day twenty-five: kigoma

you can be who you want
when you are traveling: it's like being the new kid at school, knowing you can tell any kind of lie about yourself and, as long as you can back up it up in action, it will be true to everyone there. i don't really want to lie, like i once did on moving to a new school my senior year, trying to appear as though i'd been the 'big man on campus' as someone put it (i failed pretty successfully within a week or two) but it is a chance to redefine yourself. no one knows you but you: and you always know yourself as more than the regular society you've been part of. so you can call yourself a name no one ever would have, bring to light a part of yourself you never have, and people just accept it, like they accept whatever style of hair you have no matter what it was the day before. you are new.

it's a chance, too, to redefine yourself for yourself: there is no daily schedule to follow, no social roles that need fulfilling: you are free. especially so, i guess, when you travel alone, but even with a good friend, you are still free, and finding your way through each day like a new puzzle, rather than an old maze you know well. if you've always wanted to try diving, now is your time to take a course and call yourself a diver for a week. if you've wanted to finally be quiet, or finally be talkative, the world is yours. if you've been secretly practicing dance moves for the moment you can get out of your constrictive social circle and dance, here you are. peers and friends can be as constrictive as physical or mental boundaries, and in travel you escape them.

so for me, the escape has been from a definition of myself as anything i've been: i am no longer a student, no longer a singer, no longer a teacher, no longer an NGO administrator. i'm a writer. and telling this to people somehow leapfrogs the irking question that often follows in the States, "Oh, so you want to be a writer?" ...there's no real difference between these two, but there is all the difference in the world in how you are seen, which can affect how you see yourself.

it's not only been a social thing, the frame i give myself by which people picture me. it's been a lifestyle change. writing was always a part of life in university, was something i did as much as i could while in Japan, keeping up my blog, was a goal i had for my time in Uganda, to write regularly, and i did. but nothing like what i'm doing here: you can see the length of the blogs i've written in just a few weeks. and on top of them, everything you're not seeing: the work on the other books, which was to be the focus of my writing attempts while here.

whatever i'm writing, it is part of my daily routine, and often the focus of it: something like wake up, get some breakfast, write for a few hours, go to an internet cafe to post what i wrote the day before, then do some business in town, or explore something i saw in my guidebook or as i was walking around town, or go back and write some more. the rest of the day will be a rhythm of doing, reading and writing, but a focus on the last.

i don't know if i'm writing anything worthwhile: like i said, more than expected the travel part of this trip has trumped the writing part, and i find myself more inclined to write on what's immediately happening than to focus on the books. it's okay: any kind of writing is good writing, i think, as any kind of exercise makes an athlete stronger, though eventually you'll need to focus if you want to be the best you can be. the point is, for the first time in my life, i am a writer, in name and act. this has been a dream of mine since i was an 8-year-old laying on the couch devouring The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia.

and here i am, freed by travel to do it, and loving it.

needing travel to start something, or redefine myself, is surely an excuse, as needing to move to a new school to be the Most Popular Kid is surely an excuse. both are changes you could have made yourself, and ultimately will have to make yourself for them to stick. and without going anywhere, without changing your social life much at all, if you started acting like a writer, a singer, or whatever you wanted to be, everything else would follow suit. and no matter how much you redefine yourself in talk, if you don't also walk that talk, you will not have changed. what's more, people will be disappointed in you, as you will be in yourself. some kind of big change, starting a new job or moving to a new place, or traveling, is just a grace period in which for you make the change, is a time for you to go out of your society and face yourself, and hopefully come back changed, with something new to share[1].

so that is where i am, out somewhere away from everything i know and everyone who knows me, facing myself, trying to see a writer in the mirror, to find that place in myself that has always been a writer, and bring it to the light.

and you know, i think it just might be working.

[1] In other words, it is an archetypal hero quest as described best by Joseph Campbell in his book Hero With A Thousand Faces

My Moon the Tanzanian Ebleskeeber Lady
from the quiet old lady who cooks Tanzanian ebleskeebers in the morning, as i'm buying my morning six to eat with bananas and jam, the same one who has spoken only Kiswahili to me four days running, comes

"What is your name?"

I tell her, and she keeps on with a stiff but very capable English, asking me questions: how long i've been here, where i'm from, how old i am, the whole time working on her ebleskeebers as well.

i ask her about them, and learn they are called Bitumbua, made from rice and wheat flour and a bit of sugar. she is here frying them every morning, in a giant cast-iron pan black with use. it is, and the bitumbua are, remarkably similar to the Danish breakfast food my dad makes, ebleskeebers: cooked in the same kind of pan with small round indentations, first one side then flipped to cook the other, coming out as a little saucerlike patty with crispy outside and soft inside. her batter is a little heavier than my dad's, and the cakes are a little flatter because the same amount of batter goes into a bit bigger indentation, but they are eerily similar, down to the little pocket that forms between the top and bottom layers that's just right for jam.

i ask her what her name is. she tells me Maimune, and i say "My moon?"

she answers yes, and i smile, and take my still-warm Bitumbua back to my room for a little breakfast, having made a new friend. My Moon the Tanzanian ebleskeeber lady.


i want friends, but i don't want friends.
i've learned something funny about myself: i want friends, but i don't want friends. or, i want friends only when i want them. or, i want friends who give me my space. or, i want friends but only good ones.

traveling alone for long periods is strange. obviously, if you're not an introvert you shouldn't do it. and even if you are, it gets lonely sometimes, so you make friends. i think the slow trickle of social charm that would normally be spent as it comes forth in mediocre charisma builds up as you travel alone, so that when you want a friend you have a whole wealth of funny and charming things to say and topics to talk about, and it's really easy to make them. that's nice, i've done that few times here in Kigoma.

thing is, after we've spent some time together, i start to change poles: i've had my fill. i know this person will most likely never be a best friend, or even part of my life after tomorrow, so we have our talk and then i'm done.

then--because i'm funny--if they're still around the next day i start to fear them.

take Wilson, for instance. a nice enough Tanzanian i met, the guy who's hooked me up with the dump truck to Dar es Salaam (which he'll also be riding in, apparently). we had supper and some beers one night, have sat on the front porch of the Zanzibar Lodge talking a few times. but when it's me-time, when it's Levi-time, boy i sure don't want to see him. the problem is his room's right across the hallway from mine, so i'm always fearing i'll open it and see him and have to interrupt me-time. even if he's not there, i glance with fear to his doorway: is the light on? is--God forbid--the door cracked, inviting guests or indicating imminent emergence of person? i experience a real quake of fear at these things.

it's nonsense, i know: if i don't want to hang out, don't feel like chatting, i should just act that way and be done with it. but somehow i can't: when i'm around people i get drawn into them, and if they want to stay and chat, if they want to go have a beer somewhere, i sometimes find myself going along. maybe that's the real cause of my fear: i'm afraid of my own social inability to be as i please around others. that may be a bit shocking for people who know me as someone at ease with myself, but i'm not completely! i have my idiosyncracies. like this one. no offense to Wilson, or other travel friends, but i'm still learning how to deal with y'all when i want my own space.


an exceptionally nice sunset
was experienced, sitting on the deserted beach of a non-operational guesthouse tonight, watching our good red sun sink behind a peninsula and sketch the sky a glorious orange, gold, crimson and violet. the waves came in slow on the sand, water reflecting the colors of the sky like a molten mirror sea. i'd been on my bike desperately searching for a place to catch the sunset, having abandoned what i was doing when i realized how nice it was going to be, and in the search for a good place to watch it met an undefinedly-European couple who took me back to their place, an unoperational guesthouse with a lovely little sand beach. it was exactly what i'd been looking for, and not a moment too soon. the sunset was exceptionally nice. a thank-you-whatever-you-are-that-made-me-conscious moment. thank you!


the Bastard King
has shown its true literary colors as a thoroughly worthless read. and yet i am page 430, and fearing its close in another 40 pages, as i have no fiction with which to replace it. the writing is so bad it actually acts as inspiration, because i have a constant dialogue in my head with the author about what he might have done to make it more interesting, realistic, dramatic, less repetitive, etc. and at some point it actually moves me to stop reading and write better than what he did. so it's not been a total waste. but if i had it all to do again, i might've chosen a different book back at Edirisa.

day twenty-four: kigoma - that place i was going - kigoma

i'll know it when i see it
when i first stepped out of the captain's crew in Kigoma port, and looked around at the green arms of the bay stretching out on both sides of Kigoma, there was a place i wanted to go. of course, i was excited about going to Tanzania in general, but i mean specifically, i saw one place i wanted to go: the very tip of the northern arm of the bay, where two little hillocks stretch out from a steep green hill, like a baby's hand reaching into the water, new and untouched. i wanted to go there.

i think it's important to pay attention to things like that, the very first feelings and impressions you get on going somewhere or meeting someone. if you go to that place you felt on the very first glance you wanted to go, if you make friends with that person who on the first glance gave you a good feeling, you are affirming yourself, your own curiosity and your freedom to satisfy it. and usually, it turns out well.

