyres, the metallic clang of construction and the yells of vendors that were omnipresent in the third world have disappeared.

Supposedly the Finnish population is one of the most genetically homogeneous groups in the world, but they don't look it - in fact probably less than half the people I see are blonde - rapidly destroying my idea of every native Scandinavian being blue eyed and blonde haired. As Finns remind me, they aren't Scandinavian anyway - Nordic is the right word.

When we hitched up to the north I saw the evidence that Finland is the land of 100,000 lakes, and there is water everywhere - I should say everywhere there isn't trees. For most of the six hundred kilometre journey all I see are endless tracts of lush, green pine forest. I indulge myself and have the pleasure of taking several guilt-free thirty minute showers with the water on full - no water restrictions or spying neighbours here. (It is the little things !!!)
Having so much forest and water, and with the exodus from the land to the cities being relatively recent, Finns still have a strong attachment to the land. Every Finns' dream is to have a little cabin in the woods, a place to escape to the quiet and sit in the sauna, drink vodka and not say much at all !!! Lots of families have little cottages and especially in summer they head out there to relax, swim in the river, wander through the forest and remember the good old days. I had the good fortune of being able to spend a few days in the self built log cabin of Sari's grandfather, in an idyllic bit of forest, next to a small river. I got to experience my first smoke sauna, and had the masochistic pleasure of running from a scaldingly hot sauna in to a freezing could river - well actually that is a slight exaggeration, the river was probably about 20 degrees, but it felt cold !!! I got to see my first real life reindeers (no sign of Rudolf) and watched the sun go down at midnight. It was all very relaxing and reinvigorating.

The Finnish forest also seems to be very fecund, filled with food for the picking - in fact any person is allowed to come to Finland and harvest the fruits of the forest tax free. (So of course enterprising capitalists ship in teams of Thai workers to work for a tuppence) As traditionally most food had to be collected during the summer months and preserved for winter Finns often go in to the forest to collect kilos upon kilos of berries to be frozen and eaten during winter. A couple of days we headed out with empty buckets and specially designed tools to separate blue berries from the bushes. By the third or fourth day I was getting the hang off it and managed to collect an entire bucket in not much over an hour, but as the blue stains evidence I think I nearly ate just as many blueberries !!! Never having seen, let alone eaten, fresh blueberries I discovered the reality of the artificial taste that I had eaten in some many industrially produced ice creams and deserts. As we crushed a few berries that we picked and piled in to the buckets the scent permeated the forest, wafting between the trees and continuously making my mouth water despite seemingly constantly eating berries and slacking my work rate in the eyes of my Finnish friends/overlords. On the way back to the car we stumbled across some bear footprints which my Finnish friends casually showed me, like I would show people crocodile tracks in Australia.

Not satisfied with me only meeting one of her grandparents, Sari also took me to see her maternal grandparents, and before I knew it I had become a Finnish potato farmer.
Her parents have a larger field behind there house and as they are well over seventy their eyes lit up when they saw a fit lookin' city boy like me ripe for the workin' !!! It was actually enjoyable to spend a day or two working for a change, and there is nothing like a bit of gardening and weeding to reacquaint you with your connection to the soil. However when I woke up the morning after the first full day I was saw all over, and couldn't touch my toes because my muscles were so tights. Fortunately we finished all the weeding on the second day, so we could move on to the lighter work of stacking firewood, but even a couple of days afterwards I was still a little stiff from all that gardening. The reward however was particularly sweet though, we got to eat freshly picked from the ground new potatoes that were absolutely scrumptious.

Chasing the sun

2009-07-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

I spend two or three hours in the airport in Istanbul waiting for my flight during which I meet a Sudanese family. They sit down next to me outside the duty free and the young son breaks in to fits of laughter every time I make the noises to go with the actions he is producing with his little toy aeroplane. I had been listening to the young daughter speaking to her father in English with what I think is an Irish accent. I ask the father where he is from, guessing correctly he is Sudanese. He explains that the family has lived in Ireland for 14 years, and all the kids were born there. They were on the way to Sudan for a holiday. I ask the daughter whether she likes Ireland more than Sudan. She tells me she does because it is too hot in Sudan !!!

I walk out on the tarmac and as I ascend to stairs to get on the plane I look out to the west and see the sun's last gasp of light as t falls below the horizon for another day. I get on the plane and somehow find myself in a drinking competition with the middle aged father sitting next to his son opposite me; he got two bottles of wine when dinner came around, so I do my best to catch up.

Halfway through the second bottle I suddenly notice that the Finair flight attendants are middle aged women, without copious amounts of make-up on, dressed in rather drab uniforms that are a pale blue colour best described as 60's pale blue.

By bottle number three the man and his son are making paper planes, and one of them lands on my tray table so I throw it back to the son when the father isn't looking - the alcohol seems to be effecting my aim though.

By the time I start the fourth bottle I look out the window and the flickering glow of sulphur orange street lights below which pierce the darkness of the night down below give way to a layer of dark grey thunder clouds which in turn on the horizon give way to the faintest light blue sky as the sun hovers just below the horizon refusing valiantly to give in to the night. The light is so weak that above he horizon their grow darkening layers of black - the absence of light. By the time the fourth bottle is finished we are getting close to Helsinki and the sun has managed to push its way high enough up to make it look like the end of the long twilight on a summers' day.

Fortunately the father seems content with only four bottles of wine and we call it a draw, so that I am able to walk off the plane. The Finnish immigration officer asks me how long I plan to stay in Finland, "Just a week or two" I say, "You know you can stay for ninety days" ,he replies, stamps my passport and waves me through. If only he knew.

When I step out of the airport building it is about 12.30 in the morning, the sun isn't visible but it is bright enough to stand outside and read a book - much more light than when I stepped on to the plane in Istanbul at 8 pm. I think to myself I have managed to outrun the sun.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Istanbul, or a bus ride in Turkey

2009-07-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I only had a day to cross Turkey to get to Istanbul to
catch my flight. I caught a bus at 5am from Aleppo in the north of Syria
to Antakia and from there I took a Turkish overnight bus to Istanbul.
Naturally I took the cheaper bus but when I stepped on board I was
pleasantly surprised - there were pillows and neatly folded blankets on
each seat. When I sat down again I was surprised, I could stretch my
legs fully out and my knees didn't touch the seat in front of me.
As we headed off the surprises continued, every now and then the steward
would come around offering complimentary drinks, chocolate bars and
lollies. The bus even had free wi-fi access to the internet so I didn't
have to watch Turkish TV. The sweetest touch of all was the couple of
times the steward came around with the Turks favourite pungent lemon
scented cologne which he generously splashed on to my hands and then
gave me a hot towel - very refreshing.
All this, and a fourteen hour bus ride for $30, and we managed to arrive
on time.

Crazy Christians

2009-07-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

OK, so I admit I have been going a little hard on the Muslim faith a little of late, so time for poking a little fun at the other main faith in the Middle East, Christianity.

In the north of Syria, near Aleppo - in what was in biblical times known as Antioch, is a place called Qalat al Samaan , or the Basilica of St Simeon. Simeon, born around 400AD was your run of the mill shepherd, who went on to become a monk, and then left the monastery to go and live in a cave - the monastery not being an ascetic enough lifestyle for him. Just like these days, people who live in caves and claim to be closer to God seem to attract a lot of attention, and before you know it solitary seeking Simeon was so besieged by admirers that he had a pillar built so that he could escape the great unwashed (and probably so he could be a little closer to God) Now stopping there for a moment I think that is probably enough irony for an entire blog entry but the story goes on. It seems the pillar dwelling only made him more famous, so as more pilgrims arrived Simeon felt the need to get even higher, so that after forty or so years of pillar dwelling, he was now leaving at around 18 metres off the ground. Apparently he gave sermons and answered questions, but no women were allowed - except that we all learnt from the stoning scene in the Life of Brian that even in those days gender was pretty fluid. Seems Simeon's desire for more solitude only made him more famous, and he set off a fashion for pillar dwelling which swept the known world. The authoritative Lonely Planet says that when Simeon kicked the bucket, or fell off his pillar to use a more appropriate expression, he was the most famous person in the world - a bit like a fifth century Paris Hilton. Anyway, being so famous, they built the world's then biggest church over his tomb, to ensure that in death as in life, he would never have a moments' peace.

Oh, and that little rump of rock in the middle is what is left of his pillar, pilgrims over the years have each nicked a bit leaving the pillar not quite so impressive

Apathy, or how I know it is time to move on

2009-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

I don't want to see any more old buildings - a mosque is a church is a colonial office.
I don't want to be invited for tea with the awkwardness of working out whether I am supposed to pay and then the long silences caused by the inability to communicate in a common language.
I don't want to have to negotiate finding the right bus terminal, chose a bus company, bargain the fare, argue with the luggage boy, arrive in a new town and try to find a place to stay.
I don't want to have a complicated conversation, using mainly hand gestures, to try and stop everything I buy being wrapped in three plastic bags.
I don't want to watch people throw rubbish absolutely wherever they feel like it - on the street, out the window of a moving vehicle, over the edge of the wall of a ruin, without even a second glance.
Time to move on.

On the road from Damascus

2009-07-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

The conversation on the road to Damascus was all in Arabic so no possible conversion there, unfortunately on my trip out of Damascus, on the way to the rather uninspiring largest of the Crusader castles, I was subjected to an attempted conversion in English. I had managed to squeeze in to the back seat of a minivan, rather uncomfortable with my backpack on my lap to avoid paying for two seats.

Not long in to the journey I found that I had the pleasure of sitting next to an English teacher in the local high school, who attempted over the entire length of the journey, almost 90 minutes, to bring me in to the fold. He was an educated man so it started out as a rather open discussion but the Converters always seem to get stuck on the question of where did you come from ? My attempt to short circuit this line of questioning by answering, "My parents made me" is never satisfactory and only leads to
a series of questions about who begtted each generations' forebearers. Then we got tied up in a discussion about the origin of life and everything being about chance. Under relentless questioning and preaching, unable to articulate what I thought and being stared at by someone who clearly thinks my responses are ridiculous I started to doubt my own beliefs. Somehow though I struggled on, clutching at whatever rational straws I could grasp and finally I think he conceded defeat and he told me, "When judgement day comes I will see you and I will say I told you about God and still you denied him"

So I am left still waiting for the light to knock me off my horse.

Arriving in heaven more than once

2009-07-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

Legend has it that back in the day when the prophet Mohammed was wandering about he sighted Damascus from a hill top nearby the town but declined to enter the city saying that a man can only enter in to heaven once. It may well be sacrilicious, as Homer once said, to say this but the hummus in Damascus is bordering on the divine. In the small street where I am saying there are about five hummus places in the space of a couple of hundred metres. And when I say hummus place that is all they sell - and why would you mess with anything else when you can reach such perfection - served up on a square piece of cardboard covered in silver lining. You get a big dollop of rich, creamy hummus which is then weighed for the price. The master craftsman then shapes the hummus so that he can create a pool of olive oil in the middle, and place small slices of tomatoes in each of the four corners. A light dusty of paprika, some coriander leaves and a bit of lemon juice and voila !

Next door you can pick up your still piping hot fresh pita bread and you are ready to be taken to culinary heaven.

Syria - first impressions

2009-07-03T02:08:00.000-07:00

So maybe I give my heart away too easily but after half a day in Damascus I am already falling in love with Syria.

I arrived yesterday in the early evening and the city is an assault on the senses - in contrast to the rather homogeneous looking Egyptians, Syrians are a diverse mix - many look more European than Arabic. Also thrown in to the melange are plenty of other Arabs from the Gulf who come here for the shopping and cooler climate, and a few bus loads of Iranian burka clad tourists I saw wandering around. Dress varies wildly - from the completely covered in black women (burka, veil and even eye coverings) to short, tight jeans, fluorescent lycra clad modern women with hair flowing in the breeze and everything in between. (Something that still strikes me is the way even within a group of women who are clearly good friends the range of covering will vary - it is not uncommon to see a women completely covered with veil and all walking hand in hand with her friends wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It makes me wonder whether they discuss the matter between themselves, or look down or up at each other about it)

As is to be expected in a place that claims to be the oldest continually inhabited city in the world history drips out of the walls, runs along the roads and in to the gutters. Everywhere you look there are buildings from a different historical period - the odd Roman column and arch, a 2nd century synagogue, the first grand Arab mosque, grand old Ottoman houses, 20th century French modernist buildings and space age Iranian funded Persian style mosques/tombs. Throw in more souks (street markets) than you can throw a stick at, and the wafting aroma of a million perfumeries and it is not that difficult to transport yourself back in time.

This morning being Friday means that almost everything is shut, however I still managed to spot what I am going to have for breakfast for the next week: chocolate croissants (but real croissants), mini herb and lemon pizzas like in the Turkish bread shop in Sydney Rd, baklava and some other delicious looking sweet that is caramel on top and cream underneath, and what I finally opted for - fresh hummus served on a paper plate then decorated with tahini, olive oil, chickpeas, tomato and parsley so it looked like a work of art - and it tasted even better. Washed down with fresh coffee, needless to say I was one very happy camper.

Reflections on the Holy Land

2009-07-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

This land is my land

During the day the sun is searing and temperatures can get up to around 50 degrees, and then as evening falls, and you would expect the temperature to drop, it actually starts rising as the hot winds from the desert blow in. From almost any point you are surrounded by steep, stark hills, filled with so many ridge lines caused by erosions the hills look they have been scribbled all over with the erratic strokes of a thick black pen in the hand of a hyperactive child. In the narrow gaps between the hills, a few small plains and the coastal strip, there is shimmering white sand that the sun heats up all day that it is too hot to walk on, and the wind whips up at night that in the morning it looks like an impenetrable mist, and everything is covered with it. The few roads that cut across the land are like snakes, swinging back and forth as they find the gaps between the hills and rising abruptly from small planes to narrow passes then dropping down almost as quickly. The wind grows stronger and stronger, whipping up sand and the odd plastic bag here and there, you can imagine it only took a couple of years for it to wear down the hills as it blasts across all you can see, wearing everything in its path down like sandpaper.

As we ride along in a taxi the German guy sitting next to me surveys the landscape and comments, "Huh, its hard to believe they fought a war for this place". I take it he is referring to the Israel-Egypt war, but really people have been fighting for this land for pretty close to eternity Jews (Moses), Christians (Crusaders) and Muslims (the 4000 horseman). It is pretty clear they weren't fighting for the view.

Ships in the desert

I finally managed to leave Cairo and head east, and on the way to the Sinai I saw a most spectacular sight. After I went through the tunnel under the Suez Canal I watched out the bus window as we drove along the road the surreal site of three or four huge container ships, apparently stuck in the middle of the desert. All around there was only sun bleached sand, and a few hills in the background - no water or trees to be seen. The view from the bus meant I couldn't actually see the water in the Canal, so the ships appeared to be just sitting there slowly melting in the sun, and I couldn't help think of them as camels, the ships of the desert !!!

On the way to the Dead Sea

I headed out of Amman down to the Dead Sea (which Jordan shares with Israel) through the hilly, tree-less sun bleached, desolate, dry and rugged hills that are the Holy Land and was struck by the similarity between here and when I was getting about in the Kimberley. Perhaps because I had been wearing my Noonkanbah t-shirt the night before and explained what it meant to a curious Englishmen I suddenly had one of those flashes of insight about the similarities between two very different Holy Lands. As we descended down the road what looked like desolate country is filled with holy places - Mt Nebo on the left (where Moses is supposed to be buried) Bethany over Jordan - where Jesus is supposed to have been baptised, on so on. In between these places live people who go about their daily lives without paying much attention to these special places, which to the outsider don't appear to be much.

In the Kimberley much more time has passed since most places gained their significance from a religious system that most people don't really understand, and their aren't too many signs pointing them out, and people go about their everyday lives without apparently paying much attention to the special places, but they are important none the less. Just like in the Holy Land, they are places of pilgrimage that would upset the Gods to tamper with or destroy.

I think the analogy is a good one, especially for good Christian kids like me who paid attention in religious education classes and absorbed some of the reasons behind the significance of biblical stories because it gives you a little understanding of the importance that people, both Australian aboriginals and others, place on certain places, the way that people can live around and manage sacred places, and an idea of the universality of the relationship that people have with the land upon which they live.

Swimming in the Dead Sea

As the sea came in to view , covered in a thick haze the steep, red hills in the background in Israel were barely visible. The water is a dark grey colour - almost black, and is very still, the whole place is eerily quiet.

Some fast facts - the Dead Sea sits 400 metres below sea level (as you come down the road from Amman you pass the most unusual sign which reads YOU ARE NOW PASSING SEA LEVEL) the Dead Sea is around 40 percent salt (most seas are around 4 per cent - which interestingly is about the same as your tears and amniotic fluid) - it has no outlet so the water evaporates and the salt remains. The Dead Sea really is dead and is dying - it is true !!! The water is so salty there isn't any fish or much aquatic life getting around. Also, Jordan doesn't have much water so it tries to stop as much as it can running off in to the Dead Sea, so it is shrinking. The Dead Sea is bloody hot and quiet - I arrived at around 8.30 and it was already forty degrees.

