They say bad luck comes in three's, so I guess this was the week. It's been an eventful few days in Southern Africa and Los Angeles, and it certainly could have gone better.
The week didn't start off so bad, really. Last weekend, we went out two nights in a row for my roommate, Lauren's, birthday. On Friday this meant I met lots of locals and expats at the Bull and Bush pub and listened to a mediocre singer that bills herself "a professional" (In reality, it's karaoke, and not very good at that. At least she got into it and danced on the tables.). On Saturday, we tried out the Lizard Lounge Club after a dinner in nearby Riverwalk Mall. The club wasn't too happening, but we learned that Batswana reeeeeally like to dance in front of mirrors, and many of them wear winter scarves onto the dance floor--a curious choice of clubbing accessory. We also tried "springbok" shots for the first time--South African amarulla mixed with mint liquor, named after a deer-like animal. Yum! Sunday, after an unfortunate miscommunication in the combi (we ended up in the outskirts of Gabs; there were lots of cows), we met our boss for lunch, her son took us to a local bar, and then he joined us to watch "Hangover" at the movie theater. Then, during the week, the U.S. stunned Spain at the Confederation's Cup in South Africa, and qualified for the event final. I also found a great new source of satirical news, Hayibo which is the South African version of "The Onion". I was laughing, and life was good.
Then, easy as A-B-C, it all took a turn for the worse. South Africa lost to Brazil in the Confederation's Cup. Then, on Friday, I came into work to find out that Michael Jackson had died--it was the first thing my co-worker told me in the morning. The poor guy was preparing his comeback, which might have actually redeemed him from some of the weirdness that has engulfed him in recent years. So sad. I suppose the only thing to do is turn up the Thriller. Everyone was distraught--didn't matter if you're black or white. Our favorite taxi driver (who is--randomly--a singer/music producer on the side and is preparing to go to the U.S. to try and promote his music) was upset he would no longer have a chance to meet MJ in person. Over the weekend, our friend wouldn't go to dinner with us until she saw the news clip that promised more information on the cause of his death. And not only MJ, but Farrah Fawcett died too! How am I supposed to put the finishing touches on an AIDS workshop for UN employees with all of this (ok, that actually didn't go so badly, more on work in the next post)? C'mon sadness, just beat it!
But the disappointment didn't end there. Lauren and Kefi and I were planning to go up to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans for the weekend, but our planning fell somewhat short of the mark. Honestly though, I can't even say "Makgadikgadi" correctly, so no wonder (the "kg" makes a hacking phlegm-like coughing sound). First, we thought a friend could drive us in his 4x4 (you can't take a 2WD through the sand around the pans), but that fell through the day before we were supposed to go. Then, all the 4x4's were booked through rental companies. Then, one was available, but absurdly expensive. We thought about starting with the man in the mirror and changing our...plans, but instead we decided to rent a 2WD and hope we could find a salt pans tour when we arrived.
We arrived late in Francistown to spend the night, then woke up early to head on to Nata, near the edge of the pans. Some morning phone calls made us think our luck was turning around. We found a tour in Nata and an affordable room in Gweta, a little further down the road. But over breakfast at Wimpy's, the room in Gweta fell through (they'd overbooked). We drove on to Nata anyway, and found a room at a very nice lodge that was equivalently pricey. No choice but to fork over the pula. At least we got to lounge by the pool.
Not content to stop 'til we got enough, we drove out to the Nata Sanctuary for our tour, where we were joined by a very nice couple of avid ornithologists from Australia. Imagine our surprise, however, when we reached the salt pans with our guide, only to discover that the entire pan was a giant lake! We thought, based on our Lonely Planet, that we would be able to drive out onto the pans and experience the sense of confusion and disorientation that is supposed to come from being on this vast, white, ethereal surface. Nope. Apparently the water usually has receded somewhat this time of year, but given all the recent rains, the pans were completely flooded. And they only dry up completely every few years or so. We had no choice but to enjoy the view of the unusual amount of water, and observe the birds. We saw a pelican, but not the usual flamingos. On a little bushwalk of my own, I tracked some eland (antelope), and got close enough to take some fuzzy pictures (below), and far enough into the bush to get a few mosquito bites (and luckily no ticks!). We watched the sunset, then headed back to the lodge.
Dinner at the lodge was tasty, and equivalently expensive. Morning came early. We had to get the car back by 4 pm. Driving along the roads in northern Botswana at 7 am, birds are everywhere. As they hear your car approaching, they disperse to the winds, as if they are celebrating and announcing the arrival of royalty in a fairytale. It's very peaceful and pretty, and makes you forget about the potholes on the road...at least it did until we clipped one of the little avian wonders with the car. Survival of the fittest...go join MJ and Farrah, little bird, and my apologies--I'm only human. I'm glad we hit you, and not one of the people scything grass or a cow or donkey or goat hanging out on the side of the road.
After returning the rental car, we had a peaceful afternoon in our house, then went to the house of a co-worker, Poloko, who had invited us for dinner. She made us some amazing traditional Botswana food--dumplings, beef in a vegetable stew, cabbage, and peaches and cream for dessert. Back at home, I tried to pick up the Confederation's Cup Final on my mp3 player's FM radio, but only got three music stations. The DJ threw me a halftime bone by announcing a 2-0 US lead over Brazil, and I fell asleep thinking the US might actually win a major soccer tournament. I was distressed this morning to learn Brazil has mastered the art of the comeback. Oh, the luck--it's bad, bad, really really bad. But, honestly, nothing that I can't get over. And Wednesday is a Botswana holiday, and I have the day off work. So I'm pretty sure good luck is on the way.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
My little house
I love my little house. I moved in after three days in Gabs, into a little neighborhood near Broadhurst, in the northeast of the city. It is a two-bedroom house that I share with one of the other UN interns. I did not know what this neighborhood was called for a long time, because it is in between two neighborhoods, and every time we asked a taxi driver to clarify the name of the region, we got a different answer…and I never could remember any of the Setswana words. I do know one of the names is the Setswana word for “baboon.” That one is my favorite. I finally clarified it with our new favorite taxi driver--we live in Ledumang. It sounds French, but isn't.
The house is inside a gated compound, and our landlady, her husband, and kids live in the house next door. Around the corner is a pre-school, so on our way to work in the morning we see lots of cute little children walking to school. It is also (randomly) around the corner from a Sikh Temple. I know nothing about the Sikh religion, but their temple is beautifully lit up with multi-colored lights on some evenings. We are a few blocks away from the Choppie’s supermarket, and a bar that looks somewhat gritty, but definitely warrants exploring.
The neighborhood:
Sikh Temple and Street at Dusk:
Here are some more reasons I love my house:
-It is furnished! This includes towels, kitchen table and cooking ware, fridge, and beds. It also includes an oversized curtain in the kitchen window. There is no living room, but that’s ok. My favorite room is my room. The theme is safari, which I did not ask for, but find perfectly fitting. As you can see from the picture, there are giraffes on the curtains, and leopards on the bedspread:
-Gas stove—hurray! Everything cooks so well with butagas.