i haven't always followed those kind of instictive feelings. in fact, for a long time in my life, things had to make sense to be done, had to be logical progressions towards a known end. so if i wanted something on that hill, if i'd decided it would be the best place to go swimming, etc., then i might logically decide to go there, so long as it fit into other plans. i would actually ignore my gut feelings on first feel, actually, disregarding them as superstitious, and wanting first to give everything the dubious benefit of doubt, whether it seemed bad or good.

well, i guess i've grown out of it: life is no fun, and often pretty lumpy/unsynchronicitous if you just follow your brains around all day. we are more than that, and if we want to live as whole humans we've got to embrace being more, and work it in. let go a little with whatever's ruling your life, let other things have a say. in my case, that means listening to irrational feelings now and then, going or leaving or talking or keeping quiet for no good reason, and paying serious attention to whims like they'd been considered arguments for or against something. i don't know for a fact this way is better--there's no control group in the experiment of life--but it's certainly been more fun.

so today was that day for me, the day to follow whim. i followed it down the road to town, out another one that looked to be going the right direction, off that onto dirt, past a fish-rank fish market, a brown beach full of women washing clothes, a shady market under palm trees, up a hill into the market's brick and reed village, through its houses and shops steadily climbing, kids running after my bike, yelling CHUPA!, til the gaps between houses outpaced the buildings and the hills rose up to the right, bay stretching blue to the left. i followed the path then through deep, eroded waterways, up treeless gravel patches where it was little more than a dusty line in the rock, across shakey wood bridges over deeper waterways, past houses walled with standing reeds, down into rougher waterways with no bridges, using my mountain bike like it was intended to be, up again through dry rows of cassava seedlings, past the occasional hut, hillside sloping steeply down into the sea, that destined hillock coming closer, rode under the shade of a big mango tree, roots exposed, through waterways so narrow i had to push the bike before me, up a long trail of close-hanging bush, and there, finally, it was before me: the silhoutte of a single shady tree, and the long, blue expanse of Lake Tanganyika, boundless as the ocean.

it was beautiful. perfect. beyond all that. it was what i'd been looking for. and walking to the edge of the land a few feet beyond the tree, i saw down below a gorgeous beach of rocks, gradually descending into the clear, bluegreen waters of the lake, coast proceeding as a line of cliffs off to my right. a place to swim, a place to read, a place to let nature's beauty soak in, i knew it once i'd seen it: this was where i was going.


the rest of the story
what i didn't mention was J.

J lived in the hut near the biggest eroded waterway, and called to me once i'd passed it, eager to tell me something in Kiswahili. when he came over, i understood he was asking if i was going to swim. i said yes, and he started off the trail before me, going to lead me.

okay. i was having fun doing it on my own, a bit more of an adventure than being led somewhere, but i followed along, peddling slowly to match his walk. it was the classic picture of a helpless white guy following an african wherever he was going. there was only one path to follow anyway, and after a bit the scenery of his back rather than the open stretch of hill leading to the water paled. so i stopped him and said in no uncertain terms thank you, i'd be going now.

and i went: over the river and through the woods, to that place that i knew i was going. and once i got there, i was hot and sweaty, and the lake was a gorgeous blue. the only problem being, it was about fifty feet down a cliff.

so i tried to find a way down, and on climbing back up from the first failed attempt, saw a couple of fishermen on the shore waving me down another way. so i followed their gestures, not much worried about being alone on this little beach with some local fisherfolk, and scrambled down a kind of natural rock stair to the bottom. and who should be there, grinning and reaching out to shake my hand, but J. he was again really wanting to tell me something in Kiswahili, and i listened for a bit, but i was still hot and the lake was right there, so i nodded and said thank you after explaining again that i don't understand Kiswahili, and jumped into the lake.

now, here's the thing: i was kind of lying. either Kiswahili is close enough to Luganda, or people here are good at body language, or it's not a hard language to learn, because if i really pay attention to someone, i can usually guess what they're talking about. J was no exception. the only thing is, i pretty much already knew i didn't want to know anything he was talking about. at first, my antipathy was categorical: that was not the time for talk, that was the time for sweet water and sunshine. so i got naked--as most Tanzanian men do before they swim, though god help a woman who ever tried it--and jumped in the water. and when it was time for floating heavenly without much sense of being more than a stretch of the lake, it still wasn't the time for talk, and i mostly ignored him trying to do so to me from the shore.

eventually, he was insistent and i'd had enough of a swim. so i came out, and he tried to teach me to skip stones. i already know how, so we skipped for awhile, me standing there naked drying off, giving half an ear to his language i could half-understand. i caught enough to know that he wanted to take me around the far side of the island, where we could take nice pictures and there was a rock you could wade out to, and maybe some interesting fish. thing was, i wasn't interested: this was where i was going, and i was here. once i'd dried off, it was time for some peaceful writing under that tree up there with the lake and the breeze. i tried to explain that to him, but he was as good at ignoring what he half-understood as i am, so when i started to climb back up the cliff, he came along, and wanted to hold my bag for me. more of the mzungu following african through africa like a lost albino puppy. i guess it offends my american male individualism: it's like an affront for someone to assume i can't do things myself--especially when i've already shown i can, and not asked for help.

long story short, i parked myself under the tree with my book and told him this is where i was, thank you for everything. and he squatted down and had some things he really needed to say to me, at first about places we could go, how we could repair my bike (the front tire had gone flat while i'd been swimming), then when i wasn't interested segueing into the hook i'd known was coming: how his mother had died of a stomach illness, how his dad was working in a different town (the place i saw with the Spanish girls), how he had never gotten past fifth grade, how he was hungry even now, they didn't have any food at home.

this kind of story was more moving the first time i heard it, about a year and a half ago. you'll remember i heard almost exactly the same thing from Daudi yesterday. and i'm not denying that any of it was true, it probably was, but i can't personally give all these kids the financial support they need to eat and finish high school and then go to university in america. more than that, here i was in the place i'd been going, the most beautiful spot i may have found on the whole trip, ready to just relax with a good book or to do some writing, and Mr. J was insistent on telling me his life story, and leaving me to connect the dots back to the ample amount of money i had to give away.

so i thought i'd cut it off in the bud. i looked at him straight, i said "Thank you, J, for showing me how to get down the cliff, for everything, but i'm not going to give you money. I can't and it is not my personal responsibility to support every needy person on earth." then i said it again in Luganda, which he looked like he caught a fair part of, then asked if he understood. he said yes. i went back to my book. he stood staring at me for awhile, then squatted down and began telling me something again in very earnest Kiswahili.

it was maybe at that point that i should've just ignored him, let him actually understand what he'd said he'd understood just now, and go away. but it's rude to ignore someone who's talking to you, something i can't stand people doing to me. so i had to listen: instead of to the brilliant words of Mr. Campbell, or the peaceful sound of the lake on the shore, i strained to make out J's Kiswahili, which after having been understood was a repetition of what he'd just said to me, followed by requests for specific things i could buy him.

i cut him off this time, a little forcefully, making eye contact. "J, I'm not going to give you money, no matter how much you talk. Please leave me alone."

he wouldn't: his talk just got more insistent, more and more Kiswahili... and by this time the peaceful easy feeling i'd had was quickly going, replaced with the mzungu-in-the-spotlight-being-asked-for-money feeling, which is not my favorite. finally J said to me straight "Give me money."

and i said to him as straight, "No."

"No?"

"No."

now we had come down to it: communication had happened. he wanted money, for reasons i partially understood. i didn't want to give him money, and didn't know how much of my reasons he understood. i knew them well enough: one, he didn't look like he was really in need of food, he looked healthy. two, i didn't have enough money to get him back in school, nor the permanency here to make sure it happened. three, i don't want to encourage africans to think that they can get money by begging, don't want to encourage dependency. four, and most importantly for me personally, i can't solve everyone's problems, especially not with money. i just spent the last year working for free, trying to improve the lives of 50 orphaned and street children, and the other staff who are working to support them. of course, he doesn't know that, but he doesn't need to. it is not my obligation to give money. i tried giving him what i had: on the shore, i'd taught him some English when he said he wanted to learn, had been friendly to him, had stood there and tried to just be natural as two people together, skipping stones. it's as much as i gave Daudi yesterday, as much as i think i owe anyone. now J was interested in taking more, and had just gotten a pretty final NO as an answer. and didn't want to accept it.