However the most amazing thing about the Dead Sea is swimming in it - because of the combination of low altitude and high salt levels when you get in the water you float like you are in space - standing in the water over my head the water only came up to my armpits - I was so buoyant that I couldn't but help poke out of the water - even when I tried bobbing up and down the water only reached my shoulders !! No need for treading water here. Lying on my back almost my entire body was out of the water, and there is no effort required - you really can lie there and read a book.

Swimming is almost impossible, you just can't get in to the water enough to pull yourself along - not that you would want to try - a bit of water in your eyes would ruin your whole day. All the little cuts and scratches I had on my feet started to sting from the salt, although it is nowhere near as bad as guide books warn. The benefit of the salt is that once you wash it off with water your skin feels soft as a baby's.

Language soup

2009-07-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

wake up in the morning and speak Indonesian with the guest worker at the hotel in Wadi Musa, Jordan.

I hitch hike back from the Dead Sea to Amman with a Jordanian who lived in Italy for twenty years and speaks better Italian then Arabic. He speak to me in Italian, which I can understand, and I can speak to him in Spanish, with a few Arabic words thrown in, and he can understand.

I take a share taxi from Amman to Damascus and try to communicate using English with a few Arabic words thrown in here and there, and I find myself using some very Arabic hand gestures, particularly the tips of fingers together wriggle the wrist up and down one which ostensibly means wait but can be used for a myriad of other expressions. The other three passengers, two older women - an Iraqi and a Syrian, and a middle aged guy who sits in the front seat and thinks the back seat must be thirty metres away given the volume with which he speaks, and the driver spend the entire five hours of the journey in a heated debate about Iraq, Saddam, America, democracy, Palestine, Israel, the King and the best falafel joint west of the Mediterranean. OK, the made the last one up, but I did hear all the others mentioned.

I arrive at a hotel in Damascus and the receptionist, an older Syrian who lived in Germany for years insists on speaking to me in German, even after we clear up the Austria/Australia confusion.

I chill out on my bed in the dorm and meet an Algerian, and we have a long conversation in French about what Algeria is like and why he is living in Damascus.

I go to sleep a very tired and confused Loiterer.

Goodbye and good luck - The Africa List

2009-06-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

In fitting style, after waiting for a boat that sailed six hours late, I have left Africa. During the eight and a half months I was there, almost getting from one end to the other overland, I have been constantly surprised, astonished and amazed by the people and their way of life, and the landscape and the animals that populate it. What stands out are the people - my motto for Africa is great people, terrible government - the list of friendly people that I have met goes on for pages. The thing about Africa is that despite there being almost no reason for it you get infected with a sense of the joy of life and feel hopeful about the future. Perhaps when you have had your hopes dashed so many times you have to revel in the small things and when things are so bad life is a grind you have to have hope that it will improve. So I am a little sad to leave but I can console myself with some great stories and photos as well.

A little list of the highs and lows:

GENERAL
Best country: Rwanda, Rwanda, Rwanda
Best local insight: Rwanda, Godwin the journalist
Biggest achievement: Tanzania, surviving Kilimanjaro in the Volleys
Most awesome experience: Rwanda, spending an hour with mountain gorillas
Coolest cat: Felix, Zambia, the guide who took us to Angel's Chair above Victoria Falls
Worst touts: Tanzania, Zanzibar, you blokes can keep your bloody island
Strangest question: Kenya, Do you want warm or cold beer ?
Best alcohol innovation: Zambia, spirit sachets (AKA Headache in a bag), cheap and nasty, the way alcohol should be
Most colonial moment: Mozambique, Tofinho, sitting on the balcony drinking a GT whilst the boy cleaned the house
Best market: Zambia, Livingstone, it's not what you buy but who you buy it from
Best backpackers: Zambia, Livingstone, Jollyboys, nice space, nice view, nice pool, nice people
Best view: Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, looking down from above the clouds on the roof of Africa
Most impressive monument: Egypt, the Pyramids, they are big and they just sit there but sometimes that is enough
Worst room: nameless hotel , Ruhengeri, Rwanda - dank room with no window, a bed that fell apart, music all night and you had to ask for the key to go to the toilet - which was a smelly hole in the ground - and it was expensive !!1

TRAVEL
Most crowded vehicle: Mozambique, 31 people (and various animals) in a Toyota Hiace
Longest waiting period for shortest ride: Uganda, Masindi to the chimps, 6 hours waiting for 2 hour ride
Worst road: Kenya, north of Archers Rest to the border with Ethiopia, more corrugations than bandits
Worst driving experience: Malawi, on the sinuous Lilongwe-Nkhata Bay road at 110km/h
Most dangerous trip: Kenya, Marsabit to Moyale on the top of truck, through bandit country
Best free ride: Tanzania, Overland truck from Malawi to Arusha
Biggest wait: Kenya, Maralal, Four days to get a truck to Lake Turkana, never arrived
Strangest driving system: Egypt, make up the rules as they go along
Skankiest toilet: Megab, Ethiopia, it still makes me queasy thinking about it

WILDLIFE SECTION:
Best Free Experience: Zambia, Watching an elephant swim across the river
Best Too Close to the Wildlife Experience: Zambia, Leopard almost jumping in the back of open jeep
Best animal on destruction: Tanzania, Ngorogoro Crater, the elephant that tore apart the water tank
Most unforgettable moment: Tanzania, Watching cheetahs and a gazelle starting the dance of death
Best is this really happening moment: Tanzania, the Serengeti, despite all the hype and the people, three lions decided to lie down in front of our car
Most underrated animal: Uganda, the hippo, they are bit, fat and waddle, like a big wombat in water

CULINARY SECTION
Best bit of meat: Mozambique, Parrot Fish - who would have thought the beak would be so tasty
Best Coffee: Ethiopia, Yabelo - my first coffee ceremony
Best Indian Meal: Uganda, Masala Chat House, Kampala - northern and southern thalis
Best soup: Zanzibar, Spicy Broth
Best fast food invention: Tie between Uganda, The Rolex and South Africa, Bunny Chow
Most enjoyable staple: Egypt, koshari, cheap, filling and delicious
Most boring staple: Tie between Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Nsima or Ugali
Best Vegetarian: Ethiopia, no meat for a whole month just fantastic vego food, almost got religion back in my good book

Pictorial tour of Egypt - Part II (Luxor)

2009-06-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

Karnak temple, Luxor. The area covered by these pillars, shaped like papyrus reeds is big enough to fit in St Peter's Basilica twice (and up to 150 buses of sunburned tourists from the coast at a time) This is just one of several gates - stretching inland from the Nile. When everybody left around midday and it was silent it was awe inspiring

Just a simple boy from Dandy

2009-06-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

How can I resist ?
Even Dandy gets gentrified, then exported.
Is nothing sacred ?
Notice the moccos in the front window !!

A tenuous link

2009-06-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Back in Cairo again (third time) for a few days. Spent a large part of today wandering around trying to find a pocket notebook, to replace my torn, tattered and full old one. I concede that I am in downtown, and that I probably didn't cover an area much bigger than 20 blocks by 20 blocks, but I did not see one newsagent or stationary shop. It got me wondering about how despite having a Nobel Prize winning authors Egyptians aren't particularly literate. According to UNICEF the literacy rate amongst adults is 72% (I think the test is whether you can read and write a full sentence about yourself, describing what you do) I have seen a few bookshops in Cairo, but elsewhere I haven't spotted one. I haven't seen anyone reading a book - other than the Quaran, and when you do bust out a book in public people look at you like you are committing a crime.

Browsing the stats I found some other interesting numbers - the average income in Egypt is $1580 or $130 a month. The government spends 9 percent on defence, 3 on health and 15 on education- and despite this the average life expectancy is 72 years !!!

Egypt in party mode

2009-06-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

Egypt is in party mode - on Thursday night the Egyptian soccer time beat Italy - the World Cup Champions as Egyptians now constantly remind you - 1-0. I didn't watch the match but from my hotel room on the 7th floor I could hear the collective ooohs, aaahs, sighs of relief, screams of joy and polite clapping through out the match. When the goal was scored, one of the older guys who works at the hostel and whom I have never seen walk at more than a snails pace was running laps around the hostel shouting Allahu akbar, allahu akbar (God is great, God is great) When the match finally finished and the tension all of Egypt was feeling could finally be released, the streets were filled with noise horn tooting, screaming, singing, clapping and general merry making. (It is the only noise louder than the badly amplified call to prayer that echoes from the seemingly sixty mosques all within a stone's throw of the hotel that appear to be in competition with each other) The celebrations went on all night - Cairo is almost a completely nocturnal city, nothing opens in the morning unti 10 or 11, and nothing shuts until well after midnight, even on school nights.

As I wander the streets in Cairo more people than usual think I am an Italian (which makes me laugh as it reminds me of the time somebody called me a dirty wog when I was playing junior football) I simply don't nose why !! They seem keen for a chance to rub salt in the wound for the Italians, and when I tell them I am Australian they smile broadly, ask me if I saw the game, and proceed to tell me about the triumph regardless of my answer. Today during lunch the TV was on in the restaurant and in the space of twenty minutes I saw the goal replayed at least one hundred times from every possible angle, and then the celebrations at the end of the game, followed by some players being interviewed. I can't understand a word of what they are saying, but then it is sport so you don't really have to.

The amount of interest in football throughout my African journey continues to surprise and perplex me - and in Egypt it is three fold. In all the other African countries I have been through there is no real interest in the domestic league, and whilst every now and then the national team will have some success, the real interest lies in European football leagues. In Egypt there is this interest in European football, and in the national league (I watched the final earlier this month and the streets were full of supporters after the final) and in the national team - the Egyptians are two time African champions - and have now beaten the Italians !!!

Tomorrow night the last game is against the Americans, a victory that one suspects despite a local guy telling me about how much Egyptians love America, would be cherished even more.

Iran, I can - not

2009-06-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

I went to the Iranian embassy today to ask about a visa - the gate was closed and it was all very quiet. Looks like I might have to postpone my plan - no green eggs and ham !!!
The cartoon is from the Atlantic Monthly

President Cool II

2009-06-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

Answer to rhetorical question - yes, you can get cooler.
It seems everywhere I look there he is, Hosny or as I like to call him Ho-Mub, is staring back at me. And none of those boring vain dictators with the same picture everywhere, Ho-Mub likes variety - well as long as the photo takes 20 years off his age.
Here are some of the finer works:

Half way around the world to learn what my brother had already taught me

2009-06-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the only food that isn't fried in Egypt is koshari, most aptly described as creative leftovers. I was introduced to koshari four years ago when Dan used to cook it up for us to feast on after yet another near loss (in the lowest grade) by the Brothers Renkin basketball team, without realising that it would one day sustain me through six weeks in Egypt.

In Egypt koshari is served in huge bowls in which pasta, noodles, rice, lentils and chickpeas are combined and then covered in a thin, savoury tomato sauce, topped with fried shallots. You then season this with a garlic vinegar and hot chilli oil to you preference. The servings are gigantic, one large plate is enough food for the entire day - even for someone with a bottomless pit stomach like myself. And the cost for this filling gourmet delight - a measly one dollar - and I had a few Egyptians tells me about how the prices have jumped a lot in the recent months. Every little town has a koshari place, and they are easily identifiable by huge silver pots in the windows. Egyptians really do treat this left-over special as gourmet - argument rages over which is the best koshari place in Cairo. I don't know about its gourmet status but I ate it almost every day I was in Egypt and I can testify to its ability to keep a stomach full for the whole day and give you enough energy to ride around on a bicycle for 10hours in forty degree heat.

So for those of you who lament not being able to experience the joys of loitering across the globe and sniffing out meat free comestibles along rubbish strewn streets in restaurants of questionable hygiene,
give Dan a call - he is probably whipping up a batch of koshari as you read this - I heard it is Aegean's favourite.

A day at the beach in Egpyt

2009-06-13T04:11:00.000-07:00

After spending so long in the hot, hot desert in the south of Egypt I was dying for a swim, and so ended up going to the beach near Alexandria. At first we went to a private beach, which front a private park about 10 kilometres to the East of town. After paying to get in to the park you then have to pay again to get in to a beach (which were all more crowded than the nearby public beaches we had gone past in the bus), but all the best - and most empty beaches - are private private - you can't even pay to get in. (We asked one nice security guard who wandered off and asked the owner who was sitting fifty metres away. The owner took one look and shook his head !!!) So I wandered out on to the point where some guys were fishing, after the security guard caught us wandering on to a private beach after jumping the wall, and when the security guard wasn't looking I slipped in to my swimmers, ran to the edge of the rocks and jumped in. Of course, all hell broke loose - as soon as the security guard saw me in the water he started blowing his whistle, ran over and screamed (mainly with his hands) for me to return. The subsequent conversation, captured in the photo, centred around how he would be taken off in handcuffs if his boss caught him with me in the water.

Not to be deterred we walked out of the park and along to the nearest public beach, just past the Hilton beach, which cost a measly $20 to get in to. The municipal beach instead cost a solitary dollar - for which we got access to the beach and an umbrella - we scrimped on the chairs and table - meaning we only got the second row, behind the umbrella line. As the photo shows, paying to get in to a beach doesn't put anyone off, we had the pleasure of sharing the beach with half of Cairo. Everyone was packed in a single row on the shoreline under their umbrellas as far as the eye could see. Coming from a city of twenty million, all packed on top of each other in dense forest of concrete towers they call home, I guess what I experienced as a can of sardines was in fact for most locals wide open expanses. When I swam out to the depths and turned back to look at the coast line for as far as I could see the entire sweep of the bay - at least 10 kilometres back to Alexandria - was filled with the same line of umbrellas and swarms of people.

The beach itself was quite nice, however it was littered with rubbish, mainly plastic bags and food containers. Likewise the water was filled with rubbish from about the first five metres from the shore, and then the deeper you swam the more sporadic the appearance of rubbish became. Most Egyptians seem to have selective blindness when it comes to rubbish. They appear content to sit in it, walk through it and swim in it as if it weren't there.

A day at the beach for Egyptians has little do with either the beach or the water and more to do with bringing as much as you can to the beach and consuming likewise. Sitting on the beach not more then a minute passed without somebody coming past to sell something - beach clothes, inflatable swimming aids, photos of you and your loved ones, nuts, drinks, fresh fish, shampoo, newspapers, food, flip-flops, ordinary clothes, chocolate bars, board games and on and on and on. Surprisingly I witnessed quite a few sales. There was plenty of eating going on, a fair few people smoking sheesha - the hubbly bubbly water pipe, a few people strolling up and down the beach, but only the kids got in the water. As soon as we got in the water we were surrounded by people, somehow the water seemed to break the ice, and we faced a machine gun round of the same questions over and over - what is your name ? where are you from ? what is your name? Fortunately most people couldn't swim that well so heading for the depths provided for a bit of solitude.
Most people were content to sit on the beach, and with most women who ventured in to the water completely covered, or at least in jeans and a long sleeved shirt, you can see why. Wouldn't be much fun if this was your swimming costume !!!

Foot fetish

2009-06-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Despite the gigantic size of some of the temples and statutes in Egypt everything was carved out with the finest detail and has stood the test of time. There is no better example of this than feet. Check out the work on these:

Pictorial tour of Egypt - Part I (Cairo)

2009-06-02T10:32:00.000-07:00

The sun sets on Cairo, obscured by the ever resent smog, to the accompaniment of about seven thousand mosques, all with loud speakers, calling the faithful to prayer

Cairo's current architectural style is described as concretism - started in the 1950's and not looking like it is going to stop anytime soon.

Only Wonder of the Ancient World still standing, a bloody lot of large stones cut precisely, put together even more precisely and after three thousand years still impressive. Sadly can't climb 'em like in the good old days.

Left: Even before they were finished there were tourists and the next day there was guys with camels insisting you take a ride.

Right: It is smaller than you think (that's what they say about the Mona Lisa as well) but it is all about location, location, location.

One place or another ?

2009-05-30T07:36:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I look around in Cairo I see Mexico, there are so many striking similarities it is a little unnerving. The people look almost identical, the same olive to dark skin tone, short and squat, many well on their way to obesity.Lots of boys are in their muscle tops, and the girls seem to be having a competition to see who can get away with the tightest pants almost revelling in the muffin tops they have going.
Like Mexico almost all of the food is fried, and really a falafel is a rolled up taco. And naturally every meal has to be washed down with a soft drink to make sure that Type 2 diabetes really gets going !!! They even cook their meat the same way here - the large, round and shallow frying tops with an indentation in the middle to make sure no fat is lost - meat and fat bubbling away.