-The shower is HOT! This is no Peace Corps service, let me tell you. No bucket baths in the freezing cold of winter, oh no. The water pressure is mediocre, but the water never ever gets cold. And I could even take a real bath if I wanted to. This hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
-There is a magical housecleaning service! I also did not ask for this, but it came included in the rent (a mere 1750 pula ($250) per person a month). Every Monday, a housekeeper comes in to clean our bathroom and kitchen, take out our garbage, and (wonder of wonders) she does our laundry and presses our clothes. She comes while we are at work, so we have yet to see her—-this is why I find the whole thing somewhat magical.
I must admit, at first I was a little uneasy about the prospect of a housekeeper, even though it’s always good to be able to feed a little bit back into the local economy. I don’t actually mind doing a little housecleaning every now and then, and I am also somewhat particular about my laundry. Part of it is that I don’t want anyone to mess up my laundry and feel responsible for it—if someone’s going to destroy my clothes, it might as well be me. I also remember how hard those Berber ladies in Morocco scrubbed laundry and, not knowing if Botswana was the same way, I was afraid to turn over my clothes for fear they would come back significantly worn out, or with holes in them from pressing them on the wrong setting.
But I have gradually come around to being ok with the situation. It took some time—I didn’t leave any laundry for her the first week, just to see how my housemate Lauren’s turned out. First thing we learned from her experience: the magical housekeeper does not do underwear. Relief—I’d rather wash my own anyway. So week two, I decided to put out my clothes that could stand a standard wash, and take my chances. And…wow! This lady is good! Everything was pressed to perfection, and folded as if I was buying it off a store shelf. I was missing one of my favorite grey t-shirts, though this is probably just a mix-up in the wash. I have hope I will reclaim it.
So yes, I love my little house. Sometime soon, we’ll invite people over, but we need more chairs first…
The house is inside a gated compound, and our landlady, her husband, and kids live in the house next door. Around the corner is a pre-school, so on our way to work in the morning we see lots of cute little children walking to school. It is also (randomly) around the corner from a Sikh Temple. I know nothing about the Sikh religion, but their temple is beautifully lit up with multi-colored lights on some evenings. We are a few blocks away from the Choppie’s supermarket, and a bar that looks somewhat gritty, but definitely warrants exploring.
The neighborhood:
Sikh Temple and Street at Dusk:
Here are some more reasons I love my house:
-It is furnished! This includes towels, kitchen table and cooking ware, fridge, and beds. It also includes an oversized curtain in the kitchen window. There is no living room, but that’s ok. My favorite room is my room. The theme is safari, which I did not ask for, but find perfectly fitting. As you can see from the picture, there are giraffes on the curtains, and leopards on the bedspread:
-Gas stove—hurray! Everything cooks so well with butagas.
-The shower is HOT! This is no Peace Corps service, let me tell you. No bucket baths in the freezing cold of winter, oh no. The water pressure is mediocre, but the water never ever gets cold. And I could even take a real bath if I wanted to. This hasn’t happened yet, but it will.
-There is a magical housecleaning service! I also did not ask for this, but it came included in the rent (a mere 1750 pula ($250) per person a month). Every Monday, a housekeeper comes in to clean our bathroom and kitchen, take out our garbage, and (wonder of wonders) she does our laundry and presses our clothes. She comes while we are at work, so we have yet to see her—-this is why I find the whole thing somewhat magical.
I must admit, at first I was a little uneasy about the prospect of a housekeeper, even though it’s always good to be able to feed a little bit back into the local economy. I don’t actually mind doing a little housecleaning every now and then, and I am also somewhat particular about my laundry. Part of it is that I don’t want anyone to mess up my laundry and feel responsible for it—if someone’s going to destroy my clothes, it might as well be me. I also remember how hard those Berber ladies in Morocco scrubbed laundry and, not knowing if Botswana was the same way, I was afraid to turn over my clothes for fear they would come back significantly worn out, or with holes in them from pressing them on the wrong setting.
But I have gradually come around to being ok with the situation. It took some time—I didn’t leave any laundry for her the first week, just to see how my housemate Lauren’s turned out. First thing we learned from her experience: the magical housekeeper does not do underwear. Relief—I’d rather wash my own anyway. So week two, I decided to put out my clothes that could stand a standard wash, and take my chances. And…wow! This lady is good! Everything was pressed to perfection, and folded as if I was buying it off a store shelf. I was missing one of my favorite grey t-shirts, though this is probably just a mix-up in the wash. I have hope I will reclaim it.
So yes, I love my little house. Sometime soon, we’ll invite people over, but we need more chairs first…
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Hot Cross Buns in Soweto (or: how to survive a road trip to Jo’burg without really trying) (or: wtf? They drive on the left here?)
Here's the slideshow from my recent weekend in Johannesburg...story to explain all the pictures is below! You can also expand the slideshow to full screen (and get captions by doing so)
Last weekend, we wanted to travel again. We, in this case, are the three of us interning at the UN for the summer: me (the American studying at Princeton), Lauren (the Canadian studying at Columbia), and Ian (the Brit studying at Harvard). We have become something like a Three Ivy League International Intern Musketeers Trio. This time, we went even bigger than Rhino Sanctuary Weekend—we decided to go to the Gold City: Johannesburg, South Africa…and we decided to road trip it.
The first decision was who would drive. Lauren was not yet 25, so she was out. After much persistence, I won the battle. I really wanted to try driving on the wrong (aka, left) side of the road, and was the only one with experience driving in African countries (the Tichka pass and Marrakech in the Maghreb definitely count for something). And I reserved the car. The man at Budget Rent-a-Car was slightly confused that the male in the group would not be driving (or at least signing onto the registered drivers), so I guess you could say that’s another reason I wanted to drive—yes, girls can drive manual transmission cars too.
Driving in a car that is completely backward from what your brain expects is not easy. You go to the wrong side of the car to get into the driver’s seat. You switch on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. You don’t think of the right-hand lane as the fast lane. It’s just automatic. However, some things were not backward (thank god): the gear shift moves in the same order, and the clutch, brake, and acceleration pads were in the same place. At least my feet didn’t have to think backwards. I was most glad to have a Brit along for the ride though, who so kindly (sometimes frantically) cautioned me if I was planning to turn into the right-hand lane. In my defense, I only attempted such mistaken actions if there was no other traffic around.
The Friday evening drive itself was fairly uneventful—no animals attempting to cross the road in the dark, which we had been warned about by our trusty Lonely Planet. The hardest part was figuring how to get out of Gaborone. There were lots of trucks on the road, and we saw a few funerals going on as the sun was setting (a sober reminder that we were traveling the infamous high-HIV transmission trucking corridor). We listened to the local music CDs we’d picked up, stopped for some dinner in Zeerust, and I think over an hour of the trip was passed with Ian explaining the rules of that most complex sport, cricket. I now know what “the Ashes” an “over,” a “golden duck,” a “fast bowl,” “20/20” and a “wicket” are. I am sad to report, however, that they do not generally drink Pims at cricket matches. The only hitch of the drive down was when we briefly got lost and took the M1 rather than the N1 freeway on the way from Pretoria, and narrowly missed a semi-truck that was stalled in the middle lane of the highway with no lights or flares on. But we arrived at our CouchSurfing destination (a nice little apartment in Randburg) unscathed, and chatted up our host, John, for awhile before heading to bed.