J is about my younger brother's Pete's age: a dangerous age. the age you have just come into your physical strength, the age when you can easily resent authority and any resistance to doing what you want, an age involving a lot of hormones and unresolved anger. i eyed J's arms: he was strong. he was fit. if it came to a fight, up here on the cliff where no one would know, he would probably win. and then he could take all my money, my computer, my credit card, my bike, everything. i knew that. if i ran, he could catch me. but i didn't care: i am a human being, and demand to be treated like one. so i stared him down.

and he stared me down, clearly angry.

i stared.

he stared. no? no. time passed.

after a good bit of this, i realized my mood for sitting there enjoying the day was gone. so i said, "Do you want me to leave? You want to make sure at least that I don't enjoy this place either? OK, fine." and i stood up, strapped my stuff to my bicycle, and started walking it flat-tired down the long hot walk back to town, thoroughly disgruntled. he didn't follow.

at the next mango tree, my shoulders already burned and burning further, i stopped to put on some sunscreen. he approached from behind, and passing said 'twende?' 'we go?' i answered in my best swahili, which was probably wrong, 'oyende' 'you go.'

but i was still too disgruntled to do anything but go back either, and had thoughts in my head of going back to the spot, only to have a very angry mr. J coming back ready to do some violence to the mzungu, his mzungu, who hadn't cared about his life problems, who had been so ultimately greedy with his money after mr. J had so kindly helped him in every way he could. i kept walking.

my feelings calmed a bit. it was a damn shame to leave a spot like that so soon. J was gone anyway. if he came back, he came back. i was hungry and had about a swallow of water left in the bottle, and a flat tire to boot, but hell with it, i was going back to that spot, and was going to enjoy it and everything else be damned.

and that's what i did. J didn't come back, my stomach held off, my thirst didn't kill me, and i read a really interesting chapter in my book on myths, while the breeze from the water rolled over, and little white sails moved lazily toward the horizon. life was generally very good again. i'd won a victory of my mind over itself, over the forces of frustration. it was a victory for me as a real person over the social stereotyping of me here as a rich man who ought to be giving money. and most of all, it was what i'd wanted to do since i got here, and i did it and enjoyed it, no regrets. and that was best of all.


J is part of something i've needed
to work through for a long time, as i think Daudi was. they're a pair in my mind, two young and somewhat needy african boys who started off seeing me as their chance. with Daudi, maybe because his English was better, but I think more because of his personality, we were able to get past that to a real friendship, brief as it was. i treated J the same, but he never let go of wanting money, and so things fell apart. he was probably the most insistent asker of money i have ever encountered, and doing so at one of the worst possible times, not when i'm sitting on a hot bus or walking to buy some groceries or something, but at a most beautiful and peaceful space and time. so i had to really face up to his idea of me, as someone with an obligation to give him money. and if i didn't agree with it, and didn't want to just buy him off so i could avoid confrontation and displeasantry--avoid ever expressing it and trying to change his mind, in other words--i had to stand up to him and let him know that. and that's what i did: i stood up for my right to be selfish, to not give to every needy cause i saw. because i can't. and i will not be manipulated by people who think i can.

deciding on my ability and what obligation i have to help, and standing up for it, was something i've needed to do for awhile here in Africa. previously i'd just have vague feelings of guilt and selfishness when an old woman or a street kid came up to me asking for money. i know where i stand now. it isn't a total refusal to help: i still gave a crippled child money that night, still bought a better lunch than i was having for a half-paralyzed man the next day. but i did it because i wanted to, because i was moved to from the heart, not because i'd been asked to. and that, for me at least, is how it should be. so thank you, J. i hope you, and the legion here who think and act like you did, can understand.

"Good morning" "Fine, how are you"
it's happening again: i'm being beat over the voice box with African English, Tanzanian at the moment, and it's forging my already-battered English in its own image.

i say, "Good morning."

s/he answers, "Fine how are you" with no question intonation. It doesn't sound odd anymore. next time someone says to me good morning, i may just answer fine how are you. it's not just the phrasing, but the pronunciation and intonation, too. awhile back i learned to speak English like a Ugandan does, to make myself better understood, and spend so much more time now speaking that way than i would using 'American English' that i'm not sure which is naturally any more. getting to speak without having to inhibit my slurs and colloqialisms has become a real luxury, to be savored.

speaking of Uganda, in that country how are you, pronounced for the most part, howayu, was itself a greeting word and not a question, to be answered with another howayu. this took a little more getting used to, but it started to come naturally from my mouth towards the end. Rwanda and Burundi are exempt because they are Francophone, but i noticed ca va never seemed to get answered with more than ca va, and my one rabbit left in the hat from high school french with Mrs. Anderson, common tallez vous, was always met with blank stares.

that's OK. this is Africa, a continent scarred by colonialism and now trying to make its own way with what the white folks left them, trying to make that their own. and in the process, it becomes foreign again to us.

last example, from the Soga people: "Morning." "Morning, too."

oh, America, i hope we are still mutually intelligible when next we meet.

day twenty-three: kigoma-ujiji-kigoma

dr. livingstone, i presume?
these were my words to the sun-red and clearly weary white travelers i met near the end of a cobblestone road deep in Tanzania. they just nodded and pointed, the young boy in front with his coat over his head too determined to get back to civilization to respond.

i was half-joking: yes, we were in the heart of africa and our meeting unlikely, but more so i was asking directions to the famous doctor himself, or at least to the place where those famous words were uttered. it's only a few kilometers from where i'm staying, but i managed to completely miss the turn and end up on the other side of the little trading center where it's found, Ujiji (isn't that a nice name? the kind a sci-fi writer would make up for one of his planets), where the paved road turned to dust.

a friendly policeman there directed me back the way i'd come, impressed by my kiswahili (i'd managed to use everything i knew in the conversation, including my new actual full sentence, _____ iko wapi?, meaning where is _____?), and after some more iko wapi's i'd found the street, but wasn't just greeting this sun-beaten and possibly disgruntled family of travelers in jest: i was really wondering if i was going the right way.

they managed some nods or small noises, my joke either too great to set in upon them all at once, or too pathetic to muster more. either way, i knew i was on the right track.

when i got to the beach without seeing the memorial, though, i figured i'd missed it again, and the friendly folks there directed me back up the hill, carmel-peanut chunks in hand. and there it finally was: a shabby brown building with 'LIVINGSTONE MEMORIAL -->' painted in small black letters along the beam.

it wasn't too impressive, for being the home of those famous words: a big stone pillar in the center of a walled-in courtyard, probably with a plaque, and some trees. the grass had been cut. wanting to do things right, i first sought out someone working there, and found two people joking together in a back office, who then demanded 5000 shillings from me to see the place. as i'd already seen it, i thanked them all the same and left, presuming that'd been dr. livingstone.


the beach at ujiji
was a lot more interesting, and was presumably why livingstone had chosen that place to hole up: some picturesque papyrus houses along a long, sandy beach, one side packed with wood boats being repaired, the other with people swimming, bathing, washing clothes, or some combination thereof. tied fifty feet out was the big green and yellow sloop Allah Akbar (God is Greater), looking straight out of a postcard. and beyond, out to the horizon, the sparkling waters of Lake Tanganyika.

it was too much: i had to get in.

shedding clothes, dropping bicycle, laying wallet + credit card carelessly on the sand with a couple hand motions to the lady frying chapati nearby to watch them, i ran for the water. my run was speeded by how sweaty i'd gotten on the bike ride, and how baking hot the sand was.

the water was lovely: just cool enough to be refreshing, clean, a few waves, the white sand underfoot gently sloping down, maybe three feet deep at thirty feet out. i found some kids to play with, wondering what kind of charmed childhood they were having with this lake nearby, then exercised my newfround freedom to float, kicking long and slow away from the shore, occasional thoughts for my bike and credit card drowned in water and weightlessness. i mentally thanked livingstone and stanley for making Ujiji famous: it was well worth finding.


he said he'd been waiting a long time
for me, buckling a belt into his white trousers, plaid shirt neatly tucked in. there on the shores of Ujiji, as i'd been walking along the coast with not a thought in my head, stood Daudi, worn and polished black dress shoes a few inches from the surf, waiting for me.

