Hot, dusty, and frustrating...sounds good to me.
-Lonely Planet Thorn Tree post
My latest country, Somaliland, is so well off the beaten path that it isn't even a country. Yet.
Somalia as a whole is shaped like a "7," with the Red Sea to the north and east, Djibouti to the NW, Ethiopia to the east, and Kenya to the south. The majority of the country has suffered through varying states of anarchy since 1991 when dictator Siad Barre was over-thrown and replaced by various waring clans. One region of the country though, the northern region of Somaliland, used this opportunity to delcare its indpeendence after having fought for years against the south. It has since turned into a rare success story in the Horn of Africa.
This is where I set off to visit.
Somaliland is at the very top of Somalia. To its east lies another autonomous region, Puntland, and below that lies Somalia-proper. Somalia-proper was governed by regional tribal chiefs until 2006 when the radical "Islamic Court Union" took it over. At this point, Ethiopia, who has never been a fan of Somalia, invaded them to prop up the US-backed central government which in reality governed only parts of a single city. This turned into their own personal Iraq and they finally pulled out, having accomplished nothing, just a couple weeks ago. Puntland, who still recognizes themselves as part of a greater-Somalia, has fared little better. It is off this coast that all of the recent piracy issues have occurred. I'm going nowhere near Puntland because I risk getting shot or, much worse, getting kidnapped and having to explain to the nearest US consulate and my mother (hi Mom!) why I was stupid enough to go there in the first place.
But Somaliland has always thought of itself as something apart. They don't like violence and pride themselves on being an island of calm surrounded by a stormy sea of violence in the Horn. The emblem of the police force here is a type of desert deer which I've seen a couple times, a docile, tasty-looking animal that runs as soon as it sees humans. It isn't an accident, I've been told; indeed, the police are very honest, careful, and courteous. The only real violence that Somaliland has seen recently were a trio of suicide bombings here in October courtesy of some crazies who came up from the South. These bombers were a real shock to a country which otherwise has seen none of the violence that has been the norm in the south.
The country forms a weird juxtaposition between two conflicting beliefs regarding the level of danger to tourists. The first belief, that of backpackers, most locals, businessmen, and actual news reports, is that the country is incredibly safe and poses absolutely no risk. This is the view that I take. The lack of violence here since 1988 is stunning and there is no evidence that foreigners are targeted for any reason. The locals are equally safe. Most everyone is friendly and appears to like Americans . . . or at least those who voted for Barack Obama. People are anxious to appeal to tourists and are naturally extremely friendly and hospitable. When I ask them what they think about me wandering alone they swear to its safety. With all this in mind, I have come to think of this country as far safer than Minnesota.
The second belief is taken by foreign state departments, the Somaliland authorities, aid agencies, and the those with long memories. Hargesia was leveled to the ground in the war for independence in the late 1980s and the affects are still felt. The AK-47, a normal feature of travel in Africa, is a standard here with security forces and you get used to seeing it around. I've been told that there are fantastic weapons bizarres in the east which feature everything from hand guns to anti-aircraft guns. Fortunately, the roads to these towns are closed to foreigners so I won't be checking them out. A little closer to home, my hotel in the capital Hargesia has a picture of a knife, handgun, AK-47, and hang grenade on the front door, all with a red "X" through them. You can imagine how reassuring that is. (The front desk, by the way, also has a no-smoking sign. So, you know, you can't do that either.)
Various state departments, who have a Fox News-like tendency to hyperventilate when it comes to foreigners and violence, warn against travel here, though most I've talked to to dismiss these warnings out of hand. The aid agencies, who I find annoying in this region, pulled out after the bombings and most have yet to come back. Perhaps, however, agencies and foreign governments are simply taking their cue from the Somaliland authorities, whose paranoia makes travel difficult.
The world has refused to recognize Somaliland's independence, so the foreign investment desperately needed here has yet to show up. It's stuck in a sort of international no-man's land and they get almost no visitors. Most tourists get their visas from the Addis Ababa consulate, and when I was there I was the 14th person of the year to have gotten a visa two weeks into January.
The lack of visitors appears to be for three main reasons. First off, the authorities are worried that any visitor getting injured, kidnapped, or killed could derail an international recognition which is potentially is only months away. Consequently, they make it very difficult to go anywhere . . . I've never encountered a country with more red tape. Secondly, there is little infrastructure in place. Finally, many tourists just don't know about Somaliland.
The trip from Harar to Hargesia, the capital of Somaliland, was one of the more excruciating I have ever had. The border crossing, at a dirty, broken town called Wachale, offered up an indication of the depth of the rabbit hole I had fallen into when the security agent opened up my bag for a search and discovered, oh God, my stash of alka selzter. He glossed over the the two 18-inch Afar knives I had in my bag but freaked out over my pills for stomach acid. It might have been okay had he spoken English, but when you're trying to communicate to a Somali-speaker what heartburn is, you run into problems. Eventually I basically shouted at him in frustration "It's for my hang-overs!" and mimicked drinking and then pretended to look ill. He looked at me, laughed, and let me pass no problem. I realized later that he still probably didn't understand what I was talking about - because booze is illegal in Somaliland - but was tired of trying to get a bribe out of me.
Hargesia doesn't act much like a capital city. The tallest buildings are perhaps six stories, and even those don't number more than a dozen. The rest of the city is sprawled out into the desert, colored with endless trash, wandering goats, the typical stalls hawking everything, and the occasional meandering camel. The roads are crazy, and the dust covers everything. It acts more like a frontier town than a capital city.
Upon arriving, I threw my bags in my room and set off into the heart of the city to do my typical first-day exploration for future restaurants, stores, and markets. However, I ran into a problem after less than five minutes when a plain-clothed police officer picked me up and drove me to the nearest police station. I wasn't worried, as I assumed I needed to check in or something, but instead I was brought before the police chief who drilled me for fifteen minutes about my visit. What I a journalist? Was I alone? Why wasn't I traveling with anyone else? How did I get here? Am I sure I'm not a journalist? How long was I going to stay in Hargesia? How long in Somaliland? Am I positive I'm not a journalist??? I fielded these questions as best I could and, for the first time in my trip, passed around a bunch of Obama stickers I brought for this very purpose to the small group of policemen who had gathered in the room.
Eventually, satisfied that I didn't pose a threat, the chief turned extremely friendly and offered a lieutenant to drive me around. I wasn't about to pass up a free ride, so I jumped into a 4X4 with three officers and they took me on a tour of the city, going through the camel market on the outside of town, the goldsmith section, and a number of other rather interested locations. They dropped me off at my hotel warning me not to wander around by myself. I agreed, and then immediately tried to exit through a back door to explore on my own. The same truck was waiting for me.
"Don't go out by yourself," they repeated.
ARGH! I was to learn, in the coming days, that this was standard procedure. It seems that authorities here had a massive over-reaction to the October bombings and decided that to ensure that tourists were kept utterly and completely safe they wouldn't be allowed to do anything. If they had their way, I would never leave the hotel. In the first three days in Hargesia I was picked up a total of five times by police. They quickly began to remind me of the over-protective mother whose son has never kissed a girl, let alone broken a bone.
Soon, after I had doled out a number of Obama stickers and made friends with enough of the policemen, they apparently decided that I was an alright guy so they stuck to giving me lifts when they saw me or just tossing me a friendly wave. Whew.