In the morning, we woke up early so as to get to the Lion Park before the crowds. We were determined to get some quality time in playing with lion cubs, and didn’t want to have to share. The Cub World part of the experience was AWESOME. You can pet the lion cubs, just not on the head or tail, advice we didn’t try too hard to resist following (they’re cubs, but they have teeth!). One of them tried to eat my new Converse kickers, luckily, the trainer got his little jaws of shoelace death off in time. We also got to feed a giraffe, an animal which I have always felt my height gives me a certain kinship with. I just hope I am not as slobbery as a giraffe…those blue tongues produce a lot of saliva! Still, an awesome experience. I can’t say the rest of the Lion Park was that thrilling. Yes, we got to see lions and a cheetah and a leopard, and hyenas, but it felt somewhat like a zoo, since the animals were really just in giant cages. You know the tourists feed the lions too, since they jump up on the big safari trucks that drive around. We were in our own car, and kept the windows rolled UP…if there was a fight between a lion and our little VW Golf, I don’t know which would have won.
The next stop was the Apartheid Museum, but when we arrived, we learned there was no restaurant in the museum…and we were hungry! Lucky for us (unlucky for the sense of seriousness you would want to accompany an Apartheid Museum) the museum is adjacent to Gold Reef City, a theme park at the site where gold was discovered in Johannesburg back in the mid-1800s. And Gold Reef City is across a pedestrian bridge from a casino (yes, again, super tacky given the museum is there too), which has several restaurants inside. If there was an African-themed casino in Vegas, it would look like this: Golden elephants, gilded gazelles in the fountain outside…oh man. After our lunch, we decided we just couldn’t resist blowing a few rand on the slot machines. This turned out to be way too complex. You couldn’t just plug the machine with coins—you had to go buy a card for 10 rand ($1.50). This took us ten minutes to figure out. Then, the card doesn’t have money on it to begin with, but it acquires it as you win money. So we had to put another 10 rand in the bill slot to play. Maybe we won something, but I think we gambled when we shouldn’t have, and consequently lost it. We had no idea what we were doing and just pushed buttons at random. I’m sure this could be made into a dumb blonde-esque joke about “How many Ivy Leaguers does it take to play slots?” (Punchline: It doesn’t matter, they’ll still lose it all.) but we consoled ourselves with really good dipped ice cream cones to make up for it.
When we finally got to the museum, we stayed for a solid three hours. I think if I had not been there, the other two would have finished in two hours, but I got really into reading everything about Nelson Mandela’s life, and took my sweet time. The museum did an excellent job giving the history of Johannesburg (going back to the San “bushmen”), and had massive amounts of media and information on what it was like to live under apartheid for different races. It is mind-blowing to watch film clips of white South African politicians justifying segregation on the basis of racial superiority, and realizing this all ended less than 20 years ago—in my lifetime. The scars are certainly still present in society. I think the most difficult thing to experience was walking into the replication of the isolation prison cells that the apartheid government kept political prisoners (read: black activists) inside for long stretches of time. The feeling of claustrophobia was immense.
After the museum, we had an hour of daylight left, and decided to take a brief driving tour of the downtown (Central Business District, or CBD). As per travel book instructions, we kept the doors locked, and were definitely the only three white people around when we drove through bustling Hillbrow, which is part of the downtown that was abandoned by whites when apartheid ended. It felt a little bit uncomfortable when we got stuck in a minor traffic bottleneck near the taxi rank, but in general (and this feeling was true in general for the weekend), everyone we met was really friendly (though we did get some surprised looks when we were in predominantly black areas of town).
For those who know nothing about Johannesburg, the first thing you typically hear is just how dangerous it is. Crime rates are high, and all the information I’ve ever read about the city advises you to be highly aware of where you are and what time of day it is (after dark in many neighborhoods is not advisable). We read everything from “be prepared to run red lights if you see people lingering around stoplights to avoid car jacking” to “don’t wear earrings because they will get ripped out of your ears”. Even the travel magazine I read before leaving the States on “underrated destinations” that extolled the wonders of Jo’burg (and was perhaps a little over-glorifying) advised being cautious to avoid muggings. However, locals will tell you that the place is not as dangerous as it is made out to be, and considering over 5 million people make their home in the city, that’s probably also fairly accurate. So moral of the story is that you shouldn’t avoid Johannesburg based on what you read—yes there is crime, but there is crime everywhere, and if you use common sense, you will probably come out of the city with nothing remarkable having happened.
We had dinner in trendy Melville with our host, John. I had ostrich spring rolls and tasty kingklip fish (which I’m told is only found around South Africa). Top it all off with a dry South African sauvignon blanc, and it was delicious! We turned in early so as to get an early start for our second day of touring. In the morning, we returned to Hillbrow to check out Constitution Hill. This is the site of an old fort, and a former women’s prison (Mandela’s wife was imprisoned here for awhile). The Constitutional Court is behind the fort, which Mandela opened in 1993…no one was around, so we went up and sat in the chair where Nelson himself sat 16 years ago.
We wrapped up our time in Jozi with a driving tour of Soweto (an acronym for “South West Township,” which was started in the 1930s by blacks). We picked up the most delicious breakfast ever at a filling station…hot cross buns! This is not just a simple song on the piano—it is cinnamon-raisin filled doughy warm goodness. We ate a lot of them. Then we started driving. Soweto is, first and foremost, not a slum. Income levels vary widely, which is evident by the type of houses you see—there are very well-off neighborhoods, as well as much poorer sections of the township. The place is huge! We toured the Hector Pieterson museum, which pays tribute to the student uprising of June 16, 1976, where students in Soweto protested the forced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in the schools. Hector Pieterson was shot by police, and the museum is named in his honor. A few days later, the BCP (one of the Botswana political parties) was holding a rally in the Main Mall in Gaborone was honoring his death and the anniversary of the uprising. They were all wearing Che Guevara shirts—is the BCP the Botswana Communist Party? I should look into this.
We also toured Mandela’s house on Vilakazi street, and ate at a former shebeen (like a bar/restaurant) called Wandie’s. The traditional food was great—lots of meat, maizemeal, pumpkin, spinach, beets, and ice cream with fruit for dessert. I wish I’d had one of my new business cards to put with the countless others on the wall—instead we left a little note saying we’d been there. There was more to see in Soweto, but we needed to start heading back to Gabs to be at work in the morning. So we reluctantly left, and shot back up the freeway toward the border. Our timing was perfect too—unbeknownst to us, the border closes at 10 pm on Sundays…and we pulled into the border station at 9:59. After a weekend in Jozi, Gabs seems positively tame…but then again, Johannesburg has more than twice as many people as the entire country of Botswana. And following all the excitement of a Johannesburg weekend, I think that a relaxing one in Gabs is in store next time Friday rolls around.
Last weekend, we wanted to travel again. We, in this case, are the three of us interning at the UN for the summer: me (the American studying at Princeton), Lauren (the Canadian studying at Columbia), and Ian (the Brit studying at Harvard). We have become something like a Three Ivy League International Intern Musketeers Trio. This time, we went even bigger than Rhino Sanctuary Weekend—we decided to go to the Gold City: Johannesburg, South Africa…and we decided to road trip it.