"oh yes, i've really been waiting a long time to meet you and never thought i could meet someone like you, it has really been my dream to meet someone like you, really, i think i can call you my friend or even my best friend because..."

something like that: about three times as many words as i'd spoken all day, tumbling out of this teenage boy, shaking my hand repeatedly and so excited about meeting me that i didn't really get much chance to talk.

as soon as he introduced himself as an orphan i knew the hook was coming, but i waited for it because we were standing in his dream, and avoided it as best i could by mentioning generally how many africans i meet have it in their minds that all white people are rich...

and talk continued to his mother, who doesn't have use of her legs, and how he was struggling to get through secondary school, and how he'd been drinking tea on the other side of the village when he saw me approach, and had really been so excited to see me and thought to himself that maybe his dream would come true because he would really love so much to talk with someone like me, and now here i am and i think i can even say we are best friends or we are brothers because i have never had a chance to talk with someone like you...

laying it on thick, but seemingly honestly, so i let it play itself out, and gradually we started to have a more interesting conversation, about his culture and the lifestyle here, and how things are different in Uganda and where i came from, the United States.

the sun was getting hot, me wearing just the pair of shorts i'd been swimming in, so i convinced him to walk, and we walked up to one end of the beach, and down to the other, passing the boats being repaired and fishermen laying out their nets, finally getting to where the sand broke up in reeds and patches of land.

he said he had something to show me, so we went inland, walking barefoot on sand that gradually heated up til it was scorching, and i found myself walking on prickly dry grass just to bear the heat, actually running to the first little pool of shade, the sand like hot coals. i ran, at least: Daudi laughed at me for having such weak soles, and took me on cooler-sand routes afterwards.

we walked through a maize field and tomato plantation to reach a lily-pad heavy little pond, where he'd wanted to show me all the fishermen, but they'd turned in for the day, as it'd gotten hot, so we skip-hopped back to the wet sands of the beach, my soles literally burned tender by this time (they stayed so the rest of the day), and all the while this boy Daudi talking a blue streak, like God had just granted him command of the English language and it was too amazing to stop even once.

taking advantage of my local guide, i had him show me the best restaurant in town, which happened to be that of the same chapati-frying lady i'd asked to watch my things. true to her gestures (we hadn't actually spoken), my things were all there, and Daudi and i shared a lunch of chapatis fried in palm oil, beans cooked with more of the same (made locally), and hot tea. sunlight filtered in through the gaps in the reed roof, and the lake breeze came in through the walls.

lunch done, it was time to leave. Daudi was nice, and he'd explained a lot of the local life to me, but i guess i've gotten used to solitude and quiet a bit--the blue streak English was starting to get to me. he walked me up to the road, and around the Livingstone Memorial i told him i'd best be riding if i wanted to reach Kigoma, and wrote my name and number on his hand in borrowed blue pen, then said goodbye.

Daudi might have just been another African trying to get money out of a mzungu, but his need was real, and his innocence honest. i heard in him speaking not a single kid on a beach in Tanzania, not just an orphan in need of help, but Africa: Africa with its real needs, Africa with its legacy of dependence on foreigners, itself like an orphan, abandoned by colonial parents before it could really take care of itself, beautiful ever-youthful continent held back by its own poverty and disorganization: a child in need of a parent. Daudi was in Senior 3, on that fragile line between child and adult, beginning to be able to take care of himself.

it's not something he or Africa can really understand, but though I am a member of that moneyed tribe that changed things forever here, I am myself living on borrowed money, and couldn't do much more for him than buy him lunch.

no, that's not true: i gave him my time, as i gave Uganda my time this last year and some, time enough for us to understand each other not just as Poor and Rich, or Black and White, or simply Stranger and Stranger, but as People. as the simple, idiosyncratic moments of humanity that each of us is, regardless of wealth or race or cultural heritage. i think i got there a bit with Daudi, in the course of our few hours together. I hope so. i am not ready to keep giving hand-outs to an African or an Africa just becoming able to take care of itself, but will always be ready to teach what i know, and bridge the gap between humans not yet known to each other, so long as the other side is willing to come halfway.

Daudi was. more than willing: his blue streak of language made the few things i did get in edgewise seem pretty meaningful, and he connected all the rest himself.

he thinks i might come back, might still be his sponsor for the rest of secondary school, might pay for him to come to america and get a degree. but even if i never do, i think we did something just as important, that he'd been waiting some time for: we made real friends with 'someone like you,' not just five-minute friends but friends who knew each other as real people. and that, in his own words, is a dream come true.


so were the four cute girls
who stayed the night at my guesthouse, but they were going to an invite-only party at a nice hotel in town, and it was too late to get invited. our conversation was a nice mzungu-break anyway, after my usual solitude and Daudi's blue streak, and we might catch up again in Dar es Salaam. i spent the last hour of the night on a rock overlooking the bay, full moon above illuminating little Kigoma town, singing itself to sleep.

day twenty-two: kigoma

travel far, travel deep
kigoma town is starting to feel a bit more like home. i recognize people on the street, am developing favorite places to eat, finding new places to sit and watch the bay every day, and getting a settled feel for Tanzania like i didn't take time to in Rwanda or Burundi. it's nice. travel is not only about moving--when you stop moving so much physically, you start to travel in a different sense, deeper into local culture, deeper into relationships with people, deeper into the regular life of the place you came to see. instead of riding 80 kilometers, you ride down the street, and when Chas greets you from underneath a shady tree, you stop and talk awhile. you memorize a couple words from your guidebook in Swahili, then go out and try to use them with the lady frying Tanzanian ebleskeebers in the morning. you go back to the same restaurant, the waiters smiling at you because you made a very foolish joke using Swahili and gestures yesterday, and you order your new favorite cake, and try the other kind of juice. gradually, you start to feel a bit like a regular.

are you a regular? are you going to stay for a few years, or a lifetime? probably not. there are some who do. but compared to the You who stopped in towns like this just to buy a bottle of water, and none of the faces there ever became more than strangers, You are pretty regular. and fundamentally, always moving, always looking for a different place to sleep at night, for people you can trust, it gets tiring. it's good to settle in a town for a few days, and really get a feel for it, so you remember it as more than a point on the map when you move on.

that's what i'm doing here--still traveling, but traveling deep instead of far. maybe it's practice for when i finally stop these 5+ years of travel, and stay somewhere long enough to be a real regular. i wonder what that's like. wonder if i can be a regular after so much of irregularity. i know part is me is well ready. and part is scared. and i guess that means it's the right move--not backwards, but forwards, whether far or deep. if you feel that way, it's right.


the rest of the story
when i started this trip, i had two main purposes: to travel, and to write. the thing is, these blogs weren't my only or even my main goal in writing--they were to be a kind of side project to the main one, which is the reworking of blogs written over the last year and some in Uganda into a book format.

well, things change. not only have i spent a lot more time on these daily blogs than the book, i've started another book entirely... which i don't really want to talk about. suffice it to say, i've realized either project will take me longer than i have left in the vacation, and i'd like to finish them both.

but wasn't i going to have a book done by the end of the trip? i had so nicely planned out: i'd ride bicycle in the morning, thoughts a-stewing, then spend the afternoons writing all those stewed up thoughts, body tired but mind active.

and it's true, that's exactly what happens--but what i failed to account for was the travel aspect of it. meaning, a 40-day trip through East Africa turns out to be more exciting and attention-grabbing than reworking stories about the year that came before it. so what i think about, and want to write about, are not those old blogs but what is happening here and now.

thus the failure to get even halfway through initially reading the blogs i want to make into my book, much less start editing, rewriting and adding to them! i could do it: it would just mean ignoring everything around me, staying in one place, and holing up in a room to write, breathing outside air only to eat or rest. i wouldn't mind doing that, but East Africa... the road... it's rude to ignore them.

so i've accepted the book is not getting done. i've accepted, too, that this other book is not getting done. what is getting done is a lot of travel, new experiences, and daily blogs forming all that into something intelligible, to you and to me (writing helps me reflect on and understand what i've experienced). and that's worthwhile. so the books, book 1 and book 2, they'll get a bit done--i do still have plenty of free time, and more will to write than experiences to cover it--but basically, they're being forwarded to the initial period of joblessness in the states, and the emotional/experiential inertia of africa that is sure to be washing over me during that period.

in the meantime, there is so much more of africa to see--


nevertheless
i spent most of today holed up in my room writing, only coming out to eat or when the power failed and my battery ran out. i was working mainly on the new book... something i'm very excited about, but a little too early to actually talk about, in case it falls flat for some reason!


well the train
is officially not running. waiting around at the scenic old train station this morning, some officials finally told me 'it might be starting in february or march.' when i asked if february could possibly mean early Feb, like Monday, they said "yeah, maybe, you can check back then."

i've been in africa long enough to under the Schrödinger experiment's local implications: how you observe the situation changes what you see. in other words, i think there's actually zero chance of a train coming on Monday, or next week, but because i asked like that, he said maybe. when i asked if there'd been any schedule set, he said not yet. translation: it ain't coming, baby, it ain't coming for a long time.

which means another part of the loose itinerary for this trip (along with being able to bike through Burundi) has fallen through: without that train, there is a long, long ways between here and Dar es Salaam. more than i feel like biking, or would probably have time to even if i tried. the bus ride is a grueling couple of days, followed a week or so later by an even more grueling one through kenya back to uganda. not sure i'm ready for that, much as i want to see zanzibar and spend some time on the ocean. lake tanganyika is a pretty nice second...

but i do have this friend who can get me a free ride on a dump truck heading back to the coast, with a driver who probably doesn't speak any english, which also sounds interesting...

so i don't know where i'm going, yet. far travel or deep travel are my options, basically: see some more lovely places on their surface level, or get beneath that with the place i am. i don't know what i'll do, but that doesn't bother me: Kigoma's nice. maybe i'll just stay here...