But then it was on to the regular population. It seems the further east I travel from Addis Ababa, the more of a spectacle I become. My hotel was downtown, away from where the aid workers stay, so I was the only white guy around. In Hargesia, as elsewhere in the country when I walk around, people are positively shocked to see me. Everyone, and I mean that, wants to stop and talk. I guess I hadn't prepared myself for that, but in reality, it's sometimes like swimming against a tidal wave.
Anyone who approaches me initially guesses that I'm German, which to me is like guessing that my favorite food is ketchup or my hero is James Dobson. But when I tell them I'm American, they get really excited and profess a huge love for Obama and America, which a nice change. And when I say I'm a tourist, a lot of people seem to get confused. This seems to be because most foreigners here are 1) Aid workers, 2) Reporters, or 3) Smugglers/gun runners. They get a huge charge out of the fact that I'm just . . . visiting.
Speaking of the third option, I was walking down the street the other day and a guy grabbed me and asked if I was a reporter. I assumed this to be normal conversation starter, but when I said no he brought me into his empty "shop", locked the door, and dumped a small pile of diamonds on the table and asked how much I wanted to pay for them.
"I hate diamonds," was my truthful reply.
"Okay, my friend, then wait one minute," he said, and went into a back room. When he returned, he had a slightly smaller pile of rubies which he placed on the table. "How much you pay for these?"
Stalling, trying to think of a way to get away from this creepy guy, I asked how much one cost.
"No buy one, only buy all!" he insisted.
"Okay, where did you get these?"
"In the desert, I go, and look around, and see them."
"And they're already polished? I think I need to go."
So I left. That being said, however, the other foreigners in my hotel were two Chinese who are also smugglers, so I can always get my hands on some diamonds from them if I change my mind.
Site-wise, as I indicated, there hasn't been much to get excited about. It took me a full day in order to secure a permit to travel to a place called Las Geel, located 40 kilometers outside of town. Las Geel has some neolithic rock paintings that are up to 11,000 years old, some of the oldest in Africa. It was just discovered five years ago in reality is a pretty amazing historical find, though there is a distinct lack of tourists. As it is, I had the entire place to myself to explore, and it was pretty cool. Set in the middle of the desert, it was an entertaining, if slightly underwhelming, tourist stop a country that has no others.
In the short time I've been here, a couple weeks, I've made some genuine friends and have gotten to know a hilariously large amount of the locals. Going out has become a real treat just because everywhere I go I can sit down with someone and have tea with someone while chatting about anything under the sun. Today, drinking some mango juice mixed with milk - a spectacular combination - with a friend, I noticed the only other foreign tourist I had seen so far, a Korean guy, changing money on the other side of the street. My friend and I got a huge charge out of watching him and joined the rest of the street in staring at the poor guy. It was at this moment I realized that I'd gone native.
I arrived in the port city of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden, basically the only other tourist town, after a week in Hargesia. And when I say "tourist town," I mean town-where-tourists-might-go, not town-where-tourists-are. As it was, I was the only white person there save for a absolutely fantastic British couple. I think it's more a tourist town for Somalilanders living elsewhere who are back in the country for vacation.
This British couple, Jill and Steve, were staying semi-permanently at a hotel called the Maan-Soor on the outside of town on the beach and are in the process of setting up a dive shop in and around Berbera and marine reserves up the coast to the Djibouti border. They are working with a businessman named Abdulker. Not only does Abdulkaer own the Mann-Soor and two others in Somaliland, but he is amazingly well-connected to the business and political community in the country. As such, he is working closely with Steve and Jill to navigate through the red tape of Somalialnd in order to ensure they succeed in their endeavors.
He is also, along with Steve and Jill, among the friendliest people I have ever met. Every day in Berbera I played a game of cat-and-mouse with the local police (they acted similar to the Hargesia police) and fled town to visit the Maan-Soor and beach. It was only a few kilometres from town to the hotel so after hiking there I would go snokeling or diving with the Steve and Jill (I brought snorkel gear with me and, because they are just setting up shop, they let me dive for free). The beach is fantastic with its beautiful blue-green water, perfect weather, and great marine life. Abdulkaer was always there to offer me fish, lobster, and pasta free of charge for my meals and help me with any questions I had. When the Regional Tourism Minister - a position that doesn't actually exist - showed up with two intelligence officers and tried to give me a hard time and take me for $50, Abdulkaer not only solved this dilemma for me in less than a minute of talking to him but called the Minister of Tourism (whom I had previously had a run-in with), the Information Minister, and the mayor of Berbera to let them know what happened and ensure it would never happen again.
These three also offered friendly and sincere conversation for me in the days I spent in Berbera and I learned a great deal about Somaliland's history and current political situation. Today we even had breakfast with a member of the electoral commission who described their efforts to register the country for the national election in two months. These efforts are stunning.
To fully understand how excited I am about what they're doing, imagine a country where no census exists and no voters have been registered. Then imagine that this country has a terrible infrastructure with horrible roads and little electricity outside of the major towns - which really aren't that "major". And then keep in mind that this country is largely NOMADIC. Think of the shear problems you would have with registering the voters!
But they're doing it here, with less than $20 million. Using electronic fingerprinting, computerized face-recognition, and good old-fashion clan names and family history, the electoral commission has manage to use its 15,000 workers to take not only the first national census but register every eligible voter as well. The USA has had 230 years to get it down and we haven't, but Somaliland's FEDERAL registration effort has turned out to be one of the best in the world in one try. I still can't get over the issue of registering so many nomads, but they have somehow managed to do that. Unbelievable!
Getting Back to Addulkaer, Steve, and Jill, they have also been a lot of help in planning for an upcoming adventure I'm embarking on. I won't be writing again for a number of days, but assuming that my plans go through as planned, I would definitely recommend checking back here in a few weeks because I'm going to attempt something pretty cool.
Cheers to everyone. Keep well!
Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Ethiopia
The effect was such that I determined always to carry a barrel loaded with shot as the best answer for all those who might object to "Feranji."
-Sir Richard Burton, "First Footsteps in East Africa"
My quest to Sudan was put on hold indefinitely after the USA vetoed the resolution in front of the UN condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. The Sudan Embassy in Cairo apparently decided to start their own little jihad and stop issuing visas to Americans . . . bummer. But it's cool, and instead I went directly to Ethiopia, a country which I fell head-over-heals in love with.
The mountain air or Addis Ababa was a refreshing break from the smog of Cairo and the Sahara dust of Egypt. But the temperature and climate, perfect really, is little compared to the food situation. I think most people who would actually read my blog realize this, but for anyone who might not know - my food intake in the USA is never limited by appetite but instead by cost. Here, everything is so ridiculously cheap that I hardly know what to do with myself. And after a steady diet of falafels and koshery, massive amounts of Ethiopian food is a gift from God.
Those who have ever hung out around Cedar/Riverside in Minneapolis know what I mean. Ethiopians know EXACTLY what they're doing with their cuisine, and while it's maybe ten dollars for a plate in Minnesota, it's a dollar and a half here. Not only that, but a 30 year occupation by the Italians a century ago means that they left behind pasta for Ethiopians to put on their menus, something that comes as a blessed relief to me after having pasta maybe four times in the first six weeks of my trip - basically a starvation diet. I was so enthused when I first saw spaghetti on the menu of a restaurant for one dollar that I ordered four plates, but after the look I got from the waitress quickly decided to order two plates and then just go to another restaurant.
Anyway, it's just a good place. Addis Ababa still has that same general group of people who give me dirty looks and shout "Ferangi!" ("Stranger/White person") at me and a smaller subset who try their various tactics to get money out of the stupid tourist, but they're far less annoying than up north. Those aside, most everyone else is at least moderately friendly.