The first decision was who would drive. Lauren was not yet 25, so she was out. After much persistence, I won the battle. I really wanted to try driving on the wrong (aka, left) side of the road, and was the only one with experience driving in African countries (the Tichka pass and Marrakech in the Maghreb definitely count for something). And I reserved the car. The man at Budget Rent-a-Car was slightly confused that the male in the group would not be driving (or at least signing onto the registered drivers), so I guess you could say that’s another reason I wanted to drive—yes, girls can drive manual transmission cars too.
Driving in a car that is completely backward from what your brain expects is not easy. You go to the wrong side of the car to get into the driver’s seat. You switch on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. You don’t think of the right-hand lane as the fast lane. It’s just automatic. However, some things were not backward (thank god): the gear shift moves in the same order, and the clutch, brake, and acceleration pads were in the same place. At least my feet didn’t have to think backwards. I was most glad to have a Brit along for the ride though, who so kindly (sometimes frantically) cautioned me if I was planning to turn into the right-hand lane. In my defense, I only attempted such mistaken actions if there was no other traffic around.
The Friday evening drive itself was fairly uneventful—no animals attempting to cross the road in the dark, which we had been warned about by our trusty Lonely Planet. The hardest part was figuring how to get out of Gaborone. There were lots of trucks on the road, and we saw a few funerals going on as the sun was setting (a sober reminder that we were traveling the infamous high-HIV transmission trucking corridor). We listened to the local music CDs we’d picked up, stopped for some dinner in Zeerust, and I think over an hour of the trip was passed with Ian explaining the rules of that most complex sport, cricket. I now know what “the Ashes” an “over,” a “golden duck,” a “fast bowl,” “20/20” and a “wicket” are. I am sad to report, however, that they do not generally drink Pims at cricket matches. The only hitch of the drive down was when we briefly got lost and took the M1 rather than the N1 freeway on the way from Pretoria, and narrowly missed a semi-truck that was stalled in the middle lane of the highway with no lights or flares on. But we arrived at our CouchSurfing destination (a nice little apartment in Randburg) unscathed, and chatted up our host, John, for awhile before heading to bed.
In the morning, we woke up early so as to get to the Lion Park before the crowds. We were determined to get some quality time in playing with lion cubs, and didn’t want to have to share. The Cub World part of the experience was AWESOME. You can pet the lion cubs, just not on the head or tail, advice we didn’t try too hard to resist following (they’re cubs, but they have teeth!). One of them tried to eat my new Converse kickers, luckily, the trainer got his little jaws of shoelace death off in time. We also got to feed a giraffe, an animal which I have always felt my height gives me a certain kinship with. I just hope I am not as slobbery as a giraffe…those blue tongues produce a lot of saliva! Still, an awesome experience. I can’t say the rest of the Lion Park was that thrilling. Yes, we got to see lions and a cheetah and a leopard, and hyenas, but it felt somewhat like a zoo, since the animals were really just in giant cages. You know the tourists feed the lions too, since they jump up on the big safari trucks that drive around. We were in our own car, and kept the windows rolled UP…if there was a fight between a lion and our little VW Golf, I don’t know which would have won.
The next stop was the Apartheid Museum, but when we arrived, we learned there was no restaurant in the museum…and we were hungry! Lucky for us (unlucky for the sense of seriousness you would want to accompany an Apartheid Museum) the museum is adjacent to Gold Reef City, a theme park at the site where gold was discovered in Johannesburg back in the mid-1800s. And Gold Reef City is across a pedestrian bridge from a casino (yes, again, super tacky given the museum is there too), which has several restaurants inside. If there was an African-themed casino in Vegas, it would look like this: Golden elephants, gilded gazelles in the fountain outside…oh man. After our lunch, we decided we just couldn’t resist blowing a few rand on the slot machines. This turned out to be way too complex. You couldn’t just plug the machine with coins—you had to go buy a card for 10 rand ($1.50). This took us ten minutes to figure out. Then, the card doesn’t have money on it to begin with, but it acquires it as you win money. So we had to put another 10 rand in the bill slot to play. Maybe we won something, but I think we gambled when we shouldn’t have, and consequently lost it. We had no idea what we were doing and just pushed buttons at random. I’m sure this could be made into a dumb blonde-esque joke about “How many Ivy Leaguers does it take to play slots?” (Punchline: It doesn’t matter, they’ll still lose it all.) but we consoled ourselves with really good dipped ice cream cones to make up for it.
When we finally got to the museum, we stayed for a solid three hours. I think if I had not been there, the other two would have finished in two hours, but I got really into reading everything about Nelson Mandela’s life, and took my sweet time. The museum did an excellent job giving the history of Johannesburg (going back to the San “bushmen”), and had massive amounts of media and information on what it was like to live under apartheid for different races. It is mind-blowing to watch film clips of white South African politicians justifying segregation on the basis of racial superiority, and realizing this all ended less than 20 years ago—in my lifetime. The scars are certainly still present in society. I think the most difficult thing to experience was walking into the replication of the isolation prison cells that the apartheid government kept political prisoners (read: black activists) inside for long stretches of time. The feeling of claustrophobia was immense.
After the museum, we had an hour of daylight left, and decided to take a brief driving tour of the downtown (Central Business District, or CBD). As per travel book instructions, we kept the doors locked, and were definitely the only three white people around when we drove through bustling Hillbrow, which is part of the downtown that was abandoned by whites when apartheid ended. It felt a little bit uncomfortable when we got stuck in a minor traffic bottleneck near the taxi rank, but in general (and this feeling was true in general for the weekend), everyone we met was really friendly (though we did get some surprised looks when we were in predominantly black areas of town).
For those who know nothing about Johannesburg, the first thing you typically hear is just how dangerous it is. Crime rates are high, and all the information I’ve ever read about the city advises you to be highly aware of where you are and what time of day it is (after dark in many neighborhoods is not advisable). We read everything from “be prepared to run red lights if you see people lingering around stoplights to avoid car jacking” to “don’t wear earrings because they will get ripped out of your ears”. Even the travel magazine I read before leaving the States on “underrated destinations” that extolled the wonders of Jo’burg (and was perhaps a little over-glorifying) advised being cautious to avoid muggings. However, locals will tell you that the place is not as dangerous as it is made out to be, and considering over 5 million people make their home in the city, that’s probably also fairly accurate. So moral of the story is that you shouldn’t avoid Johannesburg based on what you read—yes there is crime, but there is crime everywhere, and if you use common sense, you will probably come out of the city with nothing remarkable having happened.
We had dinner in trendy Melville with our host, John. I had ostrich spring rolls and tasty kingklip fish (which I’m told is only found around South Africa). Top it all off with a dry South African sauvignon blanc, and it was delicious! We turned in early so as to get an early start for our second day of touring. In the morning, we returned to Hillbrow to check out Constitution Hill. This is the site of an old fort, and a former women’s prison (Mandela’s wife was imprisoned here for awhile). The Constitutional Court is behind the fort, which Mandela opened in 1993…no one was around, so we went up and sat in the chair where Nelson himself sat 16 years ago.