day twenty-one: kigoma

the old man and the see
the first moment i set eyes on the waters around Kigoma, walking sleep-bleared out of the captain's cabin on the Ruremesha, i knew i wanted to be in them. i considered just swimming in to shore before the port opened, actually, to get the required money to pay my visa fee and avoid all that red tape.

the red tape took most of the morning, and finding a guesthouse took me a lot of the afternoon, so i didn't get around to it yesterday. i did meet some nice Spanish girls that evening, and over drinks with them decided to find a swimming spot today.

so we did: took a packed mini-van out over windy dirt roads to a picturesque little fishing village, and from there walked, waded and stumbled over a rocky beach to the shady side of a little peninsula, not a soul around except for an old man toying with his boat.

i guess he got more than be bargained for, choosing that spot, because the girls proceeded to take all their clothes off like it was business as usual, and i followed suit. we all crawled into the lake, stones too slippery to do otherwise, til we could slip into the water. it was delicious. the old man stayed in his boat the whole time, watching.

it was a perfect day for swimming, sunny and beating hot, perfect place, beautiful and no one else around, and the lake water was just the right amount of cool for a good, long swim. it was hard to believe we were in a lake and not the ocean, aside from the absence of saltwater (which you never really notice until you're IN saltwater), but on the far horizon you could make out the green lines of the Congo, a lot more distant here than they'd been near Bujumbura.

we swam, we sunbathed, we laid out in the sun on hot stones. i've gotten fat enough in Africa to kind of float again, instead of sinking like a stone the way i used to, so swimming is a lot more fun, and i'm just discovering the joys of laying in the water, barely moving, weightless and careless, drifting.

the girls had a ferry south to catch later that day, so after a final dip we hiked back into town, them speaking Kiswahili like a blue streak at the locals (i felt like a tourist)(i guess i am), had really tasty bowls of wali daga, rice and fish local style, while the taxi filled up, and then one of the hottest, most uncomfortable taxi rides of my life coming back into town.

they left within the hour, but it was really nice spending a night and day with some other long-term travellers, and a reminder to me to be more friendly to foreigners. i guess the old man was happy too.

i snagged a couple pictures from Carolina's camera before they left:

The shore of Katonga fishing village, our little peninsula in the distance.

The little peninsula with the beach where we swam.

Yours truly, old-man beard hidden by camera angle.

no one to sing my theme song with
the two girls, Cristina and Carolina, had been travelling six weeks together, and as we spent time they reminded me of all the good things about travelling with another person. at the restaurant in the morning, they ordered different foods and tried each other's. the night before, they'd ordered one beer at a time and both drank, so it was colder. as we hiked out to the beach, they spontaneously started singing their theme song, 'Thats's the Way I Like It' (KC and the Sunshine Band), whereas i've got no one to sing mine with...

little things like that. i started off this trip pretty excited to be solo, to be free, to go at exactly my own pace and do exactly what i like, and i don't regret it. i still think it was the best choice, but i'm realizing it'd also be really fun to travel with someone else who traveled the same way. i guess with someone is less about self-discovery and more about fun: you are necessarily pulled more into each other's world, but it helps as an escape and chance to reflect on the one you are travelling through, whereas going solo you are just always in that world, except in the immediate escapes of music, bad fantasy novels, guesthouse rooms, etc. i could see they traveled well together, interested in doing the same things, both relaxed and independent, giving each other enough space. best of all, they've completely avoided the mzungu-spotlight by sharing it, and being able to laugh at it, whereas it's been a real nuisance for me.

anyways, this trip is a solo one. but the times i've shared it with others--eliot and shaun, tom, cristina and carolina--have been a nice break from me.


the rest of the day
i spent exploring Kigoma, talking with local folks, looking for good places to eat, relaxing. i'd gotten in a little too much nude sunbathing on the beach, and the white areas (wearing the same clothes every day for biking, i now have dark-brown areas and white areas. sandal straps have made my feet zebralike) ripened to a sensitive pink. i sat with some university students home for the holidays, saw a nice sunset from a hilltop, had my first plate of wali maharage, rice and beans, and fell asleep reading my trashy fantasty novel.

good day.

day twenty: lake tanganyika - tanzania

more red tape
awaited me like a bloodthirsty swarm of insects when i got to Tanzania, but this was partially my own doing. as we sat in the port that morning, waiting for it to open up so we could dock, i decided to check if there were visa fees for entering Tanzania--a good while after, of course, i could get any money in case they were more than i had.

well, they were--i had 30 US dollars, and the guidebook said they needed 50, cash only.

shit.

so i asked for advice from the skipper and the goods-counter, who had nothing much of value to say, but did pass on my plight to the waiting immigration officer, so before even explaining myself i got a lengthy speech on how disappointing it was to meet someone of such high status (his words) who hadn't researched the immigration procedures of the place to which he was visiting. i felt like i was in high school, and had the yeah-yeah-stuff-it-you-suit kinda its-early-morning-get-me-into-Tanzania attitude to match.

and like a high school delinquent, i got my fair share of woe: first, they agreed that, rather than ship me back to Bujumbura, i could go get money in town. but they'd only take US dollars, so i had to first withdraw local shillings with my ATM card, then go and exchange backwards to pay the entry fee. and it's 100 dollars, not 50. i probably haven't spent 200 so far this trip.

fine, it's at least doable, i thought. the only bank in town my guidebook said had an ATM refused my card, though. three times. the good folks inside the bank said that nope, if the ATM didn't do it, they sure couldn't. varmint poop.

i'd spotted another ATM, so though i figured if one network refused my card the others were likely to, i stuck the card in and answered visa, yes, english, yes, pin, yes, money, yes, wait...

wait longer... like a full minute...

this is where my last card got rejected... and...

the whirr of cash being mechanically handled! lovely, reassuring cash.

another half hour in the line at the bank, waiting for them to locate their dollars, and i was back in the port with their blood money, ready to legally enter the country. they agreed that i'd gotten the money, but unfortunately the paper quality of one of the bills was poor, so after discussion with their treasurer, they weren't able to accept it.

red. tape.

so it was back to the bank, morning getting pretty long now with me having neither legal status nor breakfast, then back to the officials who ascented to the new paper quality, stamped me, and sent me on my way. here's hoping the red tape i broke walking out that door was the finish line of the african tape i'll have to crawl through, though i honestly doubt it...


halfway point
if my trip is 40 days, and i think it will be, that means today i'm halfways through it today. phew. i've been in four countries so far, ridden maybe 700 kilometers by bicycle, managed a blog every day, a bit of work on the book, started another, and seen and done some things. in short, that means it's time for top tens.


first,
TOP TEN THINGS I'VE DONE THIS TRIP

10.had a beer at Hotel Rwanda

9. slept in a brothel, a captain's berth, and on a wood bench by the lake

8. rode my bicycle from Lukaya to Kigali

7. learned some things about myself

6. learned how to turn a dumpster into a bakery

5. had some very peaceful moments in beautiful places

4. learned some Kinryankole, Luchiga, Luganda, French, Kinyrwanda, Kirundi and Kiswahili

3. learned and experienced a lot about the Rwandan genocide

2. had some slow beers with local folk

1. left behind the stress + busyness of my previous job


followed, of course, by
TOP TEN THINGS I HAVEN'T DONE ON THIS TRIP

10.oiled my bike chain

9. been physically injured

8. cooked a meal

7. taken a good picture

6. made it even halfway through initial editing of my book

5. used my phone to call someone

4. shaved

3. worn any shirt, jacket, pair of shorts or pants other than the one of each i brought

2. made some attractive local girl swoon for me

1. gotten malaria (so far as I know...)


and rounded out by
TOP TEN MOMENTS

10.the first 30k of Rwanda

9. the coast into Kabale town

8. watching the stars on Lake Bunyonyi

7. sleeping with the drunk captain

6. the cold beer after 100kms from Kabale to Kigali

5. the push everybody from Lukaya gave me

4. sharing a meal with Anita + Willy in Bujumbura

3. the time i spent in the crypt of the Nyamata memorial

2. watching hippos on the coast of Lake Tanganyika

1. every moment

day nineteen: bujumbura - lake tanganyika

safety is the salt in my su-pu
it was time to leave Burundi. why? much as i was excited to see this place, and have enjoyed moments of it since, the lack of safety is oppressive.

maybe it's psychological: whether you are 'safe' or not i think is often just a feeling you have, not necessarily founded on facts, like saying "i feel very safe here walking the streets at night." you can feel very safe anywhere, til you're mugged, and muggings can happen in very safe places, like small town america. then after it's happened, you can feel very unsafe in a very safe place. psychological.

nevertheless, the unsafe feeling i had in Burundi was not mine alone: the streets of the city clear out by 4pm, and both the guidebook and the locals said walking them by night was asking to get mugged. the country is still recovering from an extended civil war and the resultant poverty, and seems there are a lot of people with not much to lose.