Instead of traveling the popular northern circuit, I decided to head east towards the Somali border. There were a number of cities I had read about and wanted to visit. Chief amongst these was Harar, a city that has always been a spot of mystery to me.
Harar for years was an important city in the slave trade for caravans heading east. It was impossible for white people to enter it without getting their heads loped off, but in 1885 Sir Richard Francis Burton made his historic run from the Red Sea city of Zayla across the desert to Harar and entered under the guise of a Turk, thus becoming describing for the first time to outsiders this "impenetrable" city.
Okay, I have so stop here for something: I'm going to write a lot about Harar for a number of reasons, but one of them is because I LOVE Burton. One of few among the great European explorers, Burton had an endearing tendency to understate rather than exaggerate the perils he faced in his various travels. This is in stark contrast to, for instance, his famous contemporary Henry Morton Stanley, whose writings are excruciating because they read more like science fiction than reality. Stanley and too many others appear to view exploration as something to be undertaken with giant caravans of porters and servants and saw no problem with killing or kidnapping inhabitants of villages they came across in order to keep up their food supply. "Exploration" for him was done in the name of fame and was carried out in the name of destruction. (I'll leave it at that, though I'll most likely complain more about Stanley when I get to my Central Africa posts.)
Burton, on the other hand, had first made a name for himself by writing about his travels to Mecca. To do so, he spent seven year learning Arabic, studying Islam, and immersing himself in the Indian-Muslim culture. Only then did he go on his pilgrimage to Mecaa, one of the first infidels to do so and certainly the most famous. Later, after returning from Harar, he traveled with John Speke in search of the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Tangyanika. Burton was forced to stay here, ill, while Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria and the true source of the Nile, a feat which had previously eluded countless searches.
His writings display a large amount of wit, prescience, and subtlety that make them a real pleasure to read. Besides a fair amount of humorous fatalism that should be present for any travelers attempting travel in the Horn of Africa ("The next morning, all the villagers assembled . . . consoling us with the information that we were dead men."), he throws in the occasional philosophical comment ("What hath man but a single life? And he who throweth it away, what is he but a fool?"). He predicts well the consequences of what was to happen when the spear was to be replaced by the gun in Somalia and cautions others against rushing in a foolhardy manner towards his exploits. Altogether he is a calm, rational, and extremely entertaining writer. And he is what made me love Harar. Luckily, though Harar is a twelve hour bus ride from Addis Ababa, it's on the way to Somaliland, so it fit perfectly into my schedule.
In Paul Thoreau's cross-continent "Dark Star Sarfari", he described Hararis in rather negative terms, spitefully shouting "Ferangi!" at him from every doorway and hurling the occasional rock at the white intruder. In reality, however, I suspect that the locals simply had an inkling of who he was and wanted to give him his come-upings. I found Harar to be, hand's down, the friendliest city I have ever in my life been to. Nothing compares. Yes, it seemed that nearly everyone did yell "ferangi" after me, but it was always in playful, welcoming tone. Depending on the age and gender, it could even be a little shy.
Little kids, those who weren't scared of me at least, were constantly running up to me and shaking my hands and asking me questions. I couldn't sit down in public without being invited it to someone's home to relax, drink something, and, "if I was at all interested", chew some chat. I always accepted because Hararis appear to have perfected the art of relaxation with a room separate from the house about 10x8 feet, no lights, comfortable cushions, a hookah, stereo, and sometimes a tv. The men typically hang out here in the afternoon. Having done this one three different afternoons, I can tell you that it can't be beat.
Given its place in history and the wonderful ambiance surrounding it, I expected more tourists, but was pleased to have large swaths of the city to myself. And gosh, if there is a city to walk around in, it was that one. The women, as typical of Ethiopians, are beautiful. My first day a women, stunning even by local standards, walked up to me and said in halting English "I think you . . . are very handsome!" before turning and running away. Stunned, I manage to call after her "You're beautiful, too," which she acknowledged by turning her head and shyly grinning. This theme was to be repeated more times in the days I spent in Harar and made me wonder just what exactly was going on until I asked a local guy. He laughed and said "Ferangis have money. It doesn't matter if you're good-looking or not, they want to marry you. They do it all white people." That explained it well enough, but still, I was flattered.
A great travel experience in Harar is to visit the "Hyena Man", who sits outside the city walls each night at sunset and feeds a pack of wild hyenas who come to him. He calls them all by name and they come up to him individually and take food from his hand and from a stick he holds from his mouth. It was so entertaining watching him that I momentarily lost myself and asked him if I could do the same thing. He laughed and said "Sure!" So I was able to feed the hyenas both from my hands and from my mouth which, though perhaps less-than-sanitary, was a hell of an experience.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Harar and the cities around it, namely Jijiga and Dire Dawa, are regionally famous for growing chat. Chat is a mild narcotic consumed in the horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula that is wildly popular with the locals. It's waxy look implies a painful death along the lines of "Into the Wild" rather than any sort of high, but those who chew seem to survive and swear that it produces a mild euphoria, loss of appetite, hyperactivity, and the occasional white rabbit. Tourists almost universally disagree with this and say that it produces no effect, though given how popular chat is with people living on the Horn, I'd say that the tourists have to be doing something wrong.
Chat is illegal in the United States under our completely rational and wildly succesful national drug policy, but the large Somali/Ethiopian/Eritrean population in Minnesota has wisely decided to give the finger to the DEA and has devised an ingenious method of getting the freshly-picked chat from the Ethiopian fields, onto planes, across the Atlantic and into Minnesota in less than 24 hours before it loses its chemical properties. They then distribute it via reliable cab drivers to a grateful population.
I spent some more time in the surrounding towns, but nothing terribly notable happened, so I'll leave my post at that for now.
I'll be back in Ethiopia in a couple weeks to explore some of the south on my way to Kenya. For now I'm doing some trail-blazing here for a couple weeks, so wish me luck.
-Sir Richard Burton, "First Footsteps in East Africa"
My quest to Sudan was put on hold indefinitely after the USA vetoed the resolution in front of the UN condemning Israel's actions in Gaza. The Sudan Embassy in Cairo apparently decided to start their own little jihad and stop issuing visas to Americans . . . bummer. But it's cool, and instead I went directly to Ethiopia, a country which I fell head-over-heals in love with.
The mountain air or Addis Ababa was a refreshing break from the smog of Cairo and the Sahara dust of Egypt. But the temperature and climate, perfect really, is little compared to the food situation. I think most people who would actually read my blog realize this, but for anyone who might not know - my food intake in the USA is never limited by appetite but instead by cost. Here, everything is so ridiculously cheap that I hardly know what to do with myself. And after a steady diet of falafels and koshery, massive amounts of Ethiopian food is a gift from God.
Those who have ever hung out around Cedar/Riverside in Minneapolis know what I mean. Ethiopians know EXACTLY what they're doing with their cuisine, and while it's maybe ten dollars for a plate in Minnesota, it's a dollar and a half here. Not only that, but a 30 year occupation by the Italians a century ago means that they left behind pasta for Ethiopians to put on their menus, something that comes as a blessed relief to me after having pasta maybe four times in the first six weeks of my trip - basically a starvation diet. I was so enthused when I first saw spaghetti on the menu of a restaurant for one dollar that I ordered four plates, but after the look I got from the waitress quickly decided to order two plates and then just go to another restaurant.
Anyway, it's just a good place. Addis Ababa still has that same general group of people who give me dirty looks and shout "Ferangi!" ("Stranger/White person") at me and a smaller subset who try their various tactics to get money out of the stupid tourist, but they're far less annoying than up north. Those aside, most everyone else is at least moderately friendly.