The skyline of down town Cairo, actually all of Cairo, is filled with a forest of bland concrete towers, and it looks like nothing has been built or maintained since 1968, despite the historic age of the city - everything is made of cement. (Except of course in the new, ritzy neighbourhoods where they use glass) From ground level you can see determine the age of the buildings, despite the thick covering of black soot, by how much the cement has crumbled.

Like Mexico, the city is over run by chaotic traffic, and it appears at first glance there are no road rules at all - other than the pedestrian as the smallest object must give way to everything, but somehow the traffic manages to sort itself out. The age of most cars and the thermal inversion means that everything, including your feet, ends up being covered in black soot and the air is filled with smog 24 hours a day - it makes for impressive sunsets but terrible respiratory health.

Both societies have the veneer of being deeply religious - churches and mosques everywhere, but people are more than willing to break all the rules, (have a mistress or two, have a few beers at a bar, run a drug cartel, pinch foreign women on the bum, blow up infidels) and still go to the church or mosque once a week in a public show of faith.
Both also have a certain affection for the kitsch, fluorescent colours, 1960's style polyester suits, moustaches, way to much make up, shiny black SUVs in urban areas - the list goes on and on

Signs of Egypt

2009-05-24T23:03:00.000-07:00

Egyptians love writing signs in English, from street names to restaurants to driving directions, everything gets a go in English, sometimes with very entertaining results.
Can't really argue with The Safety First !!

President Cool

2009-05-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Can you get any cooler than this ?
President Mubarak, some very big shades, and some building or other with its pet in the background.
Perhaps when he retires he could start up a Presidential Makeover show.

Alexandria photo highlights

2009-05-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

I arrived back in Africa from Yemen in Alexandria, an incredibly historic city, perched on the edge of Africa in a beautiful setting looking out over the Mediterranean. A couple of years ago they rebuilt the famous library - which once held a copy of all books known to be in print. Now the building is more impressive than the collection !!!

Welcome to Egypt

2009-05-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

After a five hour wait in the rather otherworldly airport in United Arab Emirate of Sharjah, I finally got on the plane bound for Alexandria in Egypt. The three hour flight was relatively uneventful, which in this region basically means no bombs went off, but the excitement started before we touched terra firma.
As we descended in to Alexandria, the "Fasten Seatbelts" light having been switched on ten minutes earlier, the plane did a few tight circles around the city and out over the Mediterranean sea, and about halfway through the second loop, almost close enough to the ground to reach out the window and touch the tops of the trees one passenger decided that he need to go to the toilet, so he stood up and started walking down the aisle. He almost made it to the toilet before the hostesses, who were strapped in to their seats noticed that he was wandering about and immediately started yelling at him, in person and over the loud hailer, to immediately return to his seat - you didn't have to speak Arabic to understand what they were saying.
Not long after we touched down, and about five seconds after we rolling on the plane's wheels rather then flying, still moving at quite a speed, three or four passengers stood up and started getting their luggage out of the overhead lockers, as if we were sitting still on the tarmac waiting to taxi on to the runway for take-off, when in fact we were hurtling along at high speed straining to slow down in time to not run off the end of the runway. The hostess again yelled them down, and eventually after a bit of back and forth everyone sat down. However this champing at the bit to get the jump over everyone else and be the first off the plane, caused a repeat of these events twice more before we actually came to a stop - by which time the hostess had pretty much given up their efforts, people were wandering about and even the Egyptian guy sitting next to me was shaking his head in dismay at the rather risky behaviour of our fellow passengers.
The complete stupidity of standing up on a fast moving plane was only underscored by the events that followed next - not only did all of the passengers have to wait for the transfer buses to fill up before anybody made it any where near the terminal, once inside it took at least an hour to make it through immigration. The arrivals hall was a linoleum floored, fluorescent lit room not much bigger than a class room, into which three aeroplanes worth of people crammed into, in what suspiciously looked like queues but functioned more like an NGO donating food to the starving operation. Whilst the majority of people accepted their status as equals and waited in lines, quite a number of people simply wandered past the queues along the side, thinking no doubt they were more important than anyone else, and then tried to insinuate their way in front by either catching the eye of some one they knew amongst the myriad of uniformed people who had something to do with immigration, surreptitiously drifting in to the front of the queue, or simply waving their passport around and asserting their importance. As I watched people for twenty minutes or show I saw the complete lack of any sense of order in the waiting, people would wander out of the queue, end up in arguments when they tried to sneak in closer to the front, be sent in to exile at the side for a while then rejoin at the back of the line. Despite the raised voices, lack of clean air, the early hours and lack of sleep, everyone seemed to be in relatively polite and good humoured. I got the feeling that this sort of queuing, chaos and inefficiency was common rather than exceptional.
Meanwhile the three narrow wooden booths which actually housed the immigration officials were completely surrounded in what can only be described as a shamozel. For some reason the process required that you hand your passport to the guy through the front window, then walk past the booth and wait around until your name was called out whereupon you fought through the waiting throng, collected your passport, had it checked by the guard on the door, and then got to collect your luggage. All this occurred in a classroom sized room, now filled with cigarette smoke and most men had lit up a fag and felt free to blow smoke in anyone's face.
I had managed to avoid the queue because as I walked in the door I was accosted by the waiting health officials who asked me whether I had any flu like symptoms, then took down my name and hotel details just in case. I had then waited for the Bank de Eigypt counter to open to purchase my visa for twenty minutes or so, but to no avail. I then had to push my way through the queue, just to get around the back of immigration officials, surrender my passport to the door man, walk across the luggage hall to the bank/exchange counter on the other side, purchase my visa sticker (which uniquely in my experience they let me stick in to my passport myself) return through the door, collecting my passport on the way, push my way through the throng to the back to start waiting again.
Somehow I managed to finally make it to the front of queue before everybody made it through, although there was probably only a quarter of the people left from the peak surge. Reassuringly I noticed that there were still quite a few people from my flight waiting. When I made it to the window the guy behind me actually waved me ahead of him, and I handed over my passport without a hassle and went to wait with the others.
And as a reminder that even waiting in a stuffy queue for an hour and a half at 2.30 in the morning can have a happy ending, I had the pleasure of meeting, Michele, a great Italian bloke who was at the beginning of his adventure, riding his bicycle across the middle east. Misery certainly does breed company, and the arrivals hall was a great introduction to the pleasures of Egypt.

Flight with a view

2009-05-19T03:39:00.000-07:00

When you wander about in Africa people are always surprised that I take
the bus rather than simply jumping in an aeroplane and jetting from one
place to the next. Usually I explain my avoidance of flights by saying
that I came to see different things and from the height of an aeroplane
everything looks the same. Today I was proved wrong.
Flying over the middle of the Arabian peninsula - from Sanaa in Yemen to
Sharjar in the UAE in the middle of the day gave me spectacular views of
the Empty Quarter, the huge sandy desert in the middle of the Arabian
Peninsula. (Think Lawrence of Arabia, in the scene where they set out
for Aqaba)
The view out the tiny window gave a great perspective of the emptiness
stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. Line after
line of golden sand, stretching to the horizon in all directions,
curving this way and that, but aligned in neat rows. It was almost
impossible to draw the eye away, as they instinctively followed the
lines this way and that, perhaps looking for an escape from the
nothingness. Nothing interrupted this beautiful natural sculpture, no
blemishes of vegetation or water, and no visible human impact.
As we rose higher the air was filled with sand whipped up by the
sculpting winds, the air turned yellow, and the desert disappeared like
a mirage.

Shibam Kids

2009-05-18T09:02:00.000-07:00

In a small town called Shibam, not far out of Sanaa, I was adopted by some local kids who decided that I needed a guide to walk up the hill to see the nearby caves. After some jockeying between the kids my two guides ended up being a brother and sister, Abdul-Wahab and Rhemay, both under 10. We wandered up the hill and checked out a few of the caves, took a few of the obligatory photos, then sat around and had a chat. Abdul had recently met some tourists, and so he was curious about life outside of Yemen - or more accurately outside his village.
He asked me if it was true that in my country a man could live with any woman. I didn't quite catch the meaning, but he explained that he had met some Korean tourists and that there was a man and a woman who weren't married but had told him they lived together. He was shocked by the idea - and this from a twelve year old. He also asked me why I didn't have any children, at 32 I was already old !!! I asked Rhemay what class she was in at school and she told me that she was in grade four and when she grew up she wanted to be a doctor or an engineer. Her brother testified that Rhemay was the smartest in her class, and beamed with pride.
There seemed to me to be a gap between the expectations or dreams of this little girl, and the repressive nature of life as a women in Yemen - the requirement that you always remain completely covered in public, that you never speak to a male you aren't related to, that you marry early and that your main job is to make children and home. I am sure that the dreams of achieving are often trampled by the strictures of the patriarchy.
When we arrived back at their modest house their was no way they would let us go without first serving us tea and cakes, then juice and fruit, and then insisting that we stay for lunch. Despite how strange they might think I am, hospitality always comes first.

Faces of Yemen

2009-05-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

Left: These kids, like almost everyone in Yemen asked me to take their photo, and then tried to tidy themselves up for the photo

Left: Mix of traditional (see the knife on the belt) and trackies
Right: When I grow up I want to be an engineer or a doctor

Two ways to hell

2009-05-10T03:46:00.000-07:00

You can't really avoid religion in Yemen, there are mosques everywhere, almost all women wear the full burkha and hijab - leaving only their eyes visible, and when everyone disappears to pray - kids look at me and ask why I am not joining them. And whilst everyone takes it all very seriously, I find it a little hard to resist - two items for your entertainment:

The nearest mosque to my hotel blares out the usual call to prayer five times a day - starting at 4.30am. Those ... ignoramuses whinge that it wakes them in the morning and why can't they keep their prayers private, meanwhile the Loiterer sleeps through the early calls, struggles to make them out over the general din on the streets, and relishes the diminished crowds meaning less waiting time at restaurants and shops. However every time I hear the call from my hotel I can't stop laughing as the iman's voice is breaking, he sounds like a teenager with all the hormones firing. The pitch waivers up and down without rhyme or reason, any note he tries to hold starts with some base in it and usually trails off in a high pitched squeal - and all of it amplified by dodgy amps and tinny speakers. At first I thought he was just having a bad day, but it has been going on all week, fives times a day. I wonder what Allah thinks as She hears her name exalted by a pimply teenager.

The second is this mosque that is just outside old Sanaa. The photo doesn't show too well but yes it is baby pink and white - possibly the world's first (and only) gay friendly mosque.

Power up

2009-05-09T03:37:00.000-07:00

Okay so now everyone in Africa has mobile phones but unfortunately universal supply of electricity is still a pipe (or should that be cable) dream.

So what do enterprising shop owners do - offer to charge peoples' phones. And if you are going to do one, why not do 15. One can just imagine Prince Phillip walking past commenting on the "darky wiring job" or Poppa Smurf having a heart attack at the risk this poses to world peace.

This photo comes from a small town on the Uganda Rwanda border.

Internet filter ?

2009-05-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

Sitting in an internet cafe in Yemen, waiting for a page to load, I take a peek at the computer next to me, and the young guy is watching rocket launchers going off, someone throwing grenades, and some dodgy looking training exercises involving various types of weaponry and men in beards. All appear to be quality fundamentalist productions, bad light, shaky camera work and some guy wailing in the background.

I am both alert and alarmed.

Arab street kids

2009-05-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Sitting outside eating dinner in the street in a little back alley on the edge of old Sanaa town, I was reminded clearly that I had slipped from Africa in to Arabia by the street kids. Arabic street kids have a certain look, they are more jaded than other street kids, they look older, more like little people than kids. They have the suit coats and the mannerisms of adults, and seem to carry themselves that way as well. The way they are treated by adults is a little different to, in Africa adults would shoo away kids, but here they get whacked with the broom, back handers to the head, and have their hijabs pulled whilst getting a boot up the arse.

Naturally being the little man that her slight older an about half an inch slightly taller brother stands up and starts swinging haymakers at the six foot hero who is pulling his sister's hair. Eventually the hero realises how pathetic he looks and backs away to the shop and the kids scamper off to no doubt do battle again.

Sanaa - now you see, and you don't (May 6, 2009)

2009-05-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

Sanaa, the capital of Yemen is marked by two things, one by it conspicuousness and the other by the exact opposite.

Sanaa claims to be the oldest continuously lived in city in the world (from around 600BC) but a few other cities in the Middle East make similar claims. What sets it apart though is that the down town area is contains almost exclusively Yemeni skyscrapers - built from traditional materials - mud, wood and straw - some of them stand 11 stories high and over 400 years old. There are so many that UNESCO declared the whole city a World Heritage Site. The architecture is unique and very impressive - tall, narrow buildings with mud brown walls and large decorative white plaster windows. The roads are very narrow which keeps traffic to a minimum, but doesn't stop drivers from driving like they are participating in a rally competition. The alleyways meander around the buildings, most ground floors are windowless, traditionally being the place where animals were kept at night, or shop fronts grouped together in areas depending on what they are selling but always with goods overflowing on to the street.

What you don't see in Sanaa, and for that matter, Yemen altogether, is women. There are a few here and there, but I went two weeks in Yemen without seeing a woman's face, which doesn't sound that strange, but imagine not seeing half the faces of people walking around you for a while - bizarre. Every woman I saw was completely covered in the big, black bag and with a veil as well - showing the eyes when they were feeling provocative, but often with another piece of material covering the eyes. Even women who work in the fields are completely covered, with only their eyes showing. I never saw a man and a woman touching, not even holding hands the whole time I was there.
Interestingly everyone in Yemen has satellite TV and they have access to programs from across the Arab speaking world - including from Egypt, where a majority of women don't even wear a veil, and from Lebanon - where woman weir the veil, but as a cloth to cover their entire bodies. But in the flesh, most men won't even see their wives face until they are married. A couple of young local guys I met explained to me that their parents were pressuring them to get married, and the process is as follows - mother and sisters find what they think is a suitable candidate, arrangements made to go to home of girl with mother,sister and father, in the presence of her father, and ask her questions - she is likely to remain veiled. Man then gets to say yes or no, enlightened men will inquire whether the woman agree to the marriage - most don't ask. Wedding date is arranged, and man has to get the dowry together - wedding is held early in the morning, and then all the men go to one tent to celebrate and all the women go to another. When I suggested it was a little sad that people didn't get to celebrate together, my new friends were perplexed - but why ? they asked. In a day and age when people have access to almost everything on the internet - access to the net is cheap and fast in Yemen, one gets the feeling that there must be a huge mass of very frustrated - both sexually and politically, young men and women, but I saw no sign of it. In fact there is the opposite - people are curious and surprised by the ways of others - a 12 year old boy I met asked if it was true that any man and women could go together in my country because he met a Korean couple who weren't married but lived together, so he presumed anyone could go with anyone else. Hard to tell what is more strange, what goes on in Yemen, or when the Yemenis think goes on elsewhere.

Africa is just not dangerous enough - off to Yemen

2009-05-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

After eight months in Africa, no wars, no civilian unrest (well a little in Kenya), no rebellions (maybe close in Eritrea) and no diseases, (and one incredibly frustrating, expensive and ultimately failed attempt to get a visa) I am leaving Africa for some where with more action - Yemen. Have a look at this list of recent excitement in Yemen (that I poached off the internet):

On 15 March 2009 a group of South Korean nationals were attacked whilst visiting a popular tourist site in Shibam, Hadramaut Governorate. Four South Koreans are known to have died with reports of the death of at least one other, whose nationality is unclear at this time. At least four others were injured.

On 17 September 2008, at least 17 people were killed in an attack on the US Embassy in Sana'a, including six terrorists.

On 30 April 2008, there was a mortar attack against the Italian Embassy in Sana'a.

On 10 April 2008 an improvised explosive device exploded at an oil company headquarters in Sana'a, and a second device was disarmed.

On 6 April 2008 there was a mortar attack against a residential compound in Sana'a.
On 18 March 2008 there was a grenade attack against the US Embassy in Sana'a.
On 18 January 2008, two Belgian and two Yemeni nationals were shot dead, with four other Belgians seriously injured, in an incident in the Governorate of Hadramaut.
On 9 July 2007, an explosive device was found in Aden but was not detonated.
On 2 July 2007, eight Spanish and two Yemeni nationals were killed,and a number of others injured, in a suicide bomb attack in Ma’rib,100 km east of Sana'a.
The latest incident happened on 18 January 2009 where a German national and his two Yemeni colleagues were kidnapped in Shabwa Governorate. The hostages were released unharmed. On 2 January 2009 three South African nationals, including two children, were kidnapped on the Aden/Abyan road in the south of Yemen. They were released unharmed. On 14 December 2008 three German nationals were kidnapped in Bait Bous, on the outskirts of Sana'a. The hostages were also released unharmed. At the end of September 2008 a family of five Americans were kidnapped in the Governorate of Dhamar. Earlier that month, two Colombian oil engineers were kidnapped in the Governorate of Shabwa.All hostages were released unharmed. You should be aware that the long-standing policy of the British Government is not to make substantive concessions to hostage takers. The British Government considers that paying ransoms and releasing prisoners increases the risk of further hostage taking.