that poverty was a bit oppressive too--i don't mind rundown buildings, potholed roads with big lakes in the center of the capital city, etc., but being constantly asked for money and eyed when not asked, i got the feeling my interest-factor had switched: in all countries thus far, i'd been interesting primarily because i was white, and secondarily because, therefore, i must have money. here it was clearly that i have money, and my racial status took a firm second.

even that, it's okay: you can live somewhere not going out after twilight. you can ignore all the need, or give what you can to pacify feelings of guilt. you can avoid travel by foot or bicycle, be constantly aware your money or your things might get stolen--it's just not very fun.

safety is the salt in my su-pu, to borrow a phrase from Radio + Weasel. without it, the best soup--and Burundi seemed like a pretty spicy country--just isn't enjoyable, and that was my experience of Burundi. i wished i was african to experience it for a bit without being in the economic spotlight, but i'm not (much as i'm getting tanned enough to be mistaken for Indian sometimes). so i had my see of Burundi, and it's time to go, on to somewhere i don't need to always be conscious of my things, sit on the beach at sunset without worry, eat at an outdoor cafe without being eyed. hopefully that place is Tanzania.


the last breakfast
i had in Burundi was lovely, though--i caught the Trianon bakery, the one which had smelled lovely next door to my first guesthouse--when it was rocking in the morning, and had a still-warm croissant and a cheese pie with a giant glass of plain yogurt, served with sugar on the side. the place was packed with people, the bread was fresh and kept coming, the service quick and the whole joint obviously part of a nice morning routine for a lot of people. wish it could be part of mine.


those aren't stones in the lake
i realized: those are hippos. i'd taken them for some big rocks when riding past, but later when i sat down to watch the water under a shady tree, the rocks moved, and i realized they were giant pink hippos.

wow.

the only other time i've seen hippos up close was at a national park in Uganda, and we had to go a ways by boat to their wallow spot, and they were none too pleased to see us. these guys were right in the middle of a public beach, and didn't seem to mind the naked african boys in the water at all, though a passing canoe did raise their hackles a bit. i later saw some a distance down the beach too. hippos are one kind of creature that need to nothing to be interesting--just their being at all is impressive.


african red tape
the problem with african red tape is not that there's too much of it. i think there is actually less than you'd find when trying to do the same things in other countries. the problem is it's so damned knotted and disorderly.

case in point: trying to get a ship from Bujumbura to Kigoma. given, the passenger ferry is out of service, so i had to try to line up passage on a cargo ship, but still:

i go the day before to arrange things. the guardsman at the door sends me home speaking a lot of Kirundi and French like i understand it, but the import's clear: not today.

so i come back the next day, passing him before he has a chance to shoo me, find in the shipping company's whole office of 15 people one can speak English. she tells me to wait.

i wait half an hour. the person i'm waiting for hasn't come, so she tells me to wait somewhere else. i do. when that also brings no results, she takes me to an office we could've gone to immediately, where i'm told to come back with a stamped passport and they'd process my ticket. and to get to immigration early, because they sometimes don't stick around long.

okay. so i rode the kilometers back to my guesthouse, packed up in a hurry (i was past check-out anyway, but the good thing about messy african red tape is that check out at eleven can mean eleven thirty or noon--hakuna matata), rode back to the immigration office hoping to still find the guy there, so i could catch the ship, which wouldn't go again for a week or so.

i was told to wait.

i wait. no dice. the one semi-English speaking boy in the place says the official's car is out front, let's go find him. we find him in front of a bank a ways off; he tells me to first get my ticket then he'll stamp me. ratty P.

so i go back to the shipping office for a confrontation with the dour guardsman. the office is locked up for siesta or who knows what, and he again tries summarily to shoo me. i want to know when they're coming back, so i try my flunky French--something like "a quelle temps?"--to no effect, then Luganda "bajja komawo nga ddi?" to lesser effect, but he may have caught a couple words similar to Kirundi, because he answered back something, basically unintelligible, and i asked again in what must have been basically unintelligible ways to him, and we bantered and parried nonsense there in the sunny shut-down courtyard for a few minutes before i heard him say something like 'nana.' nana is close to Luganda's eight, 'munana,' which would have been quite disappointing (meaning 8PM, well after the ship and immigration officials would have left) except i also knew 7AM is 1 in Uganda, and if the system was the same here 8 would mean 2PM, which sounded about right for a siesta. "munana?" i asked again, tracing the figure eight in the air, and he got excited saying his version of the number, and wrote it in the dirt.

Gods be praised! communication!

so i thanked him--i know that much at least in Kirundi and French--and went for some hippo time before two.

at two, i again was made to wait til 3, paid for my ticket but the lady who could actually make the ticket wasn't around... around 3:30 i said i was worried the immigration official would leave, so they sent me with someone (who didn't speak any of my languages, of course) to get stamped out, ticket apparently unneeded.

well, the official wasn't there, despite his earlier promise he would be, so we waited outside with a guard smoking Sportsmans. the official shows up, is surprisingly good about stamping me out, then we walk to the gate of the port, where the old women in uniform take a real long time examining my passport, my lovely stamps and visas from other countries, pretending not to be able to find my stamp out of Burundi, all in a flutter about how faint the ink was when i pointed it out, etc...

they took about 10 minutes to check the already-official stamp. finally walking towards the ship, i wanted to express how red-tapey those ladies had been to my non-English-speaking cohort, so i gave my best "les mademoiselles!" with a lot of surprise/distaste. he laughed and said something i didn't understand, but rubbed his fingers together in a universal symbol: money.

ding. they wanted bribes. a lot of the people today probably wanted bribes. the guys who loaded my bike on the ship, passing it bodily over frightening gaps of water, also wanted bribes. that's the other problem with african red tape--not only is it knotty and disorganizing, the best and sometimes only way to unwind it all is with bribes.

well, i reflected, the better part of a day gone to getting a simple ticket, at least i had unraveled that tape without bribery. it was something of a pyrrhic victory.

the ship, of course, wasn't yet ready to leave, so i settled down to wait.


the wait was worth its weight
in gold: pulling out of Bujumbura port, the mountains of Burundi on one side and the Congo rising steep and verdant green on either side, lights of the city coming on as the sun set burning red in the west, the old familiar feel of ship travel... it was lovely.


this won't make sense to anyone who hasn't been on peaceboat
but the departure song from my last cruise started playing automatically in my head as we pulled out of the port... does that happen to you?


the skipper said
when i asked him if they had many passengers, "never!" then agreed i paid way too much, and apologized there was no place for me to sleep tonight.


the first mate said
i could use the bottom right bunk when i got sleepy, which i did, using my jacket as a pillow. it was really comfy, laying with my head to the gently rumbling ship, door open to Lake Tanganyika passing outside and the fresh night air.

then the goods-counter came back and apologized, but i was sleeping on his bunk and i'd have to get up.


the goods-counter said
that yeah i could probably lay on the wooden bench in the mess, since no one was going to cook, but on second thought there were some extra beds upstairs in the officer's quarters.

so up the stairs we went, me groggy from an hour or more's sleep and just wanting to continue it, carrying my sleeping bag and valuables like a refugee. we passed the helm with a real green-on-black radar screen, then found the captain.


the captain said
a whole lot of things i couldn't understand, being thoroughly drunk and a lot better at Kirundi and French than English. what i did understand was that he'd give me a place to sleep, but first i had to drink a beer with him.

in improv comedy, the basic rule is to never refuse a prompt. this was one of those times, so i waited as the captain drunkenly ordered the cook to get a beer from his sack, then sat me down right next to him on the bench and opened it with his teeth, talking all the while about things it seemed i should be responding to, but not understanding then, i could only nod and grin, buyng my bed.

the beer wasn't warm, it was hot. it burned going down my throat, tasting nothing like beer should, but you'll do a lot for a place to sleep, especially after you've already started. he also added some decent beans and rice, much to the cook's obvious displeasure, and talked to me for a long time, eventually getting around to what most african guys who talk to me for any length of time get around to: wanting to go to america, and couldn't i sponsor him/his children, and give him my contacts, etc.

i promised nothing but my contacts (which he forgot in the morning--i'm not sure if he was even awake when i got off the ship), feeling rather ill at ease and just wanting to sleep again, forcing myself to the bottom of the beer.

when it was done, he insisted i have another, but i refused, said i really needed sleep. he gave me a bed in a nice little room next to the officer's mess where we'd been drinking and trying to talk. then he closed the door and locked it from the outside.


so i was a prisoner
in a room with two sacks full of hot beer, but there was at least a bed so i decided not to worry about it. later i woke up too hot, and fiddling with the windows ascertained i could crawl out if need be, if the drunk captain lost the key for instance, or had sinister plans for me. knowing that, i went back to sleep.

an indeterminate amount of time later he unlocked the door and came in himself to sleep, leaving it unlocked. i used the chance to get some drinking water, though we were in the middle of a rainstorm, and came back to bed wet.