Instead of traveling the popular northern circuit, I decided to head east towards the Somali border. There were a number of cities I had read about and wanted to visit. Chief amongst these was Harar, a city that has always been a spot of mystery to me.
Harar for years was an important city in the slave trade for caravans heading east. It was impossible for white people to enter it without getting their heads loped off, but in 1885 Sir Richard Francis Burton made his historic run from the Red Sea city of Zayla across the desert to Harar and entered under the guise of a Turk, thus becoming describing for the first time to outsiders this "impenetrable" city.
Okay, I have so stop here for something: I'm going to write a lot about Harar for a number of reasons, but one of them is because I LOVE Burton. One of few among the great European explorers, Burton had an endearing tendency to understate rather than exaggerate the perils he faced in his various travels. This is in stark contrast to, for instance, his famous contemporary Henry Morton Stanley, whose writings are excruciating because they read more like science fiction than reality. Stanley and too many others appear to view exploration as something to be undertaken with giant caravans of porters and servants and saw no problem with killing or kidnapping inhabitants of villages they came across in order to keep up their food supply. "Exploration" for him was done in the name of fame and was carried out in the name of destruction. (I'll leave it at that, though I'll most likely complain more about Stanley when I get to my Central Africa posts.)
Burton, on the other hand, had first made a name for himself by writing about his travels to Mecca. To do so, he spent seven year learning Arabic, studying Islam, and immersing himself in the Indian-Muslim culture. Only then did he go on his pilgrimage to Mecaa, one of the first infidels to do so and certainly the most famous. Later, after returning from Harar, he traveled with John Speke in search of the source of the Nile and discovered Lake Tangyanika. Burton was forced to stay here, ill, while Speke went on to discover Lake Victoria and the true source of the Nile, a feat which had previously eluded countless searches.
His writings display a large amount of wit, prescience, and subtlety that make them a real pleasure to read. Besides a fair amount of humorous fatalism that should be present for any travelers attempting travel in the Horn of Africa ("The next morning, all the villagers assembled . . . consoling us with the information that we were dead men."), he throws in the occasional philosophical comment ("What hath man but a single life? And he who throweth it away, what is he but a fool?"). He predicts well the consequences of what was to happen when the spear was to be replaced by the gun in Somalia and cautions others against rushing in a foolhardy manner towards his exploits. Altogether he is a calm, rational, and extremely entertaining writer. And he is what made me love Harar. Luckily, though Harar is a twelve hour bus ride from Addis Ababa, it's on the way to Somaliland, so it fit perfectly into my schedule.
In Paul Thoreau's cross-continent "Dark Star Sarfari", he described Hararis in rather negative terms, spitefully shouting "Ferangi!" at him from every doorway and hurling the occasional rock at the white intruder. In reality, however, I suspect that the locals simply had an inkling of who he was and wanted to give him his come-upings. I found Harar to be, hand's down, the friendliest city I have ever in my life been to. Nothing compares. Yes, it seemed that nearly everyone did yell "ferangi" after me, but it was always in playful, welcoming tone. Depending on the age and gender, it could even be a little shy.
Little kids, those who weren't scared of me at least, were constantly running up to me and shaking my hands and asking me questions. I couldn't sit down in public without being invited it to someone's home to relax, drink something, and, "if I was at all interested", chew some chat. I always accepted because Hararis appear to have perfected the art of relaxation with a room separate from the house about 10x8 feet, no lights, comfortable cushions, a hookah, stereo, and sometimes a tv. The men typically hang out here in the afternoon. Having done this one three different afternoons, I can tell you that it can't be beat.
Given its place in history and the wonderful ambiance surrounding it, I expected more tourists, but was pleased to have large swaths of the city to myself. And gosh, if there is a city to walk around in, it was that one. The women, as typical of Ethiopians, are beautiful. My first day a women, stunning even by local standards, walked up to me and said in halting English "I think you . . . are very handsome!" before turning and running away. Stunned, I manage to call after her "You're beautiful, too," which she acknowledged by turning her head and shyly grinning. This theme was to be repeated more times in the days I spent in Harar and made me wonder just what exactly was going on until I asked a local guy. He laughed and said "Ferangis have money. It doesn't matter if you're good-looking or not, they want to marry you. They do it all white people." That explained it well enough, but still, I was flattered.
A great travel experience in Harar is to visit the "Hyena Man", who sits outside the city walls each night at sunset and feeds a pack of wild hyenas who come to him. He calls them all by name and they come up to him individually and take food from his hand and from a stick he holds from his mouth. It was so entertaining watching him that I momentarily lost myself and asked him if I could do the same thing. He laughed and said "Sure!" So I was able to feed the hyenas both from my hands and from my mouth which, though perhaps less-than-sanitary, was a hell of an experience.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Harar and the cities around it, namely Jijiga and Dire Dawa, are regionally famous for growing chat. Chat is a mild narcotic consumed in the horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula that is wildly popular with the locals. It's waxy look implies a painful death along the lines of "Into the Wild" rather than any sort of high, but those who chew seem to survive and swear that it produces a mild euphoria, loss of appetite, hyperactivity, and the occasional white rabbit. Tourists almost universally disagree with this and say that it produces no effect, though given how popular chat is with people living on the Horn, I'd say that the tourists have to be doing something wrong.
Chat is illegal in the United States under our completely rational and wildly succesful national drug policy, but the large Somali/Ethiopian/Eritrean population in Minnesota has wisely decided to give the finger to the DEA and has devised an ingenious method of getting the freshly-picked chat from the Ethiopian fields, onto planes, across the Atlantic and into Minnesota in less than 24 hours before it loses its chemical properties. They then distribute it via reliable cab drivers to a grateful population.
I spent some more time in the surrounding towns, but nothing terribly notable happened, so I'll leave my post at that for now.
I'll be back in Ethiopia in a couple weeks to explore some of the south on my way to Kenya. For now I'm doing some trail-blazing here for a couple weeks, so wish me luck.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Israel/Palestinian Territorries, Wildlife Edition
I forgot to put this in my last post -
It was commented by someone I worked with on the Vote Yes campaign that I have yet to mention wildlife in my posts. That is primarily because I have yet to see much. While in the White Desert outside of Bahariyya I did manage to see a desert fox outside of our camp site one night. That was particularly cool because they are typically difficult to spot, and also because those of you who knew me back in middle school know that I was a World War II nut and read everything I could get my hands on about it. My favorite generals to read about was Erwin Rommel. Nicknamed, of course, the Desert Fox. Sweet.
Anyway, the following information was included in her email about wildlife in the areas I've been to - "So... There are wolves in Gaza and northern Israel and they need to multiply."
Nancy, feel free to, you know, expand on that if you'd like. ; )
It was commented by someone I worked with on the Vote Yes campaign that I have yet to mention wildlife in my posts. That is primarily because I have yet to see much. While in the White Desert outside of Bahariyya I did manage to see a desert fox outside of our camp site one night. That was particularly cool because they are typically difficult to spot, and also because those of you who knew me back in middle school know that I was a World War II nut and read everything I could get my hands on about it. My favorite generals to read about was Erwin Rommel. Nicknamed, of course, the Desert Fox. Sweet.
Anyway, the following information was included in her email about wildlife in the areas I've been to - "So... There are wolves in Gaza and northern Israel and they need to multiply."
Nancy, feel free to, you know, expand on that if you'd like. ; )
Friday, January 2, 2009
Israel/Palestinian Territories, Part II
One day in Jerusalem I was wandering through the Old City when I ran into a small crowd of people blocking the passageway through. They were watching a shop television that was pointed outward.