Breaking all the rules - inadvertently

2009-05-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

In my brief time in Eritrea it seems I have inadvertently managed to set a record in the number of rules I have broken in a short space of time. All of the following are in some way prohibited by the mass of laws, rules and regulations which seems to ensnare most people in Eritrea which ever way they turn -

I crossed the border in to Eritrea from Sudan, supposedly the border is closed but there were plenty of locals passing through.
I was allowed in to Eritrea despite having a Ethiopian visa and entry and exit stamps in my passport. (The two countries were at war for thirty years, and then some more)
I never received a currency declaration form through which the government attempts to strictly regulate the exchange of foreign currency to its fixed rate of exchange.
I stayed the night in the border town of Tesseney, where foreigners are supposedly not allowed to go and are never given travel permits
I travelled in Eritrea without a travel permit - I made it from Tesseney to Barentu (another town that is out of bounds for foreigners) before the military police realised I didn't have a permit and took me off the bus. I was then escorted in to town to the Security Police and issued a piece of paper which authorised my travel to Asmara.

Massawa is sleeping

2009-05-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

I finally had enough of waiting in Asmara and decided to head down to the coast at Massawa.

On the bus on the way down we stop halfway and some Cubanas join us on the bus - standing for the second half of the journey. I overhear them speaking in Spanish and so I start up a conversation. They are here for their compulsory service - you have to go and work overseas before you can practice as a doctor in Cuba. They are not the thinnest woman in the world and are suffering from the heat, one of them says to me "I leave in September and I will be happy if I never think of Africa again". (I suddenly think of a global pecking order - Cuba is poor but Eritrea is even lower on the list) Somehow despite their measly salaries and the complete lack of food they have somehow managed to maintain their voluptuous figures which fill out the tight trackies and jeans they have on in true Latina style.

I arrive in the mainland part of Massawa and then take a mini-van across the causeways, past the tank monument, to Massawa proper. It is hard to believe that during the 1930's the Italians turned the port in to the busiest in East Africa, building on a rich and mixed architectural heritage from the various peoples who have lived and traded here, including Egyptian, Turkish, Arabs and Portuguese. Sadly during Eritrea's fight for independence the Ethiopians bombed Massawa to bits (as revenge for the rebels seizing control of the town from the Ethiopians) and this is what you see today. Many buildings lie in ruins - huge holes in their roofs, bulging walls sometimes more horizontal then vertical and piles of concrete rubble strewn all about. During the short period of peace after independence some big shiny hotels were built on the shore but they are now all closed as the restarting of hostilities has almost killed all tourism in Eritrea.

I wandered about in the ruins and managed to find a hotel that had a room - the building was a huge three storey 1930's construction, which at its peak must have had thirty or forty rooms - it now had three. All the rest were boarded up, the roof have caved in across a couple, a stairway had fallen down, and everything is covered in a think layer of dust. The owner has managed to salvage a few rooms with the creative use of plywood, but even these are barely habitable. The other three hotels I have seen are all exactly the same, once grand but now falling down, a few others are completely closed.

I finally manage to get in the water and go for a swim. The water is incredibly refreshing, as it washes away the sweat that 40 degree plus temperatures have generated. There is no beach, and their is no one swimming. The water is clear but stays shallow for as far as I can swim out. It starts to get late and the hills in the background start glowing a soft red, hence the Red Sea.

On my way back from the swim I am walking along the street and a car slows and the window slowly slides down and I fill a rush of cold, air-conditioned air.
The driver asks me if I want a ride and I explain I am just walking around. He is surprised that I am a tourist in Eritrea, and clearly wants to talk. I tell him,
"It is very quiet here, Massawa is sleeping"
"It is because of the war", he replies
"The war is finished", I say
"No, no. War with fighting is good, it finishes. War with words is bad, it never finishes", he corrects me.
I ask him where can I find something to eat and he tells me where the best (only ?) fish in town is served before biding me farewell and driving off.

When I return to my hotel I find that it is full with guests, about 10 or 15 high school students from Dekemhare have showed up for the long weekend. They are finishing school in the next week and preparing themselves for what most call hell by drinking as much as they can over the weekend. All students who want to study after high school in Eritrea are sent away to a huge camp in the desert where they all live together for a year being brainwashed. It is hot, conditions are harsh and by all reports it is very hellish. Those who don't want to or can't study are sent to an even worse place for their education. The look in the eyes of these young people, a mixture of fear, dread, frustration and dire need to squeeze some small enjoyment out of life was very disturbing. They stay up all night drinking, listening to loud music and dancing - I can't begrudge their last chance at a little enjoyment. They are still going at six am when I get up to go for a swim. Again, I swim alone.

I spend two more days in Massawa and don't see another tourist. A few other students are in town but for a long weekend it is very very quiet. I wonder what it is like during the week. My dream of taking a boat across to Yemen is completely dashed, I can't imagine the last time a boat sailed out of this harbour.

I head back to the mainland to the bus station which is easy to find because next to it sits a huge Andronov cargo plane. I imagine that the Ethiopians left town so quickly that they didn't have a chance to get this behemoth off the ground. It has been turned it to a restaurant, but in a country with very little food there was no sign of even a menu let alone a meal. I get on the bus to leave Massawa feeling like I am leaving the twilight zone.

Sudan - first impressions

2009-04-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

In the first six hours in Sudan I have already had four or five experiences which have already started defining the place for me

Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop

Sudan seems to have a schizophrenic attitude to tourists. In some Sudanese embassies it is almost impossible to get a visa, whereas in Addis Abbaba, once I had coughed up the US$100, I had mine the next day. Then when you enter the country you are subjected to varying degrees of interrogation at a collection of different inspection posts - immigration, customs, police, security police and some guy in an office who really insisted I sign a piece of paper the contents of which I had no idea. However I am an old hand at border crossings, so despite the hot sun bearing down like it wanted to tear holes through me, and the hot wind that sucked the moisture from me whilst filling the air with a sandy mist, I summoned all the patience I had left and slowly trudged from one place to the next. After receiving the appropriate permission to travel, which required me to donate another photo of myself to the Sudanese government, the minibus filled up, drove around town a couple of times, visited immigration and customs with a passenger list and then the security police again (they did a final bag search) , we motored off out of town.
About two minutes down the road, at the end of town was the first checkpoint - customs and immigration and security police all had a look inside, and requested my papers. I then had to get out, get my bag down from the roof and watch them go through it again - it wasn't just me they were doing this for all the passengers. I watched the guy who pulled up next to us in a ute, be approached by four different sets of officials in four different coloured uniforms.

We then drove another one minute and stopped at the army checkpoint - three small thatched huts, a concrete building in the middle, a radio antenna, and five or six very bored looking soldiers languorously draped over anything they could find in the shade. Behind the buildings was a four wheel drive ute with a machine gun mounted on the back. (Yep, just like you see on the news about Darfur !!)

After we passed through this checkpoint we drove another fifteen minutes before we reached the next one - out comes the passport, the same questions, the rudimentary look through what everyone's luggage and then we are on our way - until the next checkpoint. After another two or three of these stops couldn't help but think about how this is the African special - that is the idea that if enough people do a job enough times in a half arsed way eventually the combined efforts will lead to .... umm, well will lead to something. Perhaps it is law enforcement by tedium - eventually you give up and stop travelling.

Despite the extreme heat, even when I open the window when we are moving at a good speed the air being blown in is hotter than inside the van, I manage to fall asleep. I am woken by stopping at another checkpoint, and I wonder how many I have missed - the van driver now has my passport in a vain attempt to speed the process along. However this time I have to answer the where are you going ? questions myself, and then get to watch as the luggage all gets checked again. Three hundred metres down the road we get stopped again, and everyone's papers are checked.

This went on for the four hours it took to cover the one hundred and fifty kilometres or so - the road was in great condition, the driver drove like a madman and pushed the van to what felt like 150 km/h but it still took over four hours - looking at the map made me worry that I may never make it the other side of Sudan, I don't have that many years to live.

Can I help you ?

The bus from the border drives through a maze of back streets, then comes on to a main street and drops me at what looks like a market. I am flying blind, two hours in a new country, melting from the wilting dry heat, as I don't have a map, any idea of a place to stay or where I can catch a bus to head north to Eritrea, and I understand about three words of Arabic. An older guy, dressed in a white jalabaa - the long sleeved, cover all night gown that is so favoured by Muslims with a jauntily arranged white turban covering his head, standing in front of a shop behind the make shift bus stop, notices my look of complete dismay as I stand there watching the bus drive off without much idea of what I am going to do next. He calls out "Where are you going ?" and I am so surprised by his English I wander over to him. I explain I want to find a place to stay, and we end up having a conversation about how his cousin lives in Sydney.
As darkness begins to settle, and the wind whips up the sand and dust to make a technicolour sunset which obscures the otherwise very plane town, my new friend tells me to
"Take this taxi, pay 40 cents and I will tell him where to drop you." He asks me if I want a hotel or a lokanda (big dormitories for local men, where 15 or 20 beds are spread out in an open area, costing less than a dollar for the night) I choose the cheaper option, at which point others from the crowd that has now formed advise me that I want hotel. (It always strikes me how I must be seen by locals - I was out drinking late last night, I haven't had a shower in a few days, most of my clothes appear to be allergic to soap, I haven't shaved for a month, my hair does really look like rats' tails, and I arrive in some broken arse town in the middle of nowhere in a crappy old minibus, and locals still think I want to stay at the Sheraton.) A discussion ensues as I try to make it clear what I want, and when the taxi finally fills, the old man approaches me as we are about to take off and says, " We Sudanese, our problem is we talk too much"

Where are all the women ?

As I wander around town at twilight, I ask myself where have all the women gone - there are none in the shops, restaurants and out door spaces like Ethiopia. Every once in a while I see a few here and there, and all of those are covered up, dressed completely in black with only their eyes showing. I notice the change immediately as the country seems so much more dour, as though the life and colour has been stripped out of the place.

I keep wandering and everyone is surprised, and happy to see a stranger, calling out hello, and when I stop to speak to people I am inundated with invitations - invited to have tea, then invited to have juice, then dinner, and then invited to have a juice. And of course as I am a guest, I am not allowed to pay for anything - even though some of the people earn less than a couple of dollars a day, they insist, and go on insisting when I try to argue, that they must pay.

I can almost feel the moths starting to breed in my wallet

Don't mention the war

Having dinner outside at a table, and joined by two or three younger guys, all trying to speak to me in varying levels of English. As my plate was still hall full and I was completely full, I turned their invitation to join them around, so they poured what was left of mine in to the communal plate and we ate out of that. Joined by another guy who asked e to speak in English as he wanted to listen. He told me he wanted to leave Sudan because there was no future. When we had finished the guy who had arrived last walked away and then came back and said, Come with me, my friend here wants to talk to you, so we walked inside the restaurant and sat down. The first thing they said to me was, "you know the ICC ?" I thought I was going to be on tricky grounds, so I played dumb, "Ah no, umm, yes, umm"
"We like Ocampo, we think he is right"
Suddenly I felt the mood changing, and they were off
"There is no democracy in Sudan. The President is a criminal, we like O'Campo (the Chief Prosecutor at the ICC) The government in Sudan is not a good government, it keeps the people down. They are criminals, and we want to change them but we can't"
"But you can talk about it, like this" I asked, surprised that they were letting rip in public
"Yes, because everybody in Sudan agrees. Nobody likes him - it is just that people are afraid, and we don't know what to do to change. What should we do to change ?" I was asked earnestly
"Well, I just arrived and..." I stumbled
"Before you came to Sudan you have an idea of what the place is like, what do you think of Sudan ?"
"Well I only arrived today from Ethiopia, I have only been in the country for five hours , and all I saw was police stop, police stop, police stop, police stop" I answered
"Yes, for us it is the same. When we move around in our country we are treated like foreigners, the government tries to stop us from moving around. I tell you in Sudan there are only two classes, the rich and the poor. I want to leave Sudan because there is no future here, people are very poor and nothing will change. How can I leave Sudan ? Can you help me go to Australia?"
After all this I was a little flummoxed - particularly as the night before an Ethiopian had told me that I couldn't talk politics there, and I had only been in Sudan a matter of hours. Before I could answer, the guys thanked me and told me they were leaving. They then paid for my meal on the way out.
After thinking about it for a while, and pondering in particular how indicative of general public opinion they were, I started to think that often we in the West fret about imposing our rights on others, whereas the truth probably is that the people at the bottom of the pile want as much of that imposed as they can get. All that navel gazing and po-mo relativism worry can be thrown out the window, countries should be able to impose moral standards upon governments, and perhaps more importantly, should be able to enforce those standards - particularly when they are grossly violated.
I confess that think Al Bashir is a thug, and that whilst the ICC procedures may do very little to reign him in, they do serve as a good precedent. Now I am also starting to think that maybe the procedures are also supported by the majority of Sudanese, which can only be a good thing - for us and for them. Hopefully we can live up to the trust they place in us.

Last bus trip in Ethiopia

2009-04-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for the most genuine Ethiopian experience then you need do no more than get on a bus. I have written previously about the joys of catching a bus in Ethiopia, but the fun really begins once you finally head off. This took longer than usual when I took my last bus ride from Gonder to the border with Sudan, as two large cages of chickens had to be loaded on to the roof of the bus and the rickety cages made this a full hour task, and it looked like it was going to take even longer when one of the porters tried to put the 10ft long cage on his back then climb up the ladder at the back of the bus - for a brief moment it looked like
Finally we hit the road, and it didn't take long before the most important item in the bus was put in to use - the vomit bag. Every Ethiopian bus, probably by law, carries a plastic bag of plastic bags, usually stored near the back door. When the roads get windy the bags get handed out to everyone, but in our case we were on some of the straightest roads in Ethiopia, which means the bus boy has to dash to the back of the bus grab a bag and get it to the ailing passenger before the vomit hits the floor. What the straight roads don't mean though is a vomit free trip, that is something that just doesn't happen. Despite trying hard not to look a few times I couldn't but peep as passenger gave a bag their best, tied it up at the top and threw it out the window (or on to the floor if they were feeling a little lazy) - the suspended solids in a pale yellow liquid glittering in the sun still makes me feel a little queasy. The preponderance of vomit may have a lot to do with the fact that there are about eighty people (two rows of three and two) crammed in to an ordinary bus AND no matter how hot or stuffy it becomes, all of the windows will be closed. Ethiopians believe that air coming in a window brings illness, so if you ever dare to open a window they give you the evil eye, tell you to close the window or come over and do it themselves.
Now, after about an hour on the pass roughly half of the eighty people had vomited, and roughly seventy five percent of these people had used a plastic bag. Meanwhile a good percentage of the passengers are also having a hack or a gob now and then straight on to the floor, which is where anything that anyone no longer wants - i.e. - all of the rubbish ends up. Adding to all of this is the dust that the bus kicks up as it motors along as none of the roads are paved. The piece de resistance of this concoction is the rancid smell that emanates from the women who lather on sheep and goat fat to keep their hair looking shiny.
So as we descended out of the hills in to the heat of the desert plains, and the sun began to cook the bus, the pungent mix human sweat, vomit, rancid animal fat mixing with clouds of dust in the seemingly ever diminishing small space of a bus with no fresh air at all, made me feel quite happy that I was finally leaving Ethiopia and its smelly, get up at 4.30am to catch 'em buses - but there was one small last piece of theatre to go.

As we had driven through the mountains every time we stopped the owner of the chickens would check that his charges were doing all right. As we hit the planes that marked the beginning of the border with Sudan the bus kicked up a few notches with hysterical results. We were careering along on a dusty road when suddenly three or four chickens were spotted out of the back windows of the bus falling from the roof, bouncing off the side of the bus and disappearing in to the cloud of dust that was following us. Eventually after plenty of shouting from all the passengers the driver realised what had happened and slammed on the brakes. When we stopped about half the passengers got out - half of those started chasing the chickens and the other half coached the first half - first on the best method of rounding up the chooks in 40 degree heat in the scrub, and then secondly on how to put the chooks back in the cages and then fix the cages. It kept me in stitches for half an hour, as I enjoyed the relief of breathing some fresh air for a change.
The last hour and a half of the journey was punctuated by two more of these stops, once when a couple of birds escaped and were running around on the roof, and twice more when some felt off the back of the bus. The last time the driver had had enough and didn't even bother stopping - so by now there are probably a whole packs of chickens running around crossing the Ethiopia-Sudan border without the appropriate passports.