the now-unlocked door clanged in time with the rolling of the ship, which was probably the reason he'd locked it (the latch being broken), keeping me half-awake til i wedged it between my shoes, then passed out with the captain drunk asleep on the mattress next to me on the floor.


he may have groped me
in the night, but i just rolled away from his hopefully-still-asleep arm and kept right on trying to sleep. the morning came none too soon.

day eighteen: bujumbura

the burden of things
sometime early on in my solitary voyagings, i made a kind of rule about what i carried: i had to be ready to lose all of it. okay with the idea that at any time, any of it could be lost, damaged, broken, stolen, or some combination of the above. if i wasn't, i didn't take it with me.

so on this trip i have along a lot of stuff no one would really mind losing. i also have a nice little computer, my journal, someone else's tent, a credit card and the nicest bicycle i've ever owned. the tent ialready breaks the rule, since i promised to give it back to the guy who lent it to me, but everything else i am okay with losing. the bike i am planning to give to a friend before going back to america anyway, the journal is not that old (and most of what i write gets published here), other things like clothes, tools, books, etc. are expendable for sure.

the computer was a little harder to accept: i sold off my old one, added in what scarce money i had, and bought it, new and small and just right for me, a few months before leaving. it would suck to lose, but i've accepted that it might happen, and i'm not going to flip out if it does. the trip continues.

i made this rule because things are a burden. much as, for example, it is nice to have a nice camera along to take nice pictures of the things you see, that same nice camera may keep you in constant fear of it being stolen as you walk around, of it being broken as you handle your bags, of it getting wet, getting dropped, etc. put short, it's a weight on your mind and wet socks to the daily adventure of life.

accepting it may be lost frees you a bit: you still take care with it, still try to keep it no where no one will steal it, but basically you're ready for it in case they are. the trip will go on, life will go on. without this rule, my trip would be psychologically not very fun, because i'd constantly be worrying about this or that. this way, i'm free to think about whatever, free from worry about much more than the basics--what am i eating, where am i sleeping. i guess the basic experience i want on a trip is freedom--freedom from worries, plans, things needing to be done, etc. pure freedom to be as i please[1].

and on this trip i've come so far in that freedom as to feel the rule doesn't go far enough: that is, i've started wanting my stuff to get stolen. even accepting it might, it hasn't been, and all this stuff is a pain in the ass sometimes, honestly. if somebody snatched my bike, yes, i'd be relegated to public transport the rest of my days, and a heavy bag, but i wouldn't have to keep wheeling the thing in and out of guesthouse rooms, or worry about leaving it on the street when i go in somewhere.

it's not just the bike, it's everything: i sometimes wish--like today--that it would all disappear. that i had just the clothes on my back, and some money in my pocket. i guess i'd want my passport, too, so i could avoid having to spend days at the US Embassy trying to get out of the country, but that's it. no books to read, no computer to write with, just little old me and wherever i happen to be.

is that a funny wish? i guess it's one i could fulfill myself: all i have to do is leave it all on the corner of a street downtown, give it to one of the mamas begging for food with her baby on her back. but it's different doing it yourself and having someone else do it for you, isn't it? i think i've just accepted it might get lost so thoroughly that i'm sometimes surprised i still have it, and even the minimal care i give it seems like a pain. nevertheless, here i am dragging all my stuff through the narrow hallways of another guesthouse. i guess i'm not yet ready for the kind of really free travel Jesus talked about when he sent the disciples out, or that Buddhists monks do with only a begging bowl. too tied to material life for that. but now and then, i think they're the ones who really know how to travel.

[1]i think this is something that i share with my dad, who has come to love taking off on motorcycle for weeks at a time, with not much more than a general plan of where to go or what to do. i want to say we came to it by different paths, and vacations when my sister and i were still young were different, but who knows? maybe it is like father like son...


a spoonful of sugar
i think i talked while at Byoona Amagara about how the island made people think, and they either then got into the self-reflection that might have been the whole reason they went on vacation,or they left/drank themselves out of it, etc., because they were still afraid of that reflection. there are surely many other reasons to travel to beautiful places, but getting time and space to reflect on your life has got to be one of the main ones, and at the same time one of the hardest. like they say, wherever you go, there you are. you can't travel outside yourself. maybe people who time for self-reflection should ixnay the beautiful places and stay in border towns instead.

anyway, i'm starting to notice another effect of travel, one that comes after being on the road awhile. the period of time is not important: four days will feel long to some people, others need weeks, months. but at some point, you begin to wonder what you're doing. you begin to feel you don't have a purpose in society, that you are peripheral to the movement of every day life. i think this happens around the time that all the stress you had saved up from whatever you left has sloughed off, and your mind and spirit are a bit free again. the immediate purpose of escape, of release, of experiencing freedom is fulfilled. then if you are still on the road, the question is, why?

there are surely many answers to it: having always wanted to see such-and-such a thing; or doing what you're doing as a challenge (this probably applies a lot to bicyclists); having someone to meet or something specific to do later in the trip, etc. but there are also surely many travellers--like myself--who have no such answer. we are on the road, travelling, without really being able to say why is we are travelling. at least, there's no immediate answer.

and i have more to say about what kind of answers come, and what you can learn from travelling beyond the obvious seeing of sights, tasting of foods, learning of new languages, etc. but what i wanted to mention today was how extended travel can be the needed spoonful of sugar to make regular life go down. when you travel, you are always on the peripheries of regular life: you are a customer but not a worker, a guest but not a regular, a new friend but never an old one.

that life on the periphery--travel--makes you want a place. it makes you want people around you that you've known and will know for some time, some work that you can do every day, a regular bed to sleep at night with a pillow you're used to. it makes you want a home, to go home if you have one, to go make one if--like me--you don't.

and travel that way is a natural end to itself, and support to regular life: it puts you on the outside, free, and after awhile you want again to be inside, confined but comfortable, knowing your place in the world.

this feeling comes and goes on the road--for me it's strongest when i am looking for a place to stay, opening different guesthouse doors to peer in to rooms and wonder if they are mine, talking to the managers and wondering if these are my hosts for tonight, looking for the next place with every immediate thing i own along with me, feeling just a touch homeless--those are the times it hits me. and it's good: like a little sugar in the tomato sauce to balance the acidity, a little travel in the soup of life balances the restlessness we all have inside.

so travel can be that spoonful of sugar Mary Poppins sang about, herself something of a traveler, the one that makes the medicine go down...

the facts of the day
included biking most of Bujumbura looking for a guesthouse, as the nice one i was at had no vacancies for tonight; included giving some bread to mothers with children begging on the street this morning, then being overrun by them again in the afternoon, and refusing; included a long session with the Bastard King later in the afternoon, and being so frustrated with how poorly it's written i started a serious plan for a fantasy book of my own; supper--chips and rice with a chunk of beef and some sauce that tasted like ramen soup mix--with some Kenyans staying at my guesthouse, over beers of course; passing out on the bed and having to fight awake to take my malaria meds and brush my teeth. honestly, today was one of those days that will be a spoonful of sugar later.

day seventeen: kigali - bujumbura

HIGHLIGHTS: anita - how vomit turns to cheese - somatic composition - chance meetings on the night streets of Bujumbura


horizon fiasco, or, ratty ratty poop
i wake up at 6, am out the door by seven, saying my last goodbyes to the good folks who are awake at Rujumbura guest house, arrive a good hour early at the Horizon bus office, where i yesterday booked and paid for tickets, and sit there to wait for my bus.

people come, we chat in Luganda, i get some breakfast (hot sweet milk and margarined bread) with a new friend, come back and wait some more, bastard king in tow.

finally, we are told the bus is coming, and i roll my bicycle plus panniers out to meet it, start disassembling before it arrives because i know it will be easier to load that way. i get the two panniers off, and the front wheel, then stand there waiting for someone to come and get my stuff. instead the driver revs the engine, is talking on the phone and the manager who knows me at the same time, rolls the bus forward a couple feet. i wave at him, he waves back, and i'm a bit reassured knowing he knows i need to get on the bus, bike and all.

then he pulls away.

what?! it is not a parking maneuver: the bus pulls onto a busy Kigali thoroughfare and i know it's not coming back. they've left me, after i paid all that money and waited more than an hour for it to come. ratty poop. and me i wanted to go to Burundi. ratty ratty poop.

the conductor happens to be there so i give him some high-decibel words (partially because i've learned this is how you get refunds and free nights in hotels, and partially because i want to give out some high-decibel words) in the midst of a gathering taxi-park crowd.

he acquiesces, after some wording, says they'll put me up for the night and i'll go in the morning. lovely. but this is not the time to go quietly into the night, because i had my last day with Kigali, and i want to go to Burundi today. better yet, while waiting for the delinquent Horizon bus to show, i made friends with a guy from Kampala Coach (the big red monster buses that have so often nearly mowed me down) who said they would have taken me cheaper, and i know their bus to Bujumbura is still here, leaving soon. in other words, i want my money so i can go get where im going, and cheaper anyway.