Al-Jazeera was showing live images of a large group of men, policemen I think, who had been killed in a town square. The camera crew had arrived before the ambulances, and they took sweeping shots of the square full of dead, perhaps twenty mangled bodies. I asked a Palestinian where it was. "Gaza," he said. "Forty are dead so far."
I continued on, very concerned. The Israeli/Palestinian cease-fire of six months had just ended days before, and nobody had known what was going to happen. Militants had been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel with increasing frequency, and some sort of action by the Israelis was largely expected. But this was beyond what most had thought. Every shop that had a television or radio tuned in to the coverage, and within minutes it seemed all in the Old City knew.
This is probably why people were so easy to get spooked a few minutes later as was I continuing on through the densely packed alley. The crowd of people suddenly stopped its typical walking pattern and started started stampeding towards me, yelling in different languages. I looked ahead and saw smoke. Someone yelled a questioning "Bomb???" in English, which seemed to excite everyone even more. The shopkeepers all quickly threw their wares into their tiny shop and closing the steel doors are fast as possible, but it seemed more to protect it from the smoke than anything else. I tell you, that place cleared out FAST.
Logically, I thought, if I hadn't heard a "boom" and there was already smoke, it couldn't be a bomb, so I just kind of stood there with a small group of people and after a minute walked tentatively ahead. Sure enough, we saw a decent size grease fire in the middle of the walkway ahead. So we all grabbed some rags by the garbage and threw them on top of the fire, putting it out quickly.
(The shops, it turned out, didn't re-open. In fact, the rest of the Old City shut down soon after in solidarity with the people of Gaza.)
Still, if that didn't worry me, my next stop did. I needed to go to Bethlehem to check on my stolen wallet from New Year's Eve. I faced this with a small amount of apprehension because of its location just within the walls of the West Bank, but I decided to take my chances anyway.
I jumped on a slow-moving bus from Jerusalem and made my way back to the Church of Nativity where the tourism police were. They hadn't found anything from my wallet of course, but they had al-Jazeera on and I saw that the death toll had now climbed to 150. The policeman, who spoke good English, saw that I was watching and asked me a few questions about what I thought about the whole thing. I was as ambiguous as possible because, really, it isn't my place at all to get involved here. But eventually we got into a long conversation about the whole mess.
It turns out that he had been in the same building, just yards away from the Church of Nativity, a couple years before when the Church it had been taken over by militants and besieged by the Israelis. He expressed more a sense of bewilderment towards Israel's policies ("What are they trying to accomplish in the end in Gaza? And what in the West Bank?") and the USA's stance ("I just don't understand why they don't seem to care about us") than anything else. This impression has largely been matched by most Palestinians, both before and after the strike, with whom I've talked to. Anger, yes, but more confusion than anything else. And a why-are-they-doing-this-to-us mentality combined with, let's be honest, a strong anti-Semitic streak, makes for a pretty explosive potential here.
While the average shopkeeper might simply want to make a living to support his family, a number of people wish horrible things on Israelis. It doesn't take many people to set off a rocket or detonate a bomb, and with Hamas in charge of Gaza and locked in a power struggle with Fatah for the West Bank, there's no telling what they'll do next. Hamas doesn't recognize Israeli's right to exist and their stated mission is to destroy it, so its natural for Israel to be hostile towards them. Furthermore, Israel's history with all of it's neighbors leaves much to be desired, and its understandable why the two sides don't trust each other.
But if the military ends up destroying Hamas with this incursion, then it has cut off the only leadership Gaza really has. What next? Who takes control? If they fail and Hamas stays in control, then Israel will have presumably strengthened Hamas in front of the entire world - especially those with al-Jazeera on 24/7. After the Lebanese War, Hezbollah was actually empowered. Does Israel truly think the same thing won't happen to Hamas?
So, basically, it seems to me kind of a waiting game with no possible good ending. I don't know.
Anyway, when I was done at the police station I wanted to walk back to the checkpoint to get through the wall and out of the West Bank. I wanted to talk to some more Palestinians about what was happening. The amount of solidarity they expressed for Gaza was impressive, and their attitude towards me in general was perhaps the first time I've ever felt genuine hostility because of my nationality. Individuals have expressed it before, but it's almost always directed towards my government. Rarely the population as a whole. Here I got a strong sense of "You guys, your government, everyone over there, are evil. Burn in hell."
Eventually I came to the wall that surrounds the West Bank.
The wall is just horrible. It's a giant grey monstrosity, ineffective at its purpose, and significant beyond anything else as a tangible sign of oppression for the Palestinians of the Israelis. Protesting slogans of resistance, peace, love, hate, anti-US, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, atheism, anarchy, socialism, and every other stripe cover the bottom portion of it - a poignant and sobering message to a world which, as far as the Palestinians believe, seems not to care about their plight. I followed it a while, simultaneously reading it and hating it. At one juncture, right below an Israeli-manned observation tower, a rock landed some meters away from me.
Not having noticed anyone around me, I took a quick glance around; no one. But then another one landed, and another. Finally, a distance away, I saw a group of twenty or so teenage and 20-something men launching an entire volley. Their body language didn't seem to indicate hostility towards me. But while their target appeared to be the Israeli-manned observation post above me, they knew I was there and didn't seem to care if they hit me. So I decided to get out real quick.
My position was between the wall, which created an angle with an adjacent building that made it impossible for me to continue, and the rock throwers, who were hiding behind a tree and a cement wall. Because I had backed myself into a literal corner and because they seemed to be concentrating on the post, I trotted to the other side of the street away from the rocks and walked up the road towards them to get away from them.
The Palestinians showed anxiety in their actions, as they were careful not to remain exposed for long when throwing. They would run out from behind a cement wall, hurl the fist-size rocks, and then run behind a large juniper that was near the wall. After a moment of rest the group would scamper back to the wall for more rocks. Then they all jumped out and start hurling rocks again. Evidently these guys had past memories from throwing rocks and didn't wish to be shot at or detained at a later time.
This, I found out later, was only a small example of many larger protests and riots that were already cropping up all around the West Bank. But all I wanted to do was get out of there, so I hugged the opposite wall from where the throwers were and started up the street. I waited until they had just thrown a volley and then passed by them on my way to a taxi that was just ahead of me. As I was starting to jog towards it I heard a crack behind me as a stone hit a brick store I was near. When I turned around, a half dozen of them were pointing at me and picking up stones. They threw a volley my way but I was mostly out of range by that time and the taxi driver casually opened the door for me and then yelled something toward the stone throwers.
I jumped into the taxi and asked the driver what he said. "Don't hit my car," he replied with a grin.
He brought me to the checkpoint saying "You probably shouldn't be around the West Bank by yourself any more over the next few days." He paused. "Sorry about the rocks."
My planned expedition for the say into Hebron, deeper within the West Bank, was obviously out of the question now, so I retired to my hostel for the night.
The next say I decided to exit Israel. There wasn't any danger to me that wasn't there before, but it was time for me to leave anyway. Luckily I made the Egyptian border in decent time and went back into Cairo, entering the city for, incredibly, the 5th time in as many weeks.
As I write this, the death toll in Gaza has passed 400. As it was, the first day saw 200 deaths in the largest Palestinian single-day toll since the war in 1967. It doesn't matter that 75% of the deaths are members of Hamas - al Jazeera isn't mentioning that part when they show results of the strikes. But even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference. Hamas is largely admired and respected in the Arab world, and to them this is like Israel trying to take out out a foreign government.