We wrapped up our time in Jozi with a driving tour of Soweto (an acronym for “South West Township,” which was started in the 1930s by blacks). We picked up the most delicious breakfast ever at a filling station…hot cross buns! This is not just a simple song on the piano—it is cinnamon-raisin filled doughy warm goodness. We ate a lot of them. Then we started driving. Soweto is, first and foremost, not a slum. Income levels vary widely, which is evident by the type of houses you see—there are very well-off neighborhoods, as well as much poorer sections of the township. The place is huge! We toured the Hector Pieterson museum, which pays tribute to the student uprising of June 16, 1976, where students in Soweto protested the forced use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in the schools. Hector Pieterson was shot by police, and the museum is named in his honor. A few days later, the BCP (one of the Botswana political parties) was holding a rally in the Main Mall in Gaborone was honoring his death and the anniversary of the uprising. They were all wearing Che Guevara shirts—is the BCP the Botswana Communist Party? I should look into this.
We also toured Mandela’s house on Vilakazi street, and ate at a former shebeen (like a bar/restaurant) called Wandie’s. The traditional food was great—lots of meat, maizemeal, pumpkin, spinach, beets, and ice cream with fruit for dessert. I wish I’d had one of my new business cards to put with the countless others on the wall—instead we left a little note saying we’d been there. There was more to see in Soweto, but we needed to start heading back to Gabs to be at work in the morning. So we reluctantly left, and shot back up the freeway toward the border. Our timing was perfect too—unbeknownst to us, the border closes at 10 pm on Sundays…and we pulled into the border station at 9:59. After a weekend in Jozi, Gabs seems positively tame…but then again, Johannesburg has more than twice as many people as the entire country of Botswana. And following all the excitement of a Johannesburg weekend, I think that a relaxing one in Gabs is in store next time Friday rolls around.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Shout-Out to the Essa Lions
I saw one! This is for the Essaouira Lions:
Ok, it's actually an exhibit in the National Museum here in Gaborone, but I thought of you guys. Hopefully, I will see a real one soon! Roar!
Ok, it's actually an exhibit in the National Museum here in Gaborone, but I thought of you guys. Hopefully, I will see a real one soon! Roar!
I Bless the Rains Down in Africa…or do I?
Before leaving the U.S., I researched weather conditions for June and July in Gaborone. A 1% chance of precipitation based on 5-year data left me fairly certain I would not get to create this post. But on Monday I woke up to hear the wind rustling the leaves, felt the humidity in the air, and thought that it might just be my lucky day. Rain!
One of the few Setswana words I’ve learned here is pula, which means "rain" but is also the name of the Botswana currency—and the pula is broken down into 100 cents, called thebe, meaning "raindrops". The fact that money here is named after rain testifies to the value and importance of the latter in this arid country, where most of the land is the Kalahari Desert. Rain is not only money--it is vital for survival, to get a lot of it is lucky, and to have it at all, particularly at this time of year (even if it's just a few thebe), is a blessing.
The clouds hung low all day Monday, and as evening fell in Gaborone, lightning flashed across purple skies, thunder boomed, and the heavy downpour began. I think it could best be described as “raining zebras and wildebeests.” I stepped outside for a minute while I was cooking dinner to smell the freshness that always accompanies a new rainfall and allow my upturned face to soak up a few of the thick drops streaming out of the dark heavens.
It had been a good day—-work was starting to pick up, I’d just come off a great weekend of seeing incredible African wildlife, and the rain was falling on the edge of the desert. What better way to celebrate than by invoking the lyrics of that poetic band of the 80s, Toto? I bless the rains down in Africa…and sense a potential song for a future karaoke night. Turn it up (and enjoy the Lion King clips in the background!):
JD from Scrubs likes Toto too! And the scooter-driving scene is somewhat reminiscent of African roads and drainage systems...
The next morning, I woke up, and realized it was still raining. What happened to a 1% chance of precipitation? This must be the 100-year rainfall event. Why oh why did I only bring 1 pair of office-worthy closed-toed shoes? Oh right, because it wasn’t supposed to be like this! Forget sunny skies and average daily temperature of 75 degrees. I put on my tennis shoes for the commute to work, and changed once I arrived at the office. Indeed, all day, people were saying that this was unseasonable weather. Climate change is real, folks. And I’m hitting myself for giving up the sunny skies of a somewhere-else-summer for African winter. Tuesday night featured rolling power outages at our little house after we got back from seeing a movie. Luckily the stove is gas-fired, and our landlady provided us a battery-powered light.
Surely this weather couldn’t last more than 48 hours? Oh, but it could. Wednesday morning, and the rain was still drizzling off and on, expected to last until the weekend. This feels like Portland in winter, and not at all the quick, hour-long downpours you expect from African rains. Let’s just hope the Limpopo don’t overflow-oh. The cloudless blue skies can come back anytime now. I just pray the sun doesn’t take as long to reappear as it took Toto to break up (Are you serious, Wikipedia—how were they producing albums for 31 years? Did anyone really pay attention to them after the album Toto IV?). Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you…
One of the few Setswana words I’ve learned here is pula, which means "rain" but is also the name of the Botswana currency—and the pula is broken down into 100 cents, called thebe, meaning "raindrops". The fact that money here is named after rain testifies to the value and importance of the latter in this arid country, where most of the land is the Kalahari Desert. Rain is not only money--it is vital for survival, to get a lot of it is lucky, and to have it at all, particularly at this time of year (even if it's just a few thebe), is a blessing.
The clouds hung low all day Monday, and as evening fell in Gaborone, lightning flashed across purple skies, thunder boomed, and the heavy downpour began. I think it could best be described as “raining zebras and wildebeests.” I stepped outside for a minute while I was cooking dinner to smell the freshness that always accompanies a new rainfall and allow my upturned face to soak up a few of the thick drops streaming out of the dark heavens.
It had been a good day—-work was starting to pick up, I’d just come off a great weekend of seeing incredible African wildlife, and the rain was falling on the edge of the desert. What better way to celebrate than by invoking the lyrics of that poetic band of the 80s, Toto? I bless the rains down in Africa…and sense a potential song for a future karaoke night. Turn it up (and enjoy the Lion King clips in the background!):
JD from Scrubs likes Toto too! And the scooter-driving scene is somewhat reminiscent of African roads and drainage systems...
The next morning, I woke up, and realized it was still raining. What happened to a 1% chance of precipitation? This must be the 100-year rainfall event. Why oh why did I only bring 1 pair of office-worthy closed-toed shoes? Oh right, because it wasn’t supposed to be like this! Forget sunny skies and average daily temperature of 75 degrees. I put on my tennis shoes for the commute to work, and changed once I arrived at the office. Indeed, all day, people were saying that this was unseasonable weather. Climate change is real, folks. And I’m hitting myself for giving up the sunny skies of a somewhere-else-summer for African winter. Tuesday night featured rolling power outages at our little house after we got back from seeing a movie. Luckily the stove is gas-fired, and our landlady provided us a battery-powered light.
Surely this weather couldn’t last more than 48 hours? Oh, but it could. Wednesday morning, and the rain was still drizzling off and on, expected to last until the weekend. This feels like Portland in winter, and not at all the quick, hour-long downpours you expect from African rains. Let’s just hope the Limpopo don’t overflow-oh. The cloudless blue skies can come back anytime now. I just pray the sun doesn’t take as long to reappear as it took Toto to break up (Are you serious, Wikipedia—how were they producing albums for 31 years? Did anyone really pay attention to them after the album Toto IV?). Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you…
Monday, June 8, 2009
Charging Rhinos, Hitchhiking and Khama Persuasion
June 7, 2009
My second weekend in country, and it’s time to get out of the capital for a couple of days. What could be more fun than going on safari to Khama Rhino Sanctuary! I am in Africa, after all.