Food, glorious food

2009-04-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

Somehow I managed to stumble in to Ethiopia during Coptic Lent, during which almost the entire country fasts - abstaining from eating meat for forty days, turning the country in to a vegetarian paradise. I spent the six weeks I was there living off beyenit - fasting food, and was so impressed I even took a photo !!!

The main part of the Ethiopian diet, njera, a huge pancake made from tef, a grain a bit like wheat that only grows at altitude in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The standard (and almost exclusive dish in most places) involves njera as the plate and then a selection of varying goodies - ranging from your bog standard shiro (the paste in the middle made from spiced, lentil flour) , to spicy eggplant, fancy beetroot and a few more lentil dishes.

An unwanted Australian - beyherzaff - the tree from over the sea

2009-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you look out over the hills of Ethiopia, and the rest of Africa south of there, you could easily make the mistake of thinking you were in Australia - the hills are covered in that very recognisable green leaves, yellow flowers and white trunks of the eucalyptus tree.

In Ethiopia they are called beyherzaff - bey meaning sea and herzaff meaning branch or tree, and when I tell many locals where I am from they immediately tell me how King Menelik, the first king of united Ethiopia (and the grandfather of the divine Emperor Haile Selassie). Like in most East and Southern African countries they were brought to Africa from Australia at the turn of the century (in the other countries by the new colonists), to replace the rapidly deforested hills. In the perfect conditions of Africa, plenty of sun, water and good soil the eucalyptus grow like wildfire, to mangle a few metaphors. In the absence of any small marsupials to pick on the saplings, the trees grow straight and tall, rushing towards the sky at break neck speed. Since their introduction they have self seeded to cover large swathes of land, crowding out any indigenous trees that have been left, and often because of the more recent high levels of deforestation, they are the only trees that can be seen in many areas.
You would think that any tree is a good tree, but the eucalyptus is not native so it creates problems in its alien environment, deep roots steal the water from other trees and cause the water table to rise. Native animals and birds haven't adapted to use the eucalyptus, so like native trees they are pushed elsewhere by the unwanted Australian interloper.

In some areas, especially in Rwanda, people have wised up, and are now clearing the eucalyptus for firewood and replacing them with native species, but in most areas the antipodean import continues to spread its reach. Maybe they could send a few back to Australia.

Loiterer on a mission

2009-04-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

Finally there is a purpose to the loitering - hmm perhaps that may be an oxymoron. Anyway, on a bus ride from Mekele to go to Debre Damo I met Teklab, an Eritrean refugee living in Ethiopia. (For those who don't know Eritrea fought a 3o year war of independence with Ethiopia that ended in 1991, and then they fought another war in 1997) Eritrea is afraid of another war and requires all its male citizens from 18 to 45 to do full time permanent military service, and requires a permit for its citizens to leave the country. Nonetheless, each month about 1000 refugees slip across the border to Ethiopia and 2500 go to Sudan.

Teklab left five years ago, and he is a lucky one, he has a residency permit to live and work in Ethiopia, most refugees end up in camps, where they are not allowed to work, and must remain in the camps, sometimes they are allowed out for a week at a time. When I met up with Teklab him in Shire where he lives, the mere mention of his sister and mother who still live in Eritrea almost killed the conversation - Teklab suddenly became very quiet and I could almost see in his eyes memories of better days flashing past. (Teklab can't return to Eritrea meaning he hasn't seen his sister or his mother since he left, it is not possible to call between the two countries because the lines have been cut, and emails are censored) Teklab became animated again when he got on to talking about freedom, the word Eritreans give for the end of the war and independence. He said "When freedom came in 1991" as if it had simply knocked on the door and had been allowed in, rather than a thirty year war in which Eritrea had no international allies. However for five or six years life was good, travel between the two countries was open to all families were reunited, and their was a post conflict economic boom in Eritrea - its economy grew faster than any other country in Africa. It seemed that the tough sacrifices the Struggle were over, and people in both countries looked forwarded to an even more promising future. Tragically it only lasted six years, before the two leaders launched another war between the two countries, ostensibly about control of some busted arse border town, but more about egos - egos which cost around 70,000 to 100,000 lives, and ruined the economies and lives of millions in both countries.

I met a few other unluckier refugees on a local bus. They had managed to get a two week pass out and had been to Addis, but they were now on their way back to the camp - a five hour bus ride, and then a ten kilometre walk. There is no real chance of escape as anybody travelling in Ethiopia, particularly around the border areas, has their papers checked so often that any refugee on the run would soon be caught. They told me about how Canada had declined to let them migrate so they were now going to try for Australia. They had been in the camp for five years, and spent most of their time doing nothing - they are not allowed to work, including even farming the land inside the camp, or study - people live off handouts from the UNHCR and aid agencies, so they have no income, and very little to do. I later rode on a bus through another camp, about a thousand or so ramshackle huts, distributed across a denuded hillside - black burnt soil and not a tree in sight. As in most places in Ethiopia, everything was covered in a thick layer of dust thrown up by passing cars, and whilst there was no fence, it looked worse than a prison.

Teklab convinced me to visit Eritrea, first by telling me the border was open, and secondly and more importantly by giving me a job - to carry a letter and photo across the border like an illicit postman.

Noise,blackouts and some castles in Africa

2009-04-04T03:39:00.000-07:00

It is not that often that you find yourself in the middle of a blackout hoping that it continues but in Ethiopia things a a little unusual that way. For some reason hotels are normally always situated above, behind or in the worst cases, inside bars/restaurant/nightclubs. The action will usually start around nine in the evening, which means when you arrive at the hotel before that time you have no idea how busy, and loud, it will get.
The music is cranked up, and failing that, English football, or just any sound at all, and this is Africa, so when any music is played on electronic equipment the volume must be turned up to eleven, so that almost everything is distorted beyond comprehension. There are many good things about Ethiopia, and I know the culture police may try to arrest me for saying this, but Ethiopian music is terrible, there appears to be no actual instruments - just badly synthesised approximations thereof, and most of the lyrics are screeched rather than sung. There also seems to be a limited range of choice, so that the same songs will be played five or six times each night. The racket makes conversation in the bar pointless and sleep nigh on impossible, even with ear plugs firmly fastened. So I hear you say, find a hotel that isn't a bar, well that doesn't work either, because inevitably somewhere within hearing range there will be a bar playing music at full volume. Contributing to this is also the way that Ethiopians tend to speak at the top of their voice, whatever the subject, location or time of day. As all buildings are made from cement and then lathered with tiles the booming voices echo throughout the building, so even when the music stops at 3am, there are still plenty of noises keeping you awake.
The one thing that offsets all of this is the tendency for the power to go out in most cities. In some places it is regular, from around 11 in the morning to 8 or 9 in the evening, in other places it is random, everything shuts off and there will be no power for a couple of hours. Travelling around to different cities it was difficult to say with any certainty when the power would go off or come on as locals tended to treat the question with disdain. So when the power went out or was out around bedtime, I found myself secretly hoping that it would stay that way until the morning time. No power meant no music which usually meant no customers, which meant no noise. Unfortunately a couple of times power returned at around 11 or midnight, the music would be cranked up, whether or not there were any customers, and I would go back to counting sheep in Amharic.

Oh yeah, there is also some old castle from the 14th and 15th century in Gonder too.

Arguing with God

2009-04-02T02:47:00.000-07:00

Many Africans ask me why I visiting their country, or why I am travelling and the best answer I have is how I felt yesterday as I set out on a twenty two kilometre walk through some incredibly beautiful countryside to the monastery of Debre Damo. After coming down the wondrous engineering feat that is the road from Mekele to Axum, where the road serpentines down the hill, almost on top of itself and looking down I could see five or six passes of the road below me. We finally reached the bottom of the plateau after a nerve racking hour of descent, and then a couple of kilometres along I was dropped off at the turn off to the monastery - a small dirt road. To the horizon there were peaks everywhere, with a few ridge lines joining some peaks here and there. The sun was beating down, but with the breeze on my face my muscles started twinging and I was ready to go - ready to escape all the hassle that comes along with being stationery and embracing the freedom and the joy of movement.The walk proved to be as rewarding as I imagined. After a couple of kilometres on the track a few locals suggested I join them on a short cut, so we clambered up and over a hill, whereupon they left me to head out to the fields and pointed me in the direction I was to go. I dropped back down the side of the hill towards the river, spotting the road continuing on the top of the ridge line a couple of hundred metres up the side of the hill I had just come down. I reached the river bed, covered in rocks and about 150 metres across, but the water was not much more than a trickle a couple of metres wide. As I hopped across the rocks I met a few nuns who greeted me and pointed to the towering mountain in front of me and chuckled to themselves. Following their pointing figures I saw the monolith I was to climb rearing up in front of me, a circular hill that straight up for a couple of hundred of metres topped by a vertical rock face of at least a hundred metres, a natural fortress. I followed the river bank for a while and then followed the track as it headed up the hill. It was hard going with rocks strewn across the steep path and the mid day sun seemed to take particular pleasure scorching anything that was foolish enough to be out of the shade, leaving me covered in a damp layer of sweat. As I was going up I passed a number of locals coming down, all older men, dressed in their white robes. They all greeted me with a smile on their face and pointed up towards the monastery.
After about an hour of heavy going, I made it to the foot of the sheer rock face, and then skirted around the bottom looking for the only way up. After walking what seemed halfway around the cliff I stumbled across the way up and stood transfixed as I watched forty to fifty men, some who would have been well in to their sixties and seventies making their way down the fifty metre sheer cliff. Some of the men flew down, using only the thin rope made from goat skins, they did any modern day abseiler proud, leaning back so their body was perpendicular with the cliff and walking and leaping backwards down to the bottom. A few of the less game ones tied themselves in to a harness (made of course from goatskin) and using the rope they were lowered down more slowly.

After having seen the physical state of many of these men as they waited at the bottom I gave up any idea I had of wussing out and ambled over to where the ropes came down. Looking up I noticed that behind the small gate through which you entered there stood a gatekeeper dressed in his fancy robes. A kid on the ground befriended me, he told me to take my bag off, and to do the climb in bare feet. He then mentioned that it would cost me 100 Ethiopian Birr to get in and another 40 to be pulled up. (140 EB = $ 14) Now that doesn't sound like much money, except my daily budget for the six weeks spent in Ethiopia was $10, and the average Ethiopian earns about 500 Birr a month – yes per month. So 140 was quite a large sum. I checked my pockets to find that I had about 90Birr on me – I had been told it would cost me 50 to get in. I explained to the kid on the ground that was all I had, and he had a conversation with the gatekeeper, who then suddenly spouted some broken English - “Must pay 100, if not go away”. So I went and sat with the guys who had come down and ate my lunch whilst weighing up what I would do. Surely, I thought to myself if I impress upon him this is all the money I have he will let me in, it is a monastery after all.
So I return to the bottom of the ropes. Immediately he yells out,
“Give me 100 Birr.”
I explain that I only have 87 Birr
“Go away, you must pay”
At this point, probably due to the combination of having woken at 5am that morning, having spent 4 hours on a hot bus with Ethiopians refusing to open any windows whilst engaging in synchronised vomiting, then having walked around 11 kilometres and the rather irritating practice of Ethiopian Orthodox churches charging every time you even want to go near them, I confess to flying off the handle. I looked at the robed gatekeeper, and it made me wonder whether this was what it was like when we arrive at the pearly gates.
“Are you a church or a back ?” I yelled at him, but received no reply.
“What will you do if when you get to heaven it is like this – if you don't have enough money they won't let you in ? “
“No, give me 100” was his only reply, before he slipped behind the wall so I couldn't see him.
“Are you afraid ? Why are you hiding ?” I yelled up at the heavens, wondering whether even St Peter would be this tough.
“No”
I stood there and glared at him as sternly as possible but I think the distance and the superior position which he was in severely undermined the effectiveness of my stare. Eventually I walked away, sat down and had a twenty minute discussion with myself about whether I should give in and whether I really wanted to see the monastery anyway. Finally I decided that after all the effort to get there it would be a waste not to invest the extra dollar – I hunted around in my bag and found some extra money, I put everything I needed in my pockets, took off my shoes and headed over to the ropes. I decided that if sixty year olds could do it, so could I – and to save the extra four dollars I started climbing up the cliff without a harness. About 10 metres in the gatekeeper noticed and called out
“Give me 100 Birr”
Rather peeved by this point I found a resting place on the wall, and yelled back at him “I will give you your money, but how can I, there is no one here. Do you have any angels to send down to collect it ?”
After he appeared to recognise the practicality of the situation he stopped yelling and I got back to climbing. About halfway up my forearms were pounding, my hands were covered in sweat and my fingers were stuck in a grip refusing to straighten. I couldn't stop my hands from shaking. I kept going until I was about three quarters of the way up, but things were only getting worse. My hands were now shaking almost uncontrollably, my fingers and forearms were too tired to get a good grip on the rope, and I made the almost fatal mistake of looking down. I started thinking to myself, hmm you have put yourself at the risk of falling to a near certain death in order to save four bucks – nice work.
At this point the gatekeeper sensing perhaps that he could get the better of me started yelling at me to stop, and that he would get the harness. This was enough to give me the impetus to pull myself together, look up, ignore the soft voice in the back of my head telling me I couldn't do it, ignore the pain in my pain in my arms, and heave myself up the last part to the gate, and then scramble through to safety. And when I took my first step through the gate what was I greeted with – the gatekeeper demanding his 100Birr !!!
The place was in fact most impressive, like a little island oasis it was covered in green grass, with cows and goats wandering around. There were quite a number of houses, some very deep dams hewn out of the rock, and a couple of churches – one in the impressive monkey head style – made from a combination of stone and wood in alternating layers, with the stumps of the wooden beams sticking out like monkey heads. I wandered around for a while, admiring the incredible views, looking north I could see over the border in to Eritrea. I could see how this was the perfect place to hold out against the invading Arabs as they swept across Ethiopia from the coastal plains, through the mountains and towards the southern cities – destroying all of the churches and monasteries on the way. Debre Damo was one of the few to hold out until the invaders were repelled.

I managed to wander in to the main church just as the chanting was drawing to a close, and the five or six priests wandered out of the secret part of the church and then did four or five laps of the church before heading back in to the part hidden by the curtain. I headed back towards the gate and the gatekeeper kept badgering me to give him more money – first for the climb up, then for having a camera, then for going down, and then in the end just for being.Unable to resist, I went and collected a few rocks and came back and made out to be paying him in rocks. Fortunately the way down was a lot easier than the way up, and I managed to make it without stopping.

Where are the starving babies ?

2009-03-28T00:49:00.000-07:00

So I am naive as the next person, riding on a bus through the middle of Ethiopia I find myself asking, where are the starving babies ?
The images that I associate most with Ethiopia are those from the famine in the 1980's, starving babies, with bloated stomachs, large bald heads covered in flies, large, blank eyes filled with the look of complete surrender to the inevitability of death staring at the camera, sitting under the burning sun, in the middle of the desert.

I look out the window and I see sheer mountain peaks, thin rocky ridge lines, steep flanks covered in ploughed terraces divided by stone walls, goats, cows and sheep grazing on the green grass and trees everywhere. I am yet to see any starving babies, instead I have been enjoying the tasty fare that traditional Ethiopian food has to offer, including plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and my new staple - coffee.

I look around the bus trying to validate my preconceptions, I like to think of myself as relatively well informed - after all I did read an article in Kenya that the UN agency the WFP (World Food Program) said that nine million people were at risk of starving this year in Ethiopia, and I see Save the Children signs everywhere. Instead people are busy sending messages on their mobile phones, chewing chat, roasted barley and sugar cane - no starving babies here either.

The gap between the portrayal of Africa, and the reality of Africa seems to grow wider and wider the more time I spend here. The rare times that Africa makes it to the news are usually stories about natural disasters, famines or violence, and whether they occurred twenty years ago or yesterday, the sheer weight of the sum of negativity means the overall impression that we carry around with us is one of hopelessness and suffering. Even when these ideas run in to the wall of reality, I keep looking to try and prove the errant preconceptions I have. Perhaps confronting these myths also means confronting all of the other erroneous news that feeds the warped ideas of reality that we construct in our heads, and try to impose on the often resolutely stubborn reality. We know so little about the world despite being so interconnected and hearing and reading about it every day.

Can I have finally stumbled on a justification for wandering about the planet ?

Nonetheless, I will keep my eye out for some starving babies (Got to get my hug count up)

Good question

2009-03-27T01:55:00.000-07:00

On the way back from seeing the carved churches of Lalibela, I arrived
in Woldyia, a junction town which failed in it's sole purpose -
providing transport to get out of it. After a strange scene in which I
had a stand up argument with the six fingered bus boy (it was an extra
little pinky, tacked on the end of the hand, with nail and all. Once I
noticed it, it was almost impossible to stop my eyes from drifting down
to look at in brief, firvative glances, before quickly shifting my gaze
out of a mix of good manners and a sense of repulsion) about having to
pay for him to put my bag in the luggage compartment at the back. In the
end I wrenched the tool key from his hand, after threatening to take the
phone from his ear, opened the boot, got my bag and walked away. I kept
walking out of town, to some very surprised looks by locals. I stood by
the road for a while and very few cars past, but after twenty minutes or
so a ute stopped, and despite going only fifty kilometres, I through my
bag in the back and jumped in.