I'm hearing that the West Bank has had numerous protest - two rioters were killed the other day and many other injured. Lebanese have attacked their Egyptian embassy, blaming the government here for encouraging the attacks. Ditto in Yemen. Al-Jazeera has been covering the campaign pretty much non-stop and the Arab world is just pissed as hell. Here in Cairo there are marches and popular demonstrations against the the Egyptian government and Israel. Basically, this is just a tense time right now, and though I feel just fine with being in Egypt, it's yet another reason for me to want to get out of here.
Al-Jazeera was showing live images of a large group of men, policemen I think, who had been killed in a town square. The camera crew had arrived before the ambulances, and they took sweeping shots of the square full of dead, perhaps twenty mangled bodies. I asked a Palestinian where it was. "Gaza," he said. "Forty are dead so far."
I continued on, very concerned. The Israeli/Palestinian cease-fire of six months had just ended days before, and nobody had known what was going to happen. Militants had been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel with increasing frequency, and some sort of action by the Israelis was largely expected. But this was beyond what most had thought. Every shop that had a television or radio tuned in to the coverage, and within minutes it seemed all in the Old City knew.
This is probably why people were so easy to get spooked a few minutes later as was I continuing on through the densely packed alley. The crowd of people suddenly stopped its typical walking pattern and started started stampeding towards me, yelling in different languages. I looked ahead and saw smoke. Someone yelled a questioning "Bomb???" in English, which seemed to excite everyone even more. The shopkeepers all quickly threw their wares into their tiny shop and closing the steel doors are fast as possible, but it seemed more to protect it from the smoke than anything else. I tell you, that place cleared out FAST.
Logically, I thought, if I hadn't heard a "boom" and there was already smoke, it couldn't be a bomb, so I just kind of stood there with a small group of people and after a minute walked tentatively ahead. Sure enough, we saw a decent size grease fire in the middle of the walkway ahead. So we all grabbed some rags by the garbage and threw them on top of the fire, putting it out quickly.
(The shops, it turned out, didn't re-open. In fact, the rest of the Old City shut down soon after in solidarity with the people of Gaza.)
Still, if that didn't worry me, my next stop did. I needed to go to Bethlehem to check on my stolen wallet from New Year's Eve. I faced this with a small amount of apprehension because of its location just within the walls of the West Bank, but I decided to take my chances anyway.
I jumped on a slow-moving bus from Jerusalem and made my way back to the Church of Nativity where the tourism police were. They hadn't found anything from my wallet of course, but they had al-Jazeera on and I saw that the death toll had now climbed to 150. The policeman, who spoke good English, saw that I was watching and asked me a few questions about what I thought about the whole thing. I was as ambiguous as possible because, really, it isn't my place at all to get involved here. But eventually we got into a long conversation about the whole mess.
It turns out that he had been in the same building, just yards away from the Church of Nativity, a couple years before when the Church it had been taken over by militants and besieged by the Israelis. He expressed more a sense of bewilderment towards Israel's policies ("What are they trying to accomplish in the end in Gaza? And what in the West Bank?") and the USA's stance ("I just don't understand why they don't seem to care about us") than anything else. This impression has largely been matched by most Palestinians, both before and after the strike, with whom I've talked to. Anger, yes, but more confusion than anything else. And a why-are-they-doing-this-to-us mentality combined with, let's be honest, a strong anti-Semitic streak, makes for a pretty explosive potential here.
While the average shopkeeper might simply want to make a living to support his family, a number of people wish horrible things on Israelis. It doesn't take many people to set off a rocket or detonate a bomb, and with Hamas in charge of Gaza and locked in a power struggle with Fatah for the West Bank, there's no telling what they'll do next. Hamas doesn't recognize Israeli's right to exist and their stated mission is to destroy it, so its natural for Israel to be hostile towards them. Furthermore, Israel's history with all of it's neighbors leaves much to be desired, and its understandable why the two sides don't trust each other.
But if the military ends up destroying Hamas with this incursion, then it has cut off the only leadership Gaza really has. What next? Who takes control? If they fail and Hamas stays in control, then Israel will have presumably strengthened Hamas in front of the entire world - especially those with al-Jazeera on 24/7. After the Lebanese War, Hezbollah was actually empowered. Does Israel truly think the same thing won't happen to Hamas?
So, basically, it seems to me kind of a waiting game with no possible good ending. I don't know.
Anyway, when I was done at the police station I wanted to walk back to the checkpoint to get through the wall and out of the West Bank. I wanted to talk to some more Palestinians about what was happening. The amount of solidarity they expressed for Gaza was impressive, and their attitude towards me in general was perhaps the first time I've ever felt genuine hostility because of my nationality. Individuals have expressed it before, but it's almost always directed towards my government. Rarely the population as a whole. Here I got a strong sense of "You guys, your government, everyone over there, are evil. Burn in hell."
Eventually I came to the wall that surrounds the West Bank.
The wall is just horrible. It's a giant grey monstrosity, ineffective at its purpose, and significant beyond anything else as a tangible sign of oppression for the Palestinians of the Israelis. Protesting slogans of resistance, peace, love, hate, anti-US, anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, atheism, anarchy, socialism, and every other stripe cover the bottom portion of it - a poignant and sobering message to a world which, as far as the Palestinians believe, seems not to care about their plight. I followed it a while, simultaneously reading it and hating it. At one juncture, right below an Israeli-manned observation tower, a rock landed some meters away from me.
Not having noticed anyone around me, I took a quick glance around; no one. But then another one landed, and another. Finally, a distance away, I saw a group of twenty or so teenage and 20-something men launching an entire volley. Their body language didn't seem to indicate hostility towards me. But while their target appeared to be the Israeli-manned observation post above me, they knew I was there and didn't seem to care if they hit me. So I decided to get out real quick.
My position was between the wall, which created an angle with an adjacent building that made it impossible for me to continue, and the rock throwers, who were hiding behind a tree and a cement wall. Because I had backed myself into a literal corner and because they seemed to be concentrating on the post, I trotted to the other side of the street away from the rocks and walked up the road towards them to get away from them.
The Palestinians showed anxiety in their actions, as they were careful not to remain exposed for long when throwing. They would run out from behind a cement wall, hurl the fist-size rocks, and then run behind a large juniper that was near the wall. After a moment of rest the group would scamper back to the wall for more rocks. Then they all jumped out and start hurling rocks again. Evidently these guys had past memories from throwing rocks and didn't wish to be shot at or detained at a later time.
This, I found out later, was only a small example of many larger protests and riots that were already cropping up all around the West Bank. But all I wanted to do was get out of there, so I hugged the opposite wall from where the throwers were and started up the street. I waited until they had just thrown a volley and then passed by them on my way to a taxi that was just ahead of me. As I was starting to jog towards it I heard a crack behind me as a stone hit a brick store I was near. When I turned around, a half dozen of them were pointing at me and picking up stones. They threw a volley my way but I was mostly out of range by that time and the taxi driver casually opened the door for me and then yelled something toward the stone throwers.
I jumped into the taxi and asked the driver what he said. "Don't hit my car," he replied with a grin.
He brought me to the checkpoint saying "You probably shouldn't be around the West Bank by yourself any more over the next few days." He paused. "Sorry about the rocks."
My planned expedition for the say into Hebron, deeper within the West Bank, was obviously out of the question now, so I retired to my hostel for the night.