Here are some pictures from the weekend. Read more about it below!
My roommate, Lauren (another intern at the UNDP), and I woke up early Saturday to throw on some clothes for the bus ride. We had called the taxi the night before, telling the driver to arrive at 6:30. Our thinking was that he would actually arrive at 6:40, which would still be enough time to get us to the bus station by 7, so we could sort out our tickets and get good seats on the 8 am bus. Imagine our surprise when taxi man called us at 6:25, from only two blocks away. Since when was anything in Botswana ever on time, much less early? Breakfast would have to happen on the road.
Further surprises were in store for us at the bus station, as a 7 o’clock bus happened to be in existence for our desired destination. Only problem was that we were still waiting on the third UNDP intern, Ian, as well as our co-worker/resident guide, Kefi, to show up to the bus station. We explained our dilemma to the bus conductor who, as the bus began to pull away from the station, told us to have them meet us at the Shell petrol station on the road. More and more people began boarding the bus as we made slow progress toward the Shell, and my confidence that there would be any seats remaining (if they even made the bus) began to wane. The conductor was starting to lose patience, Lauren and I were both on the phone describing the location of the bus to Ian and Kefi. As the bus started to pick up speed, we saw both of them jump on board, slightly out of breath, but able to take the last two remaining seats. Whew. Perfect timing.
Four and a half hours later, we pulled up to the rhino sanctuary outside Serowe, and took a pickup truck to our little chalet. The driver picked us up a little while later to take us to lunch (luckily, since it was several kilometers to the lodge, and we almost certainly would have gotten lost walking the maze of roadways), and after a satisfying meal and an uber-light Botswana beer, we relaxed by what would have been the pool, had it been open. As I walked back to the others after taking some pictures of funny-looking birds, Kefi asked me if I’d taken a picture of the rhino.
“Rhino? Here? Haha, very funny.”
“No really, look.”
“Holy @#%!”
Apparently, the park’s only male black rhino likes to drink from the pool, but is satisfied with the nearby watering hole when that’s not an option. He also runs into the lodge’s sliding glass doors when he sees his reflection and wants to “kiss” it (“kiss” is a term the lodge employees use). I don’t think I’d like to have been eating lunch by those windows when he decided to do that. As the rhino came closer to us, it began to paw the ground. We wondered briefly if he was going to charge, and if we should move to get out of his way. Then we realized he had just been pawing the ground in preparation for taking a dump…double whew.
The surreal sense one gets when observing animals in this context can be incredibly misleading—you have to make a conscious effort to remind yourself just how dangerous they can be, because you initially just think they’re cute and fun. Ian had heard that since rhinos have poor eyesight, you should stand still when rhinos charge, and hope they will become confused, think you are a tree, and decide to stop. I told him, as an experiment, he should act like a tree, and we would observe to test the hypothesis. In the end, to test the shaky theory, we asked our safari guide what he did when he was charged by rhinos (which has happened to him three times while working at the sanctuary). He laughed as he told us he “climbed a tree and was glad if the rhino missed the tree”. So much for pretending to act like a baobab.
After an afternoon safari full of more rhinos, zebras, giraffe, wildebeest, kudu, springbok, and ostriches (which are so weird—I guess ostriches come from Africa, but they seem like they should come from another planet), and a stunning sunset, we had dinner at the lodge before turning in for the evening. In the morning, our driver dropped us off back at the park entrance, and we had to hitchhike into Serowe. Kefi told us (half jokingly) that the way to get a ride in this region of the world, if you are a woman, is not to stick out your thumb, but to stick out your bum. This may be true for the truly booty-licious women of Botswana (I know Sir Mix-A-Lot had them in mind when he wrote “Baby Got Back”), but my butt, while certainly not flat, I do not think was up to the task of getting us a ride. Since a bus with plenty of empty seats happened past us after only 9 minutes of waiting, and flagging it down with our hands was enough, I’m afraid I will never know.
We stopped in Serowe on the way back to Gabs; our only goal was to see the grave of Seretse Khama, chief of the local tribe, and first president of an independent Botswana. Luckily, Kefi is from Serowe, and knew where the police station was, where we had to ask permission to gain access to the hilltop cemetery. Unluckily, the two bored-looking policemen said that we should have called in advance to ask the current chief for permission (since Seretse Khama’s son is the newly-elected president as well as the heir to the local cheiftainship, I guess this means we needed the president’s permission-—yay, bureaucracy). But Kefi was a brilliant negotiator (I could tell this without understanding a word of what she was saying), and Lauren, Ian and I played our parts of dejected-looking students from America quite well. We sighed, lamenting how close we were to seeing this piece of Botswana history, and how far we’d come. The result was that the policemen gave in, and allowed us to go to the cemetery, provided that one of them accompanied us, and we took no pictures. This worked out quite well, as the policeman gave us a full history of the Khama family, the story of each of the four generations of chiefs and their wives buried in the cemetery, and the family’s important role in Botswana’s history—Lonely Planet can’t come close to giving us the wealth of information this guy had.
As I reflected on the trip on the bus ride back to Gabs, I took stock of three important pieces of wisdom the weekend had gleaned: bored policemen can almost always be persuaded to see your point of view, your booty is a powerful weapon, and while hugging a tree is just fine, you should never ever pretend to be one—especially when a rhino is still pacing after he finishes taking a dump.
Pictures to come soon...
My second weekend in country, and it’s time to get out of the capital for a couple of days. What could be more fun than going on safari to Khama Rhino Sanctuary! I am in Africa, after all.
Here are some pictures from the weekend. Read more about it below!
My roommate, Lauren (another intern at the UNDP), and I woke up early Saturday to throw on some clothes for the bus ride. We had called the taxi the night before, telling the driver to arrive at 6:30. Our thinking was that he would actually arrive at 6:40, which would still be enough time to get us to the bus station by 7, so we could sort out our tickets and get good seats on the 8 am bus. Imagine our surprise when taxi man called us at 6:25, from only two blocks away. Since when was anything in Botswana ever on time, much less early? Breakfast would have to happen on the road.
Further surprises were in store for us at the bus station, as a 7 o’clock bus happened to be in existence for our desired destination. Only problem was that we were still waiting on the third UNDP intern, Ian, as well as our co-worker/resident guide, Kefi, to show up to the bus station. We explained our dilemma to the bus conductor who, as the bus began to pull away from the station, told us to have them meet us at the Shell petrol station on the road. More and more people began boarding the bus as we made slow progress toward the Shell, and my confidence that there would be any seats remaining (if they even made the bus) began to wane. The conductor was starting to lose patience, Lauren and I were both on the phone describing the location of the bus to Ian and Kefi. As the bus started to pick up speed, we saw both of them jump on board, slightly out of breath, but able to take the last two remaining seats. Whew. Perfect timing.
Four and a half hours later, we pulled up to the rhino sanctuary outside Serowe, and took a pickup truck to our little chalet. The driver picked us up a little while later to take us to lunch (luckily, since it was several kilometers to the lodge, and we almost certainly would have gotten lost walking the maze of roadways), and after a satisfying meal and an uber-light Botswana beer, we relaxed by what would have been the pool, had it been open. As I walked back to the others after taking some pictures of funny-looking birds, Kefi asked me if I’d taken a picture of the rhino.