I was sharing the car with three other guys, two middle aged and one in
his late teens. Most people in Ethiopia can speak a fair amount of
English but they are usually too shy to try. As we drove along the
driver made some jokes in English about how the other two were
graduates, yet he was the only one willing to give talking in English a
shot. After about twenty minutes we reached a small town, stopped at a
bar, and the driver and one of the passengers got out. The other
passenger then started to ask me a few questions about where I was from,
where I had been in Ethiopia (the stone churches in Lalibela) and where
I was going in Ethiopia (the monasteries in Tigray). Inevitably we ended
up with the usual, what is your religion ? question.

"I have no religion" I told him, "I don't believe in God". He thought
about that for a while and then shot this curly one at me,
"You don't believe in Jesus and you don't have a church, so why do you
come to visit churches in Ethiopia ?"

I was floored by that one and have been trying to think of a good
comeback ever since.

The work of angels ?

2009-03-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

The monolithic churches of Lalibela have to be seen to be believed. They are hidden away in the central mountains of Ethiopia, and reputed to have been built, or more accurately carved, in the 12th and 13th centuries by King Lalibela after his return from exile in Jerusalem. The churches were created as a refuge, and a site of pilgrimage - instead of risking the life threatening journey across the Muslim lands on the way to Jerusalem, Ethiopian Christians could instead travel to the new Jerusalem. The backdrop, of an endless series of steep valleys, thin ridge lines and mesas that stretch along the horizon in all directions is almost impressive as the churches. The churches themselves are carved in to the rock - that is, the workers started with a flat stretch of rock and carved down 10 to 15 metres in to it, eking out a large hole in the ground with churches that are carved - rather than built - from the same rock, in the middle of the hole.

As our guide led us around the churches he explained that they were built supposedly in the space of 23 years, following the plans that were divinely revealed to King Lalibela, in a dream in which the designs were shown to him. They were all started and finished at the same time, and in order to complete the work so quickly at night angels would appear and work until morning when the mere mortals returned to work.

The angel story, told in all earnest by the guide, was what got my incredulity meter going - but I must admit it had been emitting some weird noises ever since I arrived in Ethiopia. The foundation of Ethiopia is based on the Queen of Sheba story. Supposedly Queen Sheba (allegedly an Ethiopian, but the Yemenis claim her as well) headed off to Jerusalem, and had a little dalliance with King Solomon to whom she bore a child. Her entourage then headed back to Ethiopia after nicking the Ark of the Covenant (what Moses got when God gave him the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai and what Indiana Jones found somewhere in the desert near the Pyramids) The original ark is apparently in Axum in the north of Ethiopia, and is the Ethiopian Coptic Churches most holy site. However put your cameras away because it is hidden away and nobody is allowed to see it - apparently you will instantly turn to flames if you do. All churches in Ethiopia have a copy of the covenant, but again they are behind curtains and nobody is allowed to see it. As an English guy I met asked, is there a factory where these replicas are produced, and how can you produce a replica if you can't see the original.

So there is the work of angels, the Ark of the Covenant, and each of the thirteen churches in Lalibela also has its own cross, found in the waters surrounding each church and supposedly made from perfect gold -whatever that is. (Curiously one of them was stolen by a local and sold to a Belgian collector back in the '80s, clearly the divine cross doesn't cause blindness)

Needless to say, as with most religious beliefs, not much really stands up to close scrutiny - if the churches are the work of angels surely they would be perfect, so why the cracks and collapsed buildings - requiring some rather dodgy Italian concreting in the 1930's to hold them up, why do the divinely created crosses show flaws and some rust. I guess this helps explain the rather prodigious use of curtains. And the curtains were the start of the problem.

Being in a group of rather sceptical Westerners only encouraged further scepticism, and it appeared that the guide was growing tired under our barrage of questions. It all came to a head in a rather bizarre conversation with the guardian priest at one of the churches. To a rather innocuous question as to the practicalities of some supposed miracle the priest admonished us for inquiring too far, stating that it was not right to know all of the mysteries, and that even seeking to know was blasphemous and a lack of respect. Suddenly it all felt a little like the Wizard of Oz, all smoke, mirrors and curtains, mysteries and magic spell - but no questions allowed. Yet you just know that at some point somebody will come along and tug at the curtain to reveal the real truth. Rather than a deep, meaningful or spiritual experience, it feels more like a game of hide and seek, explaining the miraculous using God or angels as a kind of patch when things get a little tricky.

In the end all the dodgy stories, curtains, and don't look heres kind of ruined the experience, it was hard not to look at the incredible buildings without thinking about ridiculous stories of angels and crosses appearing from the deep.

The work of angels

2009-03-26T02:44:00.000-07:00

The monolithic churches of Lalibela have to be seen to be believed. Hidden away in the central mountains of Ethiopia, and reputed to have been built in the 12th or 13th century by King Lalibela after his return from exile in Jerusalem.The churches were carved as a refuge, and a site of pilgrimage - instead of risking the life threatening journey across the Muslim lands on the way to Jerusalem, Ethiopian Christians could instead travel to the new Jerusalem. The churches are set against an incredibly beautiful back drop of an endless series of steep valleys, thin ridge lines and mesas that stretch along the horizon in all directions. The churches themselves are carved in to the rock - that is, the workers started with a flat stretch of rock and carved down 10 to 15 metres in to it, eking out a large hole in the ground with churches that are carved - rather than built - from the same rock, in the middle of the hole. Unfortunately photos don't really do justice, to the size, intricacy of the work and the unique nature of buildings that are carved rather than built.

As our guide led us around the churches he explained that they were built supposedly in the space of 23 years, following the plans that were divinely revealed to King Lalibella. They were all started and finished at the same time, and apparently at night angels would appear and work until morning when the mere mortals returned to work. The angel story, told in all earnest by the guide, was what got my incredulity meter going, but Ethiopian history is filled with stories that would give a Sceptics Association years of joy. The founding myth of Ethiopia, that Queen Sheba (reputedly an Ethiopian, although there is no historical evidence that she ever existed) headed off to Jerusalem, had a little dalliance with King Solomon to whom she bore a child, then headed back to Ethiopia after nicking the Ark of the Covenant (what Moses got when God gave him the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai) The original ark is apparently in Axum in the north of Ethiopia but nobody is allowed to see it – apparently if you do you will burst in to a ball of flames. All churches in Ethiopia have a copy of the covenant, but again they are behind curtains and nobody is allowed to see it. Also each of the churches in Lalibella has its own cross, found in the waters surrounding each church and supposedly made from perfect gold.
After hearing all of these stories one's curiosity is peeked – it is difficult for an enquiring mind, to say nothing of a cheeky atheist's mind, not to start questioning things – especially when they are hidden away behind curtains. Particularly when there is no cogent reason for the curtains – if God revealed the rules to live by to Moses you would think that God would have wanted that everybody got to see these rules so they knew what they were supposed to do. And if angels really did help build the churches why are the churches now cracking and falling apart, surely the work of angels must be divinely perfect ? And why did the angels just work at night – they could have saved the workers a lot of effort and worked during the day as well ? And wouldn't the workers have organised in to a union and demanded that the scabs (angels who surely wouldn't have been paid) be excluded from working on the project ? If the crosses are divinely created can when test them to see their composition ?

Needless to say not many of these questions went down very well and everything reached a head with a bizarre conversation with one of the priests who guard the churches. When the Czech guy who was in our group asked a priest a seemingly innocuous question, the priest admonished him for inquiring too far, and said that it was not right for us to know all of the mysteries of God. He said that seeking to know is a lack of respect and that asking questions is blasphemous. He then told us all to leave.
Suddenly it all felt a little like the Wizard of Oz, all smoke, mirrors and curtains, no questions allowed. When questions are asked about why things can't be seen, or what the hidden things contain, no cogent explanations are ever presented. It feels like a game of hide and seek – every time you ask a question that reveals an inconsistency a new supernatural, and therefore unexplainable, answer is invented.
Those with faith, and religions in particular seem to think that any uncertainty arising from an inability to explain things has to be covered up and hidden away – as though if you find out that they don't have the answer then the whole system of belief will collapse - at some point somebody will come along and tug at the curtain to reveal the real truth. In the end the experience was ruined by these ridiculous explanations, in fact every time I entered a church or even saw an Orthodox priest from then on I couldn't help but think about the silly game they seemed to be playing. For me
the supernatural and fantastical explanations undermine the meaningful work that is created as an offering to God. It is wondrous enough to think that people alone created these buildings eight or nine hundred years ago there is no need for angels.

Caught on first

2009-03-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Wandering about Ethiopia sometimes feels as though I have been caught in the Abbot and Costello Who's on first ? routine. Quite often when an Ethiopian sees you in the street they simply yell out "You!". Initially I was a little confused by this and did genuinely respond with "Me ?", to clarify whether they were actually referring to me - somebody they had never met before, thought I was the President of China or thought my shaggy hair made me resemble a sheep. To this the response would simply be "You !"

After a while I realised that it was me they were referring to, and that the confusion that I responded with got a few laughs from the speaker, his friends and surrounding viewers and gave me a convenient exit strategy. I started adding a few pointing gestures trying to demonstrate the difference between you and me, topped with a few bemused looks and most times people were so confused they forgot to even say "Give me money" !

So I often wander about town and have exchanges which go something like

You !
Me ?
You !
Me [point to me], or you [point to you] ?
You !
Me [point to you] or you [point to me] ?
You... [loss of certainty]
You [point at me] or me [point at you] ?
Yo...m...me ?
Oh, me [point at you. Exit stage left]

A moment of genocide tourism

2009-03-20T10:09:00.000-07:00

There are not altogether that many, although probably too many, places in the world where you can walk around the tombs of 248,000 murder victims in the space of a couple of minutes. The mention of Rwanda for most people brings to mind the hair raising events that occurred in that country in 1994, from which Rwandans are still recovering today. In some ways the genocide in Rwanda has developed that almost super-historical status, like the Holocaust; the mere mention of the word invokes so much revulsion, a rush of grotesque images often generating a cold chill and raising the hairs on the back of your neck, leaving the details often forgotten.

Background

There seems to be a difference of opinion about the ethic and historical distinctions between the two principal ethnic groups in Rwanda - the Hutus and the Tutsis. In around 1700 the nomadic Tutsi clans came from the upper White Nile to Rwanda and
Burundi where they established themselves as a minority, ruling caste over the local Bantu, the Hutu. In the memorial in Kigali, a European anthropologist suggested that when the colonialists arrived they found Tutsi and Hutu living together in relative harmony. Rwanda was first colonised by the Germans and then the Belgians, both of whom used divide and rule tactics, favouring the Tutsi to further their colonial aims. In the late 1950's with the end of colonial rule in sight, the Belgians swapped sides to favour the Hutus - who preferred democracy and then independence. Ethnic clashes occurred in 1959 when the Tutsi king died, and the first independent government in 1962 was Hutu dominated, and introduced quotas for Tutsis. Many Tutsi fled to neighbouring countries, and proceeded to launch guerrilla attacks against the Rwandan government. In 1972 thousands of Hutus were massacred in neighbouring Tutsi dominated Burundi, causing even more anxiety in Rwanda. From this time until 1990 there were repeated massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda. During the 1980's many Tutsis in exile in Rwanda aligned themselves with General Museveni, who came to power in 1986. In 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front, based in Uganda and lead by the current President Kagame (a key lieutenant of Museveni) invaded Rwanda with 5000 well armed and well trained troops. The Rwandan called for French and Belgium assistance, which they received, and were successful in repulsing the rebels. The army then went on a rampage, killing many Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers, who they accused of helping the rebels. Thousands were murdered and hundreds of thousands fled to Uganda. The RPF invaded again in 1991 and 1993. In 1994 all parties attended a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, where a power sharing agreement was reached. However on the return flight home the aeroplane containing the Rwandan and Burundian presidents was shot down by Hutu extremists killing them both. This was the tipping point for the unleashing of the Hutu extremists, those in suits within the government, the military and the Interahamwe - the militia made up of young Rwandans, trained and armed (often with machetes and other simple farming implements) by the men in suits. Lists of Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers had been prepared and the militia went from door to door, pursuing the people on the list, and then proceeding to hack them to death, and then did likewise for any of their relatives who were present. The militia also killed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers, because they knew it would provoke the Belgians in to leaving, and remove any potential for UN intervention. Guess what the Belgians did ? They upped and left - leaving a small UN force under the command of a truly heroic Canadian by the name of Romeo Dallaire.

Meanwhile around one million people, out of a population of around 6 million, and caused a couple of million refugees to flee to near by countries. Road blocks were set up, to stop people fleeing the perpetrators, all Rwandans had their ethnicity marked on their ID cards so it was easy for the potential victims to be identified. Those not caught in their homes, or fleeing on the roads were often hunted down where they sought refuge - in churches and schools, which were sometimes sealed off and bombed - killing all those inside. A tide of hatred washed over the population, and whilst the story of those who risked their own lives to protect others are many, the truth remains that millions of people, who formerly lived together as neighbours or even family, either took up weapons and killed people, or turned away and acquiesced. The streets of Kigali were littered with dismembered bodies - when the RDF forces took the capital all of the local dogs had to be killed because they had developed the taste for human flesh.

Interestingly Commander Dallaire had been informed that the Interahamwe was being trained, that plans were afoot to kill the Belgian peacekeepers to get the Belgians out of the country and that massacres were imminent, prior to the beginning of the killings by a high level defector in the Government. Dallaire sent an urgent cable to UN headquarters in New York, advising of the imminent threat, suggesting that even a small UN force would likely to be effective, and requesting such a force be sent. What happened - almost nothing. The matter was pretty much avoided, and the requested force did not arrive until over two months later. The first troops to arrive were the French under Operation Turquoise, which effectively created a corridor to the south and west through which the perpetrators could withdraw and escape in to the Congo. The world had failed to leave up to the creed of never again, and there was blood on many people's hands.

Genocide tourism ?

I visited two memorials in Rwanda, the first in Kigali, the capital, and the second in Kisuni, in the countryside near Rwanda's second city of Butare.

The memorial in Kigali sits in a suburb, down a hill just out of town, on the side of a small hill, above four long, thin terraces, in a stark white building. From the entrance you look out across the terraces across the small valley to the steep hill covered in houses and topped by a group of skyscrapers, some inhabited but many in the process of being built - giving the city an air of bursting, new vitality.

We started our visit with a tour of the mass graves where most of the 250 thousand odd victims in Kigali alone had been interred in four mass graves, covered by two 200 metre long concrete slabs about thirty centimetres high, each occupying one of the terraces that we had seen as we approached the memorial. It is almost beyond comprehension to imagine that around thirty percent of the population of a city were killed in the space of a few short weeks, by their neighbours, friends, family, all fellow citizens in a frenzy of organised violence. And here they lay beneath, crammed in on top of each other, beneath our feet. Looking at the city in the background it was difficult to see how these bustling streets, and smiling faces, could have been the scene of a bloodbath, emptied of the living and filled with the rotting corpses of the recently slain.

We then headed up to the museum and had a wander around. Strangely I was a little under whelmed - the exhibition was well presented, leading from a historical account of Rwanda, through independence, the build up, the genocide and the aftermath. The design of the building suited its purpose well, as I wandered around in circles following the exhibition the sense of space made me feel confused, claustrophobic and a little afraid. The room at the end containing thousands of pictures of the victims was very moving. However it never really had the knock-out effect, that left me floored when I visited Tuol Sleng the Khmer Rouge torture chamber in Phnom Penn. Perhaps here the wounds were to recent, there was not many graphic photos, not much description of the horrendous acts of violence, not much detail about how people were convinced, bullied or threatened to do what they did.

A few days later we headed out to Butare, and while Damo went off to track the chimps, I headed out to Kisuni. I met a soldier on the way who decided that rather than answer my questions about directions, he would escort me there himself. In that very African way he took my hand in his and we proceeded to walk down the road, hand in hand, something that takes even the most open minded Western man a while to get used to.

There is almost no flat land in Rwanda at all, there are simply big hills - volcanoes, less big hills - small rounded peaks, and then your ordinary, everyday hills. The school at Kisuni sits on a big hill, immediately surrounded by small hills, with a back drop of other large hills encircling it. It provides an excellent vantage point, it can be seen from far off and the views it affords of the surrounding countryside are panoramic. All of the hills are green, most are completely covered in a patchwork of square fields containing crops, with some of the summits are near verticals side of the hills covered in eucalyptus groves. You can see the dull orange of the gravel roads weaving their serpentine way off in to the distance, around the sides of hills, done through the valleys and along the ridge lines.