The next say I decided to exit Israel. There wasn't any danger to me that wasn't there before, but it was time for me to leave anyway. Luckily I made the Egyptian border in decent time and went back into Cairo, entering the city for, incredibly, the 5th time in as many weeks.
As I write this, the death toll in Gaza has passed 400. As it was, the first day saw 200 deaths in the largest Palestinian single-day toll since the war in 1967. It doesn't matter that 75% of the deaths are members of Hamas - al Jazeera isn't mentioning that part when they show results of the strikes. But even if they did, it wouldn't make a difference. Hamas is largely admired and respected in the Arab world, and to them this is like Israel trying to take out out a foreign government.
I'm hearing that the West Bank has had numerous protest - two rioters were killed the other day and many other injured. Lebanese have attacked their Egyptian embassy, blaming the government here for encouraging the attacks. Ditto in Yemen. Al-Jazeera has been covering the campaign pretty much non-stop and the Arab world is just pissed as hell. Here in Cairo there are marches and popular demonstrations against the the Egyptian government and Israel. Basically, this is just a tense time right now, and though I feel just fine with being in Egypt, it's yet another reason for me to want to get out of here.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Israel/Palestinian Territories
The drive to Israel from Amman was with four other backpackers, along with our bags, crammed into a tiny little Fiat. Our driver, who was without his nicotine fix because we had asked him not to smoke, turned out to be completely crazy. He drove, if you want to call it that, through the rural and residential roads alike at speeds of around 160 kilometers per hour (100 mph.) The six of us luckily survived that experience and we backpackers prepared ourselves for the crossing.
As I mentioned last post, entering Israel is hard. The border guards are hostile of anyone and everyone, and a good chunk of people are taken to side rooms for questioning. This questioning can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours. So naturally, it's a place to have some fun. Long story - that's a good one for when I get home - short, I was briefly questioned on my way through, but eventually made it across into Israel.
My base for Israel was going to be in Jerusalem, which is only a little ways from the border. At first I wanted to make it to Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, Hebron, Tel Aviv, and the Golan Height, but I ended up cutting out the last two because there really didn't seem to be a whole lot to do there and I cut out Hebron because it's within the West Bank and people are a bit angry there right now. More on that tomorrow.
The residential part of Jerusalem is rather new, having been created some 150 years ago or so around the old section of Jerusalem. It completely encapsulates this Old City, a walled-in, ever-busy section that still has many of the same cobblestone walkways that Christ walked through. It was here that I spent nearly all of my time.
Hawkers sell everything in the Old City in their small stalls. There is constant movement, with Israelis and Palestinians mingling with tourists from all over the world. Your sense of smell is sometimes overwhelmed by the various food and drink, and in general its a place of pure excitement.
The holy sites within the walls of the Old City are focal points for the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This of course has made the city more than a bit of a flash point over the last couple thousand years or so. Some notable stops include the Stations of the Cross, the Wailing Wall, and the Temple Mount. Of these, it was the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, that I for some reason most enjoyed and was here that I made the most stops.
The Western Wall is the most sacred site for Jews in the world. It was built by King Herod the Great around 19 BC as a support for the second temple which had been built some 500 years earlier after the first was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians. Both temples were supposedly in the location where Abraham had offered up his son as a sacrifice to God (I think. I'm not double-checking any of my history on this post, so anyone except for John can feel free to correct me when I'm wrong.), only to have his son replaced by God with a ram at the last minute.
When the Romans destroyed the second temple in 70 AD, the Jews were left with a major problem; it was considered sacrilegious to step on the ground or pray where the temple used to be, but nobody knew the actual location of where the temple had been located. So the Wailing Wall became a place for pilgrims to pray and lament the loss of the temple. It soon gained the importance that it has today.
I made it there for the lighting of the first candle for Hanukkah. The main section is in a large square which was a gathering place for all sorts of Jews who had come to celebrate, from the ultra-orthodox to the New York-accented, baseball cap-wearing. The wall is divided into two sections, one for women and one for men. True to it's name, there were indeed some people on both sides crying hard, though most were simply praying or silently staring.
Honestly, I also welled up a bit. It's difficult to fully understand why, especially because it literally is just a wall. But thinking about the history and seeing these people who thought so much of it, it was difficult not to be overcome. The large cobblestones have been worn smooth at arm level over the centuries by the millions who have touched and kissed it in their prayers. The cracks within reach as well have all been filled with little slips of paper, prayers from those who believe that one placed here is more apt to come true - over time they have turned into almost a type of mortar.
Within a stones throw of the wall is the Temple Mount, Islam's third holiest site. You might know it as the giant gold dome that is often seen in pictures of Jerusalem. Though non-Muslims aren't allowed inside of it, it was great to look at from the outside and amusing to think that these two holy sites of such conflicting religions were so near one another.
The Stations of the Cross was another powerful experience for me. These fourteen stations are depictions of Jesus' final hours, from when he was condemned to death to when he was laid in the tomb and covered with incense. The walk is especially important to Roman Catholics, and it was a powerful experience walking these stations and feeling what so many others have before me.
(Jerusalem in general is obviously a spiritual city and being there did good things to me. It was funny though, because the same time I was there feeling good about religion my pope came out and basically said that the GLBT "threat" was as great as that of deforestation and extinction. That was a pretty big buzz kill. Having 1) seen the effects of deforestation first-hand and 2) hung out with more than one member of the GLBT community, I gotta be honest with you; one does seem to be a bit more dangerous than the other. But what the Pope didn't bring up was the possibility of GAY PEOPLE CUTTING DOWN THE RAINFOREST!!! HOLY SHIT! That would be the ultimate threat in the world, kinda like a shark with a bazooka or a pirate with ninja skills.)
The Dead Sea is not far from Jerusalem, so I made it a point to get there. As the buses weren't running on the Saturday I wanted to get there, I hitched a ride there with a friendly Israeli hippie (yes, they exist). The sea is at the lowest point on Earth, some 1400 feet below sea level, and has filled up with so much salt and so many metals over the centuries that it's made up of pretty much 1/3 solid material. So if you float in it you're a hunk of styrofoam and always are at the top of the water.
It was mediocre. I had the bright idea to jump in head first, something you should never do because your eyes explode, especially when the freshwater showers are broken. Besides that, yes, it was pretty cool floating a little higher than normal, but all in all I was relatively unamused by the whole experience. Cool to say I've been there though.
Then there was Christmas Eve.
That was . . . well, certainly something to write about.
It is Christmas Eve here that is a big deal, while Christmas itself is less important. So with a small group of three other backpackers I set of for Bethlehem to see what it had to offer for the day.
Quickly things turned sour as I realized that my camera's screen had somehow broken. But this was nothing compared to how I felt an hour into my stay when I realized that someone had lifted my wallet, in it my credit card, from within the crowded streets. I pretty much wanted to punch someone in the face, but my fellow backpackers, who turned out to be completely awesome, convinced me to stay in Bethlehem and try to salvage the night. So after canceling my credit card we wandered over to the Church of Nativity.
The church itself was divided up by some of the various Christian factions. By a serious stroke of luck our group of backpackers, which had now grown to five, ended up joining a group of around 120 Anglicans who were attending a 10 p.m. mass in the Greek Orthodox chapel. This was quite a thrill for me, as a Christmas Eve mass within the Church of Nativity was an rare trick for the night.
The mass was very crowded, as a group of heavily-armed police inexplicably separated us from the archbishop and his crew up front. It was done in a combination of Arabic, Greek, and English, and we sang the first Christmas carols I had heard all year. The priests/pastors/archbishop up front read various passages and sermons, one of the better ones being a brief speech in English about the need for understanding in the Middle East between the various religions. Through understanding, the speaker said, we could only then achieve peace. It was a well-spoken sermon, but I was a little curious why the speaker thought that a group of Anglicans needed to hear it.