“Rhino? Here? Haha, very funny.”
“No really, look.”
“Holy @#%!”
Apparently, the park’s only male black rhino likes to drink from the pool, but is satisfied with the nearby watering hole when that’s not an option. He also runs into the lodge’s sliding glass doors when he sees his reflection and wants to “kiss” it (“kiss” is a term the lodge employees use). I don’t think I’d like to have been eating lunch by those windows when he decided to do that. As the rhino came closer to us, it began to paw the ground. We wondered briefly if he was going to charge, and if we should move to get out of his way. Then we realized he had just been pawing the ground in preparation for taking a dump…double whew.
The surreal sense one gets when observing animals in this context can be incredibly misleading—you have to make a conscious effort to remind yourself just how dangerous they can be, because you initially just think they’re cute and fun. Ian had heard that since rhinos have poor eyesight, you should stand still when rhinos charge, and hope they will become confused, think you are a tree, and decide to stop. I told him, as an experiment, he should act like a tree, and we would observe to test the hypothesis. In the end, to test the shaky theory, we asked our safari guide what he did when he was charged by rhinos (which has happened to him three times while working at the sanctuary). He laughed as he told us he “climbed a tree and was glad if the rhino missed the tree”. So much for pretending to act like a baobab.
After an afternoon safari full of more rhinos, zebras, giraffe, wildebeest, kudu, springbok, and ostriches (which are so weird—I guess ostriches come from Africa, but they seem like they should come from another planet), and a stunning sunset, we had dinner at the lodge before turning in for the evening. In the morning, our driver dropped us off back at the park entrance, and we had to hitchhike into Serowe. Kefi told us (half jokingly) that the way to get a ride in this region of the world, if you are a woman, is not to stick out your thumb, but to stick out your bum. This may be true for the truly booty-licious women of Botswana (I know Sir Mix-A-Lot had them in mind when he wrote “Baby Got Back”), but my butt, while certainly not flat, I do not think was up to the task of getting us a ride. Since a bus with plenty of empty seats happened past us after only 9 minutes of waiting, and flagging it down with our hands was enough, I’m afraid I will never know.
We stopped in Serowe on the way back to Gabs; our only goal was to see the grave of Seretse Khama, chief of the local tribe, and first president of an independent Botswana. Luckily, Kefi is from Serowe, and knew where the police station was, where we had to ask permission to gain access to the hilltop cemetery. Unluckily, the two bored-looking policemen said that we should have called in advance to ask the current chief for permission (since Seretse Khama’s son is the newly-elected president as well as the heir to the local cheiftainship, I guess this means we needed the president’s permission-—yay, bureaucracy). But Kefi was a brilliant negotiator (I could tell this without understanding a word of what she was saying), and Lauren, Ian and I played our parts of dejected-looking students from America quite well. We sighed, lamenting how close we were to seeing this piece of Botswana history, and how far we’d come. The result was that the policemen gave in, and allowed us to go to the cemetery, provided that one of them accompanied us, and we took no pictures. This worked out quite well, as the policeman gave us a full history of the Khama family, the story of each of the four generations of chiefs and their wives buried in the cemetery, and the family’s important role in Botswana’s history—Lonely Planet can’t come close to giving us the wealth of information this guy had.
As I reflected on the trip on the bus ride back to Gabs, I took stock of three important pieces of wisdom the weekend had gleaned: bored policemen can almost always be persuaded to see your point of view, your booty is a powerful weapon, and while hugging a tree is just fine, you should never ever pretend to be one—especially when a rhino is still pacing after he finishes taking a dump.
Pictures to come soon...
Monday, June 1, 2009
Botswana is not Barcelona
"I'd like to put a travel notice on my account, so I won't have problems using my ATM card this summer. I'm going to Southern Africa--Botswana."
"Barcelona?" asked the banking assistant.
Not even close. If I had been going to Barcelona, the trip would have been, for one thing, much shorter. And I had to admit that, even for me with my affinity for Moroccan souq buses, this trip was going to be long. I was using up a return ticket to London to get across the pond, and trying to visit a friend in Germany on the way home in September. To get a cheap flight out of Europe, and given that Gaborone is only reachable by air via Johannesburg, South Africa, my itinerary turned out as follows: Portland-Newark-London-Zurich-Dubai-Jo'burg-Gabs. Seven airports, six flights, four continents, a 10-hour layover in Zurich, and lots of in-flight movies and napping to total 55+ hours of traveling.
It might have been crazy, and it certainly left me feeling guilty about my carbon footprint (the offsets I purchased can't have made up for the airline fuel I burned), but I am certain I enjoyed it much more than I would have appreciated a few direct flights. Why? Because the journey is half the fun of travel. Without the long trip, I would have missed out on so much. I could have done without being squeezed between a fidgeter and a boozer on the trip from PDX, but that part of the trip would have had to happen anyway. Newark and London were fairly uneventful. But Zurich was absolutely delightful.
The airport train to baggage claim confirmed every stereotype you could ever have about Switzerland. It is, of course, surprisingly punctual. One train is called "Heidi," the other, "Mountains". They feature moving slide shows (think flip-book effect) on the tunnel walls of their namesakes, while you listen to the sounds of yodeling, cows mooing, and cow bells on the train speakers--who couldn't do without more cowbell?
As I attempted to learn the exchange rate from the information desk, I was pointed in the direction of McDonalds by a befuddled employee who either misunderstood my question, or just assumed all Americans would be looking for Mickey D's. After sorting out the confusion, and obtaining some colorful Swiss francs, I stowed my luggage, caught the train into the center of town, and began my walking tour of the city and quest for as much good chocolate as I could afford. My split-second concern about not having any timepiece--how would I ever get back to the airport on time?--was quickly calmed by the realization that I was in Switzerland--clocks would be abundant! I also realized my camera had a clock. Or I could have asked anyone on the street. The jet lag delirium was already setting in. Maybe I should have forgone Continental's variety of in-flight entertainment for more sleep--but "Marley and Me" was just too cute and sentimental to turn off, and now I can count to ten in Vietnamese.
I enjoyed a walk through the park by the Swiss Museum, and was impressed by the diversity I noticed there and throughout the city. Zurich certainly featured plenty of what you would expect demographically from Switzerland: rosy-cheeked blonde women, and men with strong, square jawlines that looked cut from Swatch or Ralph Lauren ads. However, in addition to the German and English, I heard a multitude of languages--Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Urdu. A Buddhist monk in his bright orange robes was walking through the park. Asian restaurants were sprinkled throughout the city. I was tempted by the Turkish kebab shop (but not hungry enough to give in). Who knew Zurich was so cosmopolitan?
The issue of tiredness was remedied somewhat by my napping tour of Zurich's churches. I dozed off in the pews of Grossmunster, as well as across the river in a chair below the Marc Chagall stained glass windows in Fraumunster. In St. Peter's, I leaned my head against a column and slept a cool 20 minutes with the sounds of the church organ sounding in the background. The napping probably totaled under an hour, but I credit this (ok, this and sleeping the entire flight to Dubai) with helping me experience almost zero jet lag once I arrived in Botswana. After a walk down Bahnhoffstrasse back to the train station and purchasing the requisite chocolates, I returned to the airport for my flight to Dubai.