As we entered the fenced off compound a truck filled with rocks arrived and headed over the right where a large group of men and women were working. The soldier explained to me that some of the mass graves had started leaking and the bodies had been exhumed in order for the foundations to be laid in rocks and the tombs rebuilt and resealed. We met the caretaker who searched for the keys in the new yet to be completed, two storey memorial building at the top of the hill, and then lead us around the back to the old class rooms. There were about ten or twelve rows of six, simple, square red brick buildings with corrugated iron roofs, scattered across the side of the hill in neat rows, all looking very much like classrooms. I noticed that the windows facing the sun were all covered in large tarpaulins, secured to the roof.

The caretaker lead us to the building furthermost down the hill, whilst he opened the door I stared out around the valley, the sun was quite high in the sky, basking all I could see in a bright light which made the greens of the flora and the reds of the earth and the contrast between the two seem almost surreal. It was an idyllic, pastoral scene - there was almost no sound at all other than a few birds singing. Here and there I could see people working in the fields, and the odd cow or goat wandering about. As the door to the classroom was opened, I looked in to the dark room and was unsure of what I was seeing. In each of the four corners of the room were hip high simple wooden benches, about the size of a double bed, covered in bright white human skeletons preserved in lime. In the centre of the room was a small table with a stand of flowers on it. As I entered the room I noticed what was perhaps most confronting about the remains was that rather than being laid out as for a funeral many of the victims were preserved as they had been found, reflecting them in the moments before their death many were twisted and writhing in pain, mouths open to expel a chilling scream of pain, some cowering in fear from the death blow they were about to receive trying to protect themselves or shield young children or skulls and bones deformed or smashed as they were killed. I walked further in to the room and couldn't tear myself away from looking at the macabre spectacle, usually their is a distance between us and death, but here it was thrust upon me. The details that the lime permitted to be seen were incredible, despite many of the skeletons effectively being flat, it was still possible to see holes in skulls from hoes, broken bones, bits of clothes still attached to some victims. I looked outside to the bright sunshine and back in to the room and didn't know what to think.

Meanwhile the caretaker had been opening the other rooms and when I came out of the room for some air, he pointed me to the second room. Likewise it was filled with the same disturbing scene, this room contained more young children, some no older than two or three years; the next room had more young people; the next mothers and babies and so on. After I had seen six of these rooms, I looked out at the surrounding countryside and thought to myself, what am I doing here ? Is this the height of insensitivity, the disturbing depths to which tourists descend to try and capture that authentic experience ? Do I want to reach out and touch the bones so that I can feel the genocide - so it is more real ? Am I honouring the people who died or is it just another stop, a Holy Planet must see, on my tour of Africa ?

As the caretaker locked up all the rooms, I stood under the shade of the veranda looking out on the countryside and my mind kept loping back to how could this place and these people have done all this. I imagined what it must have been like for those victims who cowered in fear for a couple of weeks, held together in a large hall, denied food and water so that many died of dehydration, to be then set upon and hacked to death. There chilling cries would have rung out across this small silent valley, and everyone in the surrounding area who heard must have known what was happening - and yet they either participated or turned a wilful blind eye to the tragedy.

When the caretaker asked if I wanted to see the other rooms - there were around fifty of them - concurred with him that it wasn't really necessary. On the way back up the hill he showed me the central hall where all of the victims had been brought and told they would be protected - it was filled with shelves of clothes and shoes, many victims had their clothes stripped off them so the killers could wear them. He also showed French armies flagpole and volleyball court placed on top of mass graves, as they permitted the perpetrators to escape. On the way back to the memorial centre I asked the caretaker my routine question about how the survivors and the relatives of the victims can go on living today knowing that there are many among them who were perpetrators and will never be held to account, how do they bury their bitterness and get on with life ? Without battering an eyelid he explained that he had lost his mother, his wife and three sisters at this very place, but that now Rwanda was one country where ethnicity didn't matter any more, their wasn't a hint of bitterness or revenge in his voice. He paused to show me a mass grave, a narrow pit, about three metres deep, in to which bodies had been thrown, piled on top of each other until the hole was filled. He said that people have not forgotten what happened but that they had to think more about the future and about living together than the past.

Having asked this question of a few people, to me it seems that the forgiveness and reconciliation are a little forced in Rwanda - people don't like to think or talk about it - despite it being such a seminal event in both their lives and the life of their country. But perhaps their is no alternative - revenge and punishment will only lead to more violence, reopen painful wounds and foment more hatred. However, maybe, just maybe, Rwandans are succeeding, little by little, in that delicate balancing act between carrying on living and looking to the future, whilst not forgetting the painful past.

I still can't answer for myself the question of why I went, and it has raised more questions than it has answered, and exposed some deep contradictions about humanity. Why is is that when so many people die a life is so easy to take - almost thoughtlessly, that life itself loses meaning, and yet it is the large amount of death at once that makes us sit up and take notice and reminds us how precious life is- there is no memorial to the earlier victims of ethnic violence in Rwanda, nor to the estimated five million victims of the war in the Congo ? Why is it that the scale of the phenomena also seems to diminish and amplify the responsibility, how could individuals resist the tide of mob, yet why didn't each individual stop, think I am participating (or turning away from) the murder of one person, then another, then another and so on a million or more times ? Do individual victims have the right to demand justice, or is the fledging social cohesion, the rupture of which would no doubt lead to more violence and death more important - and who gets to decide ?

Harar and a bad day

2009-03-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

Harar is a Muslim oasis in an Orthodox Christian nation. It was the fortified city, situated on the flat coastal plain and completely surrounded by 10 ft high walls. Inside the walls the city is filled with seemingly endless narrow alleyways - there are a few roads on which cars can fit - otherwise it is walking or donkey only. It was used as a base for the trade that came from the interior and was sent on to the Arabian peninsula - principally slaves and ivory, and until as late as 1850 it was the major market in the Horn of Africa. Later the trade included chat or qat, the plant that is chewed by people across the Arab world for its narcotic effects. It is the fourth holiest city in Islam, as Muslims that were persecuted on the Arabian peninsula fled there, and until well in to the 18th century non-Muslims (Europeans) were not allowed within the city walls. By the late 1800's the city had been conquered by the Ethiopian (Christian) king and history quickly set about forgetting Harar. Trade dried up, the market shrank to almost nothing, its high white walls began falling apart, most of the gates are gone, and the city has expanded outside of the walls in to the surrounding hills. A few tourists visit now and then, the principal attraction are the hyena feeding men.

After being in Ethiopia for around ten days and thought I was starting to adjust to the strange and different place that it is.However on my second day in Harar it was too much. I couldn't take the fact that there is no public space in which as a farenji I could escape the glare of the Ethiopians - staring at me out of sheer curiosity, resentment or more commonly as a walking wallet. As I walk the street people constantly yell out "Farenji" or "You, you, you" - it is hard to work out what to say in reply to this. If I stop to look at something a crowd soon gathers, which usually makes matters worse as people egg each other on to see how close they can get to the farenji. The more daring or linguistically skilled go on to "Where are you from ? Where are you going?, whilst the seemingly endless packs of touts will go through the list of things they have to sell me, a city tour, some chat, a coffee ceremony, see the hyenas. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to tell them I have already done all of these. There are also beggars sprinkled across the city, usually occupying large chunks of the footpath, and when they see a farenji you can almost hear the cash register ching-chinging in there ears.
The city, like most in Ethiopia, is quite filthy - dirty, dirty streets covered in a thick dust, mixed with animal and human shit - both seem free to go wherever they like. There are plastic bags, discarded usually rotting food and anything that people don't want thrown and then blown everywhere. The air is filled with diesel fumes, most vehicles appear to wear thick black smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe as a badge of honour. Combined with the decrepit old town, and a sense of a grander past the whole place is suffocating.

Yesterday I reached boiling point - as I walked down the street I wanted to shout out loud - Leave me alone - I just want to walk around and be left alone. I suddenly felt very physically and emotionally tired - despite it being only 9 in the morning. I retreated to my room, and spent all day reading, sleeping and relaxing, with the door closed on the world. I did however venture out for the star attraction of Harar - the hyena feeding.

Men have been feeding hyenas just after dusk outside the gates of Harar for around five hundred years. Hyenas are rumoured to have mythical powers, and each year in September a porridge is prepared and set out for them - if they eat it the year will bring good things, if not locals start preparing for a bad year. More prosaically keeping the hyenas well fed and happy stops them from attacking livestock, or coming inside the city walls for snacks of the human variety.

I wandered down to one of the two remaining places, to watch the spectacle of a man pulling scraps of meat out of container and holding them on a stick as hyenas cautiously approached, and then lunged for the meat. A tour bus arrived and faced its high beams directly on the the seated hyena feeder - making the whole thing a little like a circus show (If you want you can feed the hyenas yourself, even holding the stick in your mouth) Hyenas are incredible animals - looking like a mix between a cat and dog, spotted like a giraffe, their mangy fur is pulled tightly over their bulk like a stuffed animal, and they have large, muscled forearms which are longer than the back legs giving them a strange, loping gait. In the darkness they softly howled, more like a screech than a bark, and then they would lope in to the light, after being called by the feeder using a low growl. (Supposedly the feeders know each hyena by name and can communicate with them)
After ten minutes I was a little over the bright lights and the spectacle of the group of young American tourists each having their turn to get photos of themselves, so I started heading back in to the city. This being Ethiopia though of course I couldn't be left alone, first I was threatened if I didn't pay some money to the touts surrounding the hyena man - supposedly for the meat, but considering the pack of tourists that argument didn't hold much water. Then once that argument was finished I was followed by a few of the touts wanting to sell me this and that. I scurried off back to my room as quickly as I could - the day ending much as it had begun.

Huh ?

2009-03-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

But for the grace of God - I wouldn't have made it to Maralal

2009-03-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

Organised chaos

2009-03-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

A bird's eye view of the central bus station in Uganda - somehow all of these minibuses squeeze in and out off one double gate and three foot of mud the day I was there - and manage to more or less leave from the same spot everyday.
Somehow most people know when you tell them you destination where to direct you to as well !!!

Masai on holiday

2009-03-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Ethiopia - a land unto itself

2009-03-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

Ethiopia truly is different, something you notice everyday. As soon as you cross the border you go back six hours and about 8 years - they use the old Gregorian calendar, and the clock starts ticking at 6am rather than 12am. The people are different to the mixed Arab-Africans of Kenya and Tanzania, and the tribal and bantu peoples of Kenya, Uganda, and the more Arabic peoples of Sudan and Somalia. They have their own language Amharic (actually several), with its own script. They have their own religion, Ethiopian Orthodox, based on a story about the Queen of Sheba and the stealing of the Ark of the Covenant from Jerusalem. They have their own food, a great mix of desert simplicity and Italian flair. Almost all of the music they listen to is in their own language - three weeks without hearing any American R&B or pop rubbish - what a relief. The countryside is distinct - mountains, mountains and more mountains. And they have some very peculiar habits - everyone seems to like to piss and shit in the streets !!

Hardening of the heart

2009-03-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

Ethiopia has a culture of begging, and the heat of the blowtorch is focused on tourists. Addis Abbaba as the capital and largest city is filled with beggars, and you can't walk anywhere without passing a few beggars sitting on the footpath or being chased by a few kids, or having a hand thrust in the window of the minibus. And whilst you can give some money to a few people there is a limit and in most cases you end up saying no far more than you give.
You start to find yourself doing strange things, crossing the road to avoid a beggar, pretending to be engrossed in the clouds in the sky to avoid catching the eye of a beggar, or developing suspect theories about to whom you should give and then be forced to make evaluations about the worthiness of beggars – he doesn't look that bad or why should I give her anything if she has three kids.
The whole process though leads to a hardening of the heart, you can feel sympathy seeping out of you as you continually say no, and have to walk past people who are struggling to survive. When you are confronted repeatedly by such poverty it is much more difficult to forget about it and pretend it doesn't exist. And yet at the end of each day you feel like your heart is slowly turning to stone as you failed to help so many people to whom what for you is almost nothing to them is another day of life. I fear eventually that I will become so insensitive to it that the heart will stop feeling.

Training to catch a bus (Ethiopia, 13/03/09)

2009-03-13T00:44:00.000-07:00

Having found a hotel some fifty or so metres from the bus station the night before, and having been told I would need to be at the gate to the bus station at five am, I stumbled out of the hotel at five on the dot at was soon at the gate of the bus station, a huge empty, open space the size of a couple of football fields, still blanketed in almost complete darkness. I made my way to where the security guard the night before had indicated that the buses to Robe left from and where two buses where parked. As I approached the buses I noticed that there were a number of people milling around, and that further off on the other side of the station there were a collection of other buses and groups of people milling around. There didn't seem to be much going on, so I stood around trying not to fall asleep on my feet. After about ten minutes the blinding lights of an approaching bus illuminated how many people were actually waiting, and as the bus drew nearer everybody started to madly dash about - one group groping at the side of the bus and following it as it manoeuvred in to position, whilst another seemed to be forming some sort of line. By the time the bus came to a stop the two groups had converged - and when the official looking blue lab coat attired bus boy - with the appropriate laminated ID card draped around his neck appeared the crowd fell in to a queue at his direction, about twenty metres away from the bus. Having learnt the lesson long ago that white man can't queue (at least not with Africans) I stood back and watched the action unfold. After a fair amount of jostling the bus boy then started to allow people to get on the bus - but in a way that reminded me of old PLO training videos that I had seen somewhere. The bus boy allowed about ten people at a time to proceed, and in the dim pre-dawn light as the lucky passengers half ran and half scuttled the twenty metres to the bus, the shawls, woolly hats and turbans combined with the bags under their arms that looked like automatic weapons, made it look like a Hamas run training session. When they arrived at the bus door the jam of people slowed things down as people clambered aboard. Once on the bus they rushed back and forth, looking a little like a line of ants, reserving their seats, and stowing their luggage in any place they could find, above or below the seats. This went on until the bus was notionally full - about sixty to seventy people - without really making a dent in the length of the queue. A few locals were standing around with me asking where I was going, one explained that there weren't many buses to Robe, and as the first one was already full people were rushing to get on this one. At that point I decided that if there was a transport shortage then it would be inappropriate to steal a seat from a local, and despite the monumental effort of getting up before five am, I would change my plan and head straight up to Addis. I continued to stand around though pondering whether I had actually made a decision. I then noticed that what I had perceived as a relatively orderly boarding of the bus was anything but - people were not getting on, and more strangely, off the bus with some frequency, destroying any sense of order. After watching a few Johnny-come-latelys insinuate their way on to the bus, my bemusement at the whole process was starting to crack the feeble sense of reality that I was grasping at five thirty in the morning.
Then the bus boy approached me, confirmed that I was going to Robe, said "Come on" and half pulled me towards the bus. He took my bag off me, and then allocated me a seat right down the back of the bus, so everyone already on the bus could stare at me as I walked bus. The strange thing is that there was absolutely no animosity in their faces, despite them having ran, queued and then fought their way on to the bus, they seemed to just accept that the farengi would be allocated a seat as well. Having seen locals arrive after me and still get a seat my guilt waned, when my fellow passengers started welcoming me and talking to me in their broken English, I felt it would now be rude to get off the bus. As the sun began to rise and the first light of the morning lit up the bus station, I noticed that people were still chasing buses and queuing, as we set off on our journey, and I wondered how many of them would make it to where they wanted to go that day.

A trip to Ethiopian coffee nirvana

2009-03-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

After a largely unsuccessful day of attempted travel; I learnt my lesson that in Ethiopia buses go early in the morning, or not at all, I returned to the small town of Yabelo late in the afternoon, and thought I should treat myself. After asking around I found a place that served up macchiatos; almost everywhere in Ethiopia serves good percolated coffee, but the really good places also dish out macchiatos for ten cents, so good that they would make Italian coffee buffs green with envy.

The café was set back off the street, with a tree shaded courtyard, and three small rooms behind it. I entered inside to find a middle aged woman with a tray of cups and a jika (a small, portable metal fireplace using charcoal) with a coffee pot on the coals. Sitting next to her was her teenage sun, diligently folding toilet paper in to serviettes. Using my newly acquired Amharic, I asked for and was served my frothing macchiato - a short glass, filled with dark coffee in the bottom half, and a top half of milk wafting about on top of the coffee. Coffee originally comes from Ethiopia, and is treated very seriously, even in the dumpiest dives - this cup was superb - the bitter taste of the strong coffee perfectly balanced with the sweetness of a teaspoon or two of sugar and the smoothness of the milk.