no dice. more high-decibels. funky in-charge bus lady with the drawn-on eyebrows gives me a look, the decibals continue, eventually i convince the conductor to come with me to Kampala Coach, we work it out, all my stuff gets thrown on the bus last minute, bike just laid on the backseat grease and all, and we are on the road. the two white folks on the bus give me funny looks as i board moments before departure, probably realizing the bicycle and the arguments outside were mine. so be it: i got on a bus, and got on the way.


how i write when im getting sleepy:
witness the last sentence written before bed last night, from the blurb above: lvoely. but this is not teh time to coem up: ou spresh it until its socil


the ride i never took
by bicycle from Kigali to the border was gorgeous and punishing. i kept looking out the window, imagining how aching tired i'd be by the top of this or that hill, where i would have had to spend the night, how much more lovely those lovely views would have been in the fresh air, in the morning quiet, at the slow pace of a bicycle. how much lovelier even they'd've been coasting down the other side, fifteen minutes of fresh air and no pedaling, taking in sweeping views of Rwanda's garden-patchworked hills, greens and browns and silver eucalyptus, the air in my lungs full of their every scent...

then i'd get kind of sleepy, because it was a bus ride after all, and pass out through an unknown amount of punishing-by-bicycle steep uphill grades, wake up for a big town i would have been rejoicing to reach, pass out again...

a few miles before the border, road sweeping this way and that and our driver taking it at the highest possible speed, the girl next to me started vomiting into a bag i'd used for breakfast, which i knew had holes in the bottom. another nonaspect of travel by bicycle, along with the heated-in-the-sun smell of what passed through the bag being with us, windows-open, the rest of the way to Bujumbura.

probably the clincher, the killer, was not even passing through clouds in the mountains of Burundi, or the shift from mountain to lowland vegetation as we descended those mountains, the shift i'd spent days going through in Uganda--it was the first glimpses of Lake Tanganyika, and the capital city Bujumbura laid on on its northmost shore, a glittering mirror expanse in the middle of a dramatically flat stretch between steep-rising mountains.

out the bus window, it was beautiful. from a bicycle seat coasting that well-earned last coast down into town, it would have been breath-takingly, unwordably lovely.

so be it: my choice of bus travel was confirmed when, talking to locals after arriving in Bujumbura, they agreed it would not have been safe to travel that way by bicycle, nor would it be a good idea to cycle south from there into Tanzania. so at least i got to see it by bus, hurried and expensive and vomit-scented though it was. better that than an uninteresting five-day detour through Tanzania, or a too-interesting hold-up somewhere in the mountains of Burundi by armed thugs who left me with little more than my name, necessitating a bus ride anyway.


kristi + ian
the crossing into Burundi took a lot longer than expected, because customs officials and passengers on our bus bringing things back for sale had some disagreements, so i--being the solitary white person traveller needing companionship--made friends with the other bazungu who'd given me funny looks on entering the bus a few hours ago, Kristi and Ian.

we sat on a surprisingly-pleasant porch of boards laid over a drainage ditch, had some water and tried to avoid all the beggars, young, old and handicapped, who eyed us from the street.
there is something, we agreed, about border towns: they are always the seediest, the dodgiest, the most depressing parts of a country. i wondered out loud what it would be like to take a long journey stopping only in border towns. probably pretty wretched, i guess: likely to end quickly in theivery thuggery or muggery.

muggeral though the place was, it was nice sharing the wait with some people of similar perspective, especially Kristi, who was fresh from DC and not yet culturally diluted like her friend Ian and I. people like her are kind of anchors in my mind to the home i left five years ago--reminders beyond my sweetened or soured memories of what the place is really like.

in good time, the disagreers worked out their disagreements over beers, and we got back on the bus for the ride south, slight vomit smell having cheesed some during the hour plus baking session it had with no windows open.


willy + anita
Bujumbura was everything and nothing i expected it to be: edgier than Uganda or Rwanda, big decaying streets empty by late afternoon, bakeries and little groceries and cafes everywhere, friendly people and begging mothers with their children and army trucks and aging storefronts painted in French or Kirundi.

i was looking for somewhere to eat, having had nothing but a couple pieces of bread the whole day (and not wanting more in the bus), and after visiting the most local place the guidebook recommended, and confirming that it was written for people uninterested in actual Burundi, decided to start asking. at the very first place i asked, i ran into one of the conductors for our bus, who pointed me to a little place across the street.

entering the narrow gate, i saw lots of low tables surrounded with stools, some potted plants and little areas sectioned off with bamboo. it looked local, comfortable, and inviting. perfect. and on my right as i went in, some guys were drinking beer from glasses, and invited me over.

so i sat down, ordered a beer, and we chatted as best we could in the languages we shared. this has become one of my favorite things to do while traveling: sit down and have a random beer with some people drinking. it's the perfect way to get in the local culture a bit: the people you meet are uninterested in your money, the beer gives reason to sit together and fills gaps in the conversation (and makes it more interesting as more beers come), and you get to know each other. i don't really like drinking, but i really appreciate its place in Western and Western-influenced cultures: it is the social catalyst to friendship.

so we took ours in plenty, my empty stomach getting the alcohol quickly into my bloodstream, talking and laughing as the rain started, the lights cut, some ladies sat across the way from us, and the evening turned to night.

i was ready for food, and begged that we either order something or they direct me to somewhere i could eat. they did one better: Willy, who had the best English in the group, insisted we go across the way to a different pub close to his house. we did, but once we had our beers it turned out they again only served meat on a stick and fried banana, which didn't sound like a meal to me. so he went from offering to bring some food from his house to actually taking me there, and we again ran through the rain to just the other side of the courtyard, where he gave me a quick tour of his house. there was his room, a room for his cousin, a kitchen with a big guy i took to be a butler, and a living area with some rooms for his sister. it was there that we ended, and sat down on a nice sofa, TV going in the background (the power had come back). after a bit more drinking he brought some beans and rice, with a fire-roasted habanero pepper and some local cheese, muzigo (a love of mine from Uganda) over top.

the food was nice, but made so much nicer by having it in someone's home. it is a really special thing to be invited to someone's house in a foreign country, and be welcomed there like a friend, especially if it is unplanned. you see what they really eat, where they really live and all the things about life in that place you would never know staying in hotels and eating at restaurants. it's like being let in on a well-kept secret.

before we were done with the beans, his sister Anita came home. shy, slim, cute Anita... she might have been the highlight of the night! Willy convinced her to sit down, and we sat talking about her studies at university, her English better than anyone I'd so far met in Burundi. Willy had gone to prepare a place outside, and now--beans done--made us go sit outside to enjoy the night air, fresh cleaned by the rain.

sitting talking with them i gradually saw them as more than Africans or Burundians, but as real, idiosyncratic people: Willy, a bit high-strung and resistant to marraige at 40; Anita, smart and quiet and maybe 15 years younger than Willy but clearly the head of the household. The lights went out again, Anita fetched a candle, and we chatted more as Willy went to get his girlfriend Deborah from the street. i know these names sound like characters from an 80s soap opera, but i swear i'm not making them up. Anita is a serious Protestant, against Willy's (and by extension, my) beer drinking, but with a warm laugh and a curious mind about life outside Burundi. Deborah and Willy come back, and we sit and talk some more, then the fish is done and we all go inside for cassava bread (made better here than the dreaded twada of Uganda) and small fish in tomato sauce with eggplants. the food is really good, and we all crowd around a few plates, eating with sauce. we share a couple plates and all eat with our hands.

it's great: my very first night in Burundi, and i've made friends and been welcomed in to their home to share food. what more could i ask for?

it gets late, it's time to go for me and Deborah, and Anita walks us as far as the gate, giving me a small handshake goodbye (let me admit by this time that I'm a bit interested in the lovely Ms. Anita, and sad to say goodbye), then Willy walks me to the road, where he flags a taxi for Deborah and we all say good night, him inviting me to come over again anytime. and you know, i just might.


it is around then
that i remember the guidebook warns strongly against being out after dark, but it doesn't look that bad; my guesthouse is just a few blocks away. i decide to walk it.

and wouldn't you know the first person i run into, a sharp-dressed young man silhoutted in the flourescent light of a closed storefront, approaches me like we have business. shit. here's my first run-in with les petits bandits, the small gangs my guidebook says roam the streets by night, ready to mug anyone "daft enough to be walking the streets at night."

"Levi," he says. "what are you doing here?"

it's another one of the conductors from the bus! how random! and reassuring! we have a bit of a chat, him as surprised as i was that i just had dinner at someone's house, then we part for the night, and i manage the rest of the walk back unscathed. it's been a good evening in Burundi, and as i step back into my hotel room--the nicest i've been in all trip, with a view over thecity to the lake and a bakery smell in the air--I am liking Burundi more and more.