If the airport is any indication of what my day stopover in September will be like, then Dubai is, in a word, overwhelming. So many people and such exorbitant excessiveness in the middle of the desert seems so wrong from every sustainability standpoint. There are giant fountains and fir tree plots in the middle of the airport. Since when did that kind of thing exist where the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius at 6:45 am? I will concede the lounge chairs at the gate areas were exceedingly comfortable. And Emirates Air--amazing. More snacks and in-flight movies than I could ever hope for--including Vicky Christina Barcelona, which again reminded me definitively of where I was not heading.
Back in Africa, and you know it at once. The South African Airways flight to Gaborone is the only international flight where you have to check in at the domestic terminal. Defying conventional logic, you have to cross the airport yet again after checking in, as the flight actually departs from the international terminal. Of course I discovered this after I already went through security on the domestic side, as the person checking boarding passes failed to notice. The plane's an hour late leaving. I was too thrilled to be south of the equator to care. Do the toilets really cycle in the opposite direction? How different is the night sky going to look? So many things to discover.
I managed to swing a ride into town from the taxi-less Gaborone airport with the shuttle for a local luxury hotel. Because no customers were actually going to the hotel, the driver took me all the way to my couch surfing destination--Tlokweng, where I was met by a lovely retired American couple that had agreed to put me up for a few days. They offered me dinner, tea, and set me up on the fold-out couch. I took my first shower in two days, and went to bed. My host woke me up in the morning to go for a morning walk with her and two other girls that were visiting through couch surfing (Germans visiting from Namibia). Portland to Gabs was long and eventful journey, but now the exploration begins! I am thrilled to once again be somewhere utterly and completely different from anywhere I've been before, and learn as much as I can in the short time I'm here. Botswana is not Barcelona, and that is just fine with me.
"Barcelona?" asked the banking assistant.
Not even close. If I had been going to Barcelona, the trip would have been, for one thing, much shorter. And I had to admit that, even for me with my affinity for Moroccan souq buses, this trip was going to be long. I was using up a return ticket to London to get across the pond, and trying to visit a friend in Germany on the way home in September. To get a cheap flight out of Europe, and given that Gaborone is only reachable by air via Johannesburg, South Africa, my itinerary turned out as follows: Portland-Newark-London-Zurich-Dubai-Jo'burg-Gabs. Seven airports, six flights, four continents, a 10-hour layover in Zurich, and lots of in-flight movies and napping to total 55+ hours of traveling.
It might have been crazy, and it certainly left me feeling guilty about my carbon footprint (the offsets I purchased can't have made up for the airline fuel I burned), but I am certain I enjoyed it much more than I would have appreciated a few direct flights. Why? Because the journey is half the fun of travel. Without the long trip, I would have missed out on so much. I could have done without being squeezed between a fidgeter and a boozer on the trip from PDX, but that part of the trip would have had to happen anyway. Newark and London were fairly uneventful. But Zurich was absolutely delightful.
The airport train to baggage claim confirmed every stereotype you could ever have about Switzerland. It is, of course, surprisingly punctual. One train is called "Heidi," the other, "Mountains". They feature moving slide shows (think flip-book effect) on the tunnel walls of their namesakes, while you listen to the sounds of yodeling, cows mooing, and cow bells on the train speakers--who couldn't do without more cowbell?
As I attempted to learn the exchange rate from the information desk, I was pointed in the direction of McDonalds by a befuddled employee who either misunderstood my question, or just assumed all Americans would be looking for Mickey D's. After sorting out the confusion, and obtaining some colorful Swiss francs, I stowed my luggage, caught the train into the center of town, and began my walking tour of the city and quest for as much good chocolate as I could afford. My split-second concern about not having any timepiece--how would I ever get back to the airport on time?--was quickly calmed by the realization that I was in Switzerland--clocks would be abundant! I also realized my camera had a clock. Or I could have asked anyone on the street. The jet lag delirium was already setting in. Maybe I should have forgone Continental's variety of in-flight entertainment for more sleep--but "Marley and Me" was just too cute and sentimental to turn off, and now I can count to ten in Vietnamese.
I enjoyed a walk through the park by the Swiss Museum, and was impressed by the diversity I noticed there and throughout the city. Zurich certainly featured plenty of what you would expect demographically from Switzerland: rosy-cheeked blonde women, and men with strong, square jawlines that looked cut from Swatch or Ralph Lauren ads. However, in addition to the German and English, I heard a multitude of languages--Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Urdu. A Buddhist monk in his bright orange robes was walking through the park. Asian restaurants were sprinkled throughout the city. I was tempted by the Turkish kebab shop (but not hungry enough to give in). Who knew Zurich was so cosmopolitan?
The issue of tiredness was remedied somewhat by my napping tour of Zurich's churches. I dozed off in the pews of Grossmunster, as well as across the river in a chair below the Marc Chagall stained glass windows in Fraumunster. In St. Peter's, I leaned my head against a column and slept a cool 20 minutes with the sounds of the church organ sounding in the background. The napping probably totaled under an hour, but I credit this (ok, this and sleeping the entire flight to Dubai) with helping me experience almost zero jet lag once I arrived in Botswana. After a walk down Bahnhoffstrasse back to the train station and purchasing the requisite chocolates, I returned to the airport for my flight to Dubai.
If the airport is any indication of what my day stopover in September will be like, then Dubai is, in a word, overwhelming. So many people and such exorbitant excessiveness in the middle of the desert seems so wrong from every sustainability standpoint. There are giant fountains and fir tree plots in the middle of the airport. Since when did that kind of thing exist where the temperature reaches 30 degrees Celsius at 6:45 am? I will concede the lounge chairs at the gate areas were exceedingly comfortable. And Emirates Air--amazing. More snacks and in-flight movies than I could ever hope for--including Vicky Christina Barcelona, which again reminded me definitively of where I was not heading.
Back in Africa, and you know it at once. The South African Airways flight to Gaborone is the only international flight where you have to check in at the domestic terminal. Defying conventional logic, you have to cross the airport yet again after checking in, as the flight actually departs from the international terminal. Of course I discovered this after I already went through security on the domestic side, as the person checking boarding passes failed to notice. The plane's an hour late leaving. I was too thrilled to be south of the equator to care. Do the toilets really cycle in the opposite direction? How different is the night sky going to look? So many things to discover.
I managed to swing a ride into town from the taxi-less Gaborone airport with the shuttle for a local luxury hotel. Because no customers were actually going to the hotel, the driver took me all the way to my couch surfing destination--Tlokweng, where I was met by a lovely retired American couple that had agreed to put me up for a few days. They offered me dinner, tea, and set me up on the fold-out couch. I took my first shower in two days, and went to bed. My host woke me up in the morning to go for a morning walk with her and two other girls that were visiting through couch surfing (Germans visiting from Namibia). Portland to Gabs was long and eventful journey, but now the exploration begins! I am thrilled to once again be somewhere utterly and completely different from anywhere I've been before, and learn as much as I can in the short time I'm here. Botswana is not Barcelona, and that is just fine with me.
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