Only when I finished the macchiato did things begin to get serious, and the coffee ritual kicked things up a few notches. Mama, the coffee master, had added a series of teaspoons of finely ground coffee and water to the pot and set it on the coals to simmer. Everything was done in a slow and deliberative way, Mama probably having done in thousands of times before. It was late in the afternoon and the dim and dusty room was only lit by a few bright rays of soft golden sunshine streaming in through the doorway; when Mama threw a handful of itan (scented bark) on the fire the room filled with thick, delicious sweet and spicy smelling smoke, drifting across the room, the sunlight reflecting of it. The earthenware pot on the fire was black and shaped like a gourd - bulbous at the bottom, a small, thin spout jutting out at a 45 degree angle, a curving handle joining the bottom and the long, narrow neck, with a thin red cork capping the top.

Whilst the room filled with smoke, and the pot boiled away Mama busied herself preparing the cups, six small squat white porcelain cups that sat in two rows of three on a small serving stand. She poured water in to one, and then from each cup in to the next until the last cup from which the water was tipped out in to a waiting container. She repeated this a few times until she was satisfied that the water coming out of the final cup was clean enough. I was joined by a couple of local guys, one in a hat with the Ethiopian colours in a band, and another older guy carrying some mops and brooms - attracted no doubt by the scent of coffee and itan.

Mama had removed the cork from the pot a few times, and swished the liquid inside about a bit. Once she had cleaned the cups, the pot seemed to have boiled long enough and she removed it and sat it on a large crocheted ring that was sitting next to the cups stand. A younger guy appeared from out of the kitchen with a stand shaped like a large wine glass containing glowing red coals, on to which Mama through some more itan, and the room again filled with smoke. Whilst she was waiting for the coffee to cool, she placed a teaspoon of sugar in to each cup. The pouring part required first a splash of coffee between the cups on the serving board and then Mama poured the thick, black liquid in to each of the cups. The young guy appeared again from the kitchen with a small saucer to put the cup on, and a teaspoon, and then served my the coffee.

With all of the room looking at me as a took my first sip, and the taste was incredible, a thick, smooth taste, layered with alternating bitterness and sweetness from the coffee and sugar. The burnt taste of roasted coffee mixed with the spicy, ginger like taste of the itan. There was literally a party in my mouth and all my taste buds had been invited - and shown up in their Sunday best; the ceremonyalising of the whole process seemed to add that extra layer of delight that was hard to suppress. Four years after discovering the joy of Ethiopian coffee, I had finally reached my coffee heaven. I savoured the moment for a while, etching the taste and the surroundings - particularly the light and the smell, in to my unreliable memory - hoping that one day the mere waft of ground roasted coffee beans would take me back to my Ethiopian coffee nirvana.

And the cost of the fare to get there - a whopping two and a half Bir - twenty five cents !

Post script:
To round out the day, I later returned to the café for dinner and was served an incredibly tasty dish that goes by the name of atkilt - a plate consisting of a mix of spicy beetroot salad, grated carrot salad, steamed veggies, a pesto like sauce made from greens, a biting tomato salad, surrounding a fluffy grain with the consistency of couscous, served with njera, Ethiopian thin, fluffy savoury pancakes and
accompanied with a sugo - a dark, thick, smoky chilli sauce, that set the whole meal on fire.

One day in and I am starting to wonder will I ever leave Ethiopia ?

Bizarre times in Kenya

2009-03-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

The Wild West Kenyan Style

I am the first to concede that I have a tendency to throw around bizarre a little too frequently, but I think two recent experiences in Kenya justifiably fit in to that category.
After having been filled with delight at receiving my Eritrea visa after having to only wait a week, I was feeling pretty chuffed when I found a minivan taxi a few streets from my hotel that would take me all the way to Maralal, the jumping off point to visit Lake Turkana - the Jade Lake, in the north of Kenya.

I rocked up the next morning at 6.30, and sadly it was not to be, there was a strike and none of the minibuses were running. I wandered about between the various companies for half an hour, and then finally jumped in to one that was going about half way to a town called Nyamahururu. A few of my fellow passengers were also headed for Maralal and they began to explain to me that there was an outlawed gang called the Munkiki Gang, who extorted the minivan drivers. They had threatened any driver who entered or left Nyamahurururu that day would have his windscreen broken and his minivan set on fire - finally it looked like I might find some real danger in Africa, and I might see some action. Driving out of Nairobi things started to get a little surreal, all along the side of the main double carriageway highway people were milling about watching the road as though there had been some kind of accident. We then approached a police road block which was only letting one lane of cars through, we passed through at a walking pace as the traffic was backed up. A kilometre or so beyond the roadblock we were directed through a gap in the barrier in the centre of the road on to the other carriageway. A truck filled with Kenyan police or military was parked by the side of the road. The two or so guys in the back were decked out in the full three quarter length green bullet proof vest, with a flap at the bottom hanging below there hips down to there knees making them look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The truck entered the traffic before us, and the guy next to me seem relieved, "Good, they are providing an escort for us". I felt a little more comfortable with the whole scenario, but about ten kilometres later the truck pulled off the road, did a U-turn and left the traffic to itself. Nobody in the minivan said anything.
We continued our drive, but strangely the few stops we made to drop passengers off were always just before a town, or just after. We only picked up one other passengers, and then the driver requested that we draw the curtains. As we drove along the side of the road was filled with people walking along, most of whom tried to flag us down as we went past. I knew things were strange when a minivan driver has empty seats and doesn't stop to pick people up. Eventually we arrived in Nyamahururu, and the remaining five of us were dropped about two kilometres out of town in a petrol station. Three local guys were also heading to Maralal, so they took me under their wing and we headed in to town to find a lift. As we approached the centre of town, things got even more spooky, I suddenly felt like I was in the wild west. The main street was empty of traffic, but all along the side of the road people were milling around quietly gossiping amongst themselves in small groups, a few groups had taken up vantage points on second story balconies, one group had climbed a water tower. All of the shops were closed with shutters drawn, even the market was empty. The quiet was so out of place in an African town it created an air of expectancy blanketing the entire place. It felt as though any minute a tumble-weed would roll through town, and two men with six shooters would wander on to the set.
Suddenly the tension was broken when a motorbike carrying a pillion passenger slowly motoring though town hit something and ended up sideways, rider and passenger caught underneath. Both were unharmed and soon on their feet, but they were immediately encircled by a large group of people, who all began talking at once, seemingly relieved that something had finally happened, and nobody had been hurt. As the crowd continued milling a police truck, filled with police in riot gear, rolled through town, and parked just off the main street.

The other guys were approached by some touts who directed us towards a hotel in the back streets of town, to wait whilst they investigated possible transport options. We headed up stairs and in to what was a dingy bar, almost too dark to see, with a few barflys already knocking a few back at eleven in the morning. To continue the wild west theme, Ma Baker came over from a table to serve us while we waited.

Eventually we made in out of town in a taxi, and rather anticlimactically, about three kilometres out of town my fellow passengers said, we are fine now, once we reach here there is no trouble. It was strange to go back to the most dangerous thing being the general state of disrepair of the car and the way the driver choose to drive. We immediately had a puncture.

Archers' Rest

After giving up my quest to get to Lake Turkana the back way, I jumped on a matatu heading for the main road. Eight hours later, after driving through some incredible savannah backed by encircling mountains in every direction I rolled in to Archers' Rest - a small town on the main Ethiopia - Kenya road. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains and it was well beyond twilight and the silvery shadows created by the almost full moon meant everything took on an extra edge. The lack of electricity and hence streetlights magnified the effect - and every now and then random objects were caught in the light of a passing vehicle, a face illuminated by a mobile phone, or a candle blown in the wind creating strange moving shadows on the hastily thrown together wooden walls of the strip of shacks which was the main street.

There were a lot of people wandering about, a large bus had just arrived, and a the back of a big truck was filled with road workers heading back to camp. I had been befriended by a fellow passenger on the minivan and he suggested we go and get something to drink and check out the accommodation options whilst the driver decided if he was to go on to Isiolo or stay the night. We crossed the road and immediately I noticed that there were an awful lot of soldiers wandering about, and all of them were carrying automatic weapons, slung across their shoulders, in one hand pointing them to the ground, or in both hands in front of their chests. We wandered in to a bar which was a few tables in a row outdoors, and four or five small enclosed sitting areas in a row. Every customer, and there would have been about fifty, was a soldier, every one was in uniform - in differing degrees of battle preparedness, and every one of them was carrying a gun, most had a few beers in front of them as well. As I sat down there was a big explosion from outside but nobody else but me seemed in the slightest perturbed. My friend explained that sometimes some soldiers had a little too much to drink, which made me feel even more uncomfortable. We had a drink and then sauntered back out on to the street and I felt the bizarreness of the place wash over me.

Cultural melange (08.03.2009 Linguistics, Kenya)

2009-03-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

I am not quite sure what to make of the culture melange that produces the following: at a dingy restaurant, in a small, dusty windblown town in the north of Kenya, the TV is on showing Mexican soap operas (Tormenta en Paraiso - Storm in Paradise) dubbed in what sounds like Chinese accented English. Yes, is seems outsourcing has even wormed its way in to TV dubbing.
Of course all of the Kenyans are watching intently as mariachi dressed Mexicans, with hats as big as Veracruz, pants as tight as my wallet, moustaches as dodgy looking as Pablo Escobar, ride around on horses and drink tequila.
It is all a little bit too much for me, time to pull the brake on the globalisation train before it gets out of control !!!

Your mother must be very rich (02.03.09)

2009-03-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

One day I was walking to the beach to Lamu when I met a local women who started talking to me. Somehow we eventually got around to talking about families and the inevitable came up. At first she didn't believe my answer, but after going through the names she was finally convinced, and added another interesting response to the growing list.

She said to me, "Your mother must be very rich, because your parents must have paid out a lot of money for you when you were growing up, so now you must all give her money. From so many children she must be very rich"

I could only think how my mother would laugh at that, and then probably say something appropriate like, "Yes, rich in experience"

You are what you are (12.02)

2009-03-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

This is the receipt we received at a restaurant in Uganda, note the client name Whites

Truly with a tent (12.02)

2009-03-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

OK so to those who doubt that the Loiterer does actually have a tent, here is some photographic evidence.

I admit I have failed to capture the loitering in this photo but I am sure you can well imagine what I was doing at the time. The landscape in the background in the Rwenzori mountains in the west of Uganda, slapped up against the border with Congo - the border actually cuts through the peaks.

Whilst Damo headed off in to the hills for a hike, I took it easy, sitting in the balcony of the restaurant, eating passion fruit in the afternoon sun, the scent from the passion fruit vine climbing all over the beams of the balcony blown my way every now and then by the breeze. This mixed with the smell generated by the sun heating the oil on the wooden balcony. The eucalyptus trees swayed in the breeze and suddenly I was transported to Anglesea, sitting on the back patio, catching the late afternoon sun in February, half snoozing and reliving a good surf session early that morning whilst pretending to read the paper. Maybe time for the Loiterer to start moving back towards the sea.

Rwandan transport

2009-03-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

Waiting in Kigali for a local minibus taxi to fill, I was surprised that we left when there was only 14 passengers inside, each seat occupied but no overcrowding. When I explained to a local I had been chatting to that in Uganda all of the minibuses have licensed to carry 14 passengers written on the side of them but how we had been in one with 27 people he explained

In Rwanda if the taxi has even one extra person, the police will stop it and fine the driver 10,000 francs ($20). If the driver argues the police will call the tow truck, and if the driver continues to argue the police will take away his driving licence. There are many police in Kigali, so all of the drivers follow the rules.
Before it was very dangerous travelling in public transport, so the government made these rules and now it is much better.

Rwanda is the only place in Africa that I ever saw a local person reprimand a driver for his erratic driving, in other countries people would tut, shake their heads and hold on for dear life, but in Rwanda when a driver went to overtake another vehicle approaching a blind corner, a passenger called out to him, and said what sounded like, slow down and stop being an idiot. Damo immediately applauded her and the acknowledgement crossed the language barrier, and they both ended up nodding at each other in agreement.

This was the beginning of the formulation of my Rwanda thesis, to be detailed at length soon.

When I attempted to cross the border of Rwanda and Congo, I had secreted $10 in my passport as I had been informed that sometimes the Congolese will ask for a little present to exempt you fro the visa requirement. As I was walking past the official on the Rwandan side he asked to see my passport, which I duly pulled out of my pocket and handed to him. As I was placing it in his hands I remembered the $10, and said, One moment, I have some money inside the passport. He was so careful to be even not seen to be handling any money from a tourist, which could be perceived as a bribe that the official immediately removed his hands and the passport dropped to the ground. He instructed me to take out the money and then give him the passport.
As Godwin later explained, there are always people watching, and if he eats even one dollar he will be in jail for a long time.

Slipping in to gentle inertia

2009-03-08T03:15:00.000-07:00

I remember studying inertia in physics in high school, and I always identified with the idea of it being a little more difficult to get a body at rest moving, than is otherwise so. When I rolled in to the northern Kenyan town of Maralal late one evening I thought I would only be there a day or two, as I was hoping I would be able to hitch a lift further north to the fabled Jade Lake - Lake Turkana.On my way up to Maralal I had passed through a few tribal areas - northern Kenya is dominated by various groups of pastoral semi nomadic peoples. The people are easy to spot because of their colourful outfits - especially the women who are usually adorned in some very colourful jewellery. There is a lot of tension between different groups, usually involving endless rounds of one group accusing the other of stealing cattle belonging to other groups. Every once in a while the Government gets involved, which seems to make matters only worse, because each group says the Government is only on the side of the opposing group, so they have to go and steal the cattle back. The inflow of cheap automatic weapons during the nineties means that many shepherds walk around with AK47's slung over their shoulders and confrontations became far more deadly. Combine this with an unstable neighbourhood - the area is surrounded by Sudan and Somalia, and there is always trouble a brewing. Whilst I was in Maralal two young shepherd boys had their throats slit (allegedly by Somalis), a local guy was shot and killed, and there were riots in the neighbouring town. Needless to say I didn't see any of this - I was relatively safe seeing I had no cows to steal !!!Before I knew it days had drifted in to each other, and I had a routine, which consisted of passing the time between meals and sleep, going. I would get up early to watch the sun rise over the surrounding hills as I strolled along the main road out of town, checking to see if any new transport had arrived the night before. I would then return to the hotel and the water would have been heated. Receiving my bucket of hot water I would bathe using my hand as a ladle - surprisingly refreshing and effective in the cold chill of the morning. I would then wander to the market and get down my chai and chapati breakfast, before wandering over to some tourism touts I had befriended to chat with them for a while over the state of the world. The touts were very friendly fellows who refused to let the non existence of any means of transport stop them from continually renewing there promise of a truck arriving tomorrow based on information they had received from some secret source. I would then head back to my room to read for a few hours to bring me up to lunch time. Lunch really was the highlight of the day - I discovered the great Kenyan dish of KK - (kidogo kidogo or little little) a pile heaped high of everything from the kitchen, normally including pilau, beans, lentils, potatoes, all topped with a large chapati and a cup of chai, for the wonderful price of fifty cents. The only way to recover from the excitement of lunch was an afternoon nap, which was followed by an evening stroll. Dinner soon followed and by around 8 or 9 I felt as though I had accomplished enough to turn in for the day. Somehow this rolled on for almost a week, and I became a fixture in the town, local kids stopped calling out Mzungu !! to me and instead just said hi. Local merchants even started charging me local prices as people saw the stinginess of my ways are started believing I really didn't have a lot of money and hadn't chosen to spend all these days in town as a holiday. I spent six days in Maralal, and the only time I got near to any transport was when a battered old truck rolled in to town and the touts came hunting me down in my room. We legged it to where the truck was parked and finally found the driver. The touts asked him how much to take me to the Lake, and when he answered even they got up and walked away. It appeared that the driver had been blinded by the shimmer of gold that surrounded me as a mzungu and had asked six times the going rate, or around $100. Glancing at his truck as we walked away I wondered to myself if his truck was even worth that much !!After a false start one day, the following I eventually threw my hat in, the touts counselled me against it, there was definitely a truck coming the next day, but I had lost hope of proceeding further, and rumour had it that it would be much easier from Marsabit the town further north on the highway. Somehow I found myself in a minivan rolling out of town, fighting as hard as I could against inertia and moving again. As if to demonstrate the principle to me in real life, after spending the whole day in the minibus slowly building up speed, the next day I found myself sitting on the top of a truck rushing through the northern arid lands of Kenya, with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. Reaching Marsabit in a day I found that rumour was wrong and that I could likely spend another week in Marsabit waiting for a truck to Lake Turkana. I decided to cut my losses and continue further north. The next morning I flagged down a truck heading north and jumped on board. The truck was filled with same large rolls of material, so the truck boys, the two other passengers and myself found ourselves sitting on top of the cabin, as the driver flew along the unpaved road towards the Ethiopian border. By two o'clock that afternoon I was in Ethiopia, tired, covered in dust and dazed by so much movement in so little time !!