My curiosity was taken care of minutes later when it was announced that "the president needs to leave, but we are very happy that we could attend this mass with you."
"President of what?" I asked the lady next to me.
"Palestine," she answered.
I jerked my head around and, sure enough, President Mahmoud Abbas was standing up at the front of the room. I don't know how I had missed that he was there, but it sure explained the heavy military presence and the sermon. I was only a couple people away from the door he was leaving from, so as he walked out, shaking a couple hands, I reached over those in front of me (God I love being tall) to try to give him a hand shake. When he saw me towering up he gave me a crazy grin. I'll let Derek, a fellow traveler, describe what happened next: "My friend Peter actually gave the guy a high-five on his way out the door. And when I say 'high-five', I mean that Abbas gave him a full-on, reared-back, we-totally-rocked-this-shiz, high-five. It was rad."
Seriously, it was pretty rad. More than that, it was hilarious: here is Mahmoud Abbas, a main player in an almost-impossible peace process, a president of an Muslim and Arab country that doesn't technically exist, giving me this really enthusiastic, hard high-five/handshake in the middle of an Anglican mass within a Greek Orthodox Chapel on Christmas Eve in the church on the site where Christ was born. In terms of events I never pictured happening, that was pretty high up there.
After mass the Anglicans headed back to Jerusalem, but our little cadre stayed behind and went into the grotto, a little room downstairs about 30 feet by 8 feet that is the location of the true manger. We were joined by a group of around 70 Italians who told us that they were going to attend midnight mass down there. It didn't seem like anyone would toss us, so we decided to try to wait also. And as luck would have it, we made it through and managed to stick around for the midnight mass on Christmas just inches from where Jesus Christ was actually born.
I didn't understand much of it because it was all in Italian and Latin, though I knew some of the hymns and such in English. But just the very concept of what I was doing almost blew my mind. I don't know how I got so damn lucky with the whole business, but the night turned out to be absolutely, 100% top-notch awesome. Unbeatable.
I'll write tomorrow about my next, less-enthusiastic experience in Bethlehem.
Happy New Year, everyone!
As I mentioned last post, entering Israel is hard. The border guards are hostile of anyone and everyone, and a good chunk of people are taken to side rooms for questioning. This questioning can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours. So naturally, it's a place to have some fun. Long story - that's a good one for when I get home - short, I was briefly questioned on my way through, but eventually made it across into Israel.
My base for Israel was going to be in Jerusalem, which is only a little ways from the border. At first I wanted to make it to Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, Hebron, Tel Aviv, and the Golan Height, but I ended up cutting out the last two because there really didn't seem to be a whole lot to do there and I cut out Hebron because it's within the West Bank and people are a bit angry there right now. More on that tomorrow.
The residential part of Jerusalem is rather new, having been created some 150 years ago or so around the old section of Jerusalem. It completely encapsulates this Old City, a walled-in, ever-busy section that still has many of the same cobblestone walkways that Christ walked through. It was here that I spent nearly all of my time.
Hawkers sell everything in the Old City in their small stalls. There is constant movement, with Israelis and Palestinians mingling with tourists from all over the world. Your sense of smell is sometimes overwhelmed by the various food and drink, and in general its a place of pure excitement.
The holy sites within the walls of the Old City are focal points for the religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This of course has made the city more than a bit of a flash point over the last couple thousand years or so. Some notable stops include the Stations of the Cross, the Wailing Wall, and the Temple Mount. Of these, it was the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, that I for some reason most enjoyed and was here that I made the most stops.
The Western Wall is the most sacred site for Jews in the world. It was built by King Herod the Great around 19 BC as a support for the second temple which had been built some 500 years earlier after the first was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II and the Babylonians. Both temples were supposedly in the location where Abraham had offered up his son as a sacrifice to God (I think. I'm not double-checking any of my history on this post, so anyone except for John can feel free to correct me when I'm wrong.), only to have his son replaced by God with a ram at the last minute.
When the Romans destroyed the second temple in 70 AD, the Jews were left with a major problem; it was considered sacrilegious to step on the ground or pray where the temple used to be, but nobody knew the actual location of where the temple had been located. So the Wailing Wall became a place for pilgrims to pray and lament the loss of the temple. It soon gained the importance that it has today.
I made it there for the lighting of the first candle for Hanukkah. The main section is in a large square which was a gathering place for all sorts of Jews who had come to celebrate, from the ultra-orthodox to the New York-accented, baseball cap-wearing. The wall is divided into two sections, one for women and one for men. True to it's name, there were indeed some people on both sides crying hard, though most were simply praying or silently staring.
Honestly, I also welled up a bit. It's difficult to fully understand why, especially because it literally is just a wall. But thinking about the history and seeing these people who thought so much of it, it was difficult not to be overcome. The large cobblestones have been worn smooth at arm level over the centuries by the millions who have touched and kissed it in their prayers. The cracks within reach as well have all been filled with little slips of paper, prayers from those who believe that one placed here is more apt to come true - over time they have turned into almost a type of mortar.
Within a stones throw of the wall is the Temple Mount, Islam's third holiest site. You might know it as the giant gold dome that is often seen in pictures of Jerusalem. Though non-Muslims aren't allowed inside of it, it was great to look at from the outside and amusing to think that these two holy sites of such conflicting religions were so near one another.
The Stations of the Cross was another powerful experience for me. These fourteen stations are depictions of Jesus' final hours, from when he was condemned to death to when he was laid in the tomb and covered with incense. The walk is especially important to Roman Catholics, and it was a powerful experience walking these stations and feeling what so many others have before me.
(Jerusalem in general is obviously a spiritual city and being there did good things to me. It was funny though, because the same time I was there feeling good about religion my pope came out and basically said that the GLBT "threat" was as great as that of deforestation and extinction. That was a pretty big buzz kill. Having 1) seen the effects of deforestation first-hand and 2) hung out with more than one member of the GLBT community, I gotta be honest with you; one does seem to be a bit more dangerous than the other. But what the Pope didn't bring up was the possibility of GAY PEOPLE CUTTING DOWN THE RAINFOREST!!! HOLY SHIT! That would be the ultimate threat in the world, kinda like a shark with a bazooka or a pirate with ninja skills.)
The Dead Sea is not far from Jerusalem, so I made it a point to get there. As the buses weren't running on the Saturday I wanted to get there, I hitched a ride there with a friendly Israeli hippie (yes, they exist). The sea is at the lowest point on Earth, some 1400 feet below sea level, and has filled up with so much salt and so many metals over the centuries that it's made up of pretty much 1/3 solid material. So if you float in it you're a hunk of styrofoam and always are at the top of the water.
It was mediocre. I had the bright idea to jump in head first, something you should never do because your eyes explode, especially when the freshwater showers are broken. Besides that, yes, it was pretty cool floating a little higher than normal, but all in all I was relatively unamused by the whole experience. Cool to say I've been there though.
Then there was Christmas Eve.
That was . . . well, certainly something to write about.
It is Christmas Eve here that is a big deal, while Christmas itself is less important. So with a small group of three other backpackers I set of for Bethlehem to see what it had to offer for the day.
Quickly things turned sour as I realized that my camera's screen had somehow broken. But this was nothing compared to how I felt an hour into my stay when I realized that someone had lifted my wallet, in it my credit card, from within the crowded streets. I pretty much wanted to punch someone in the face, but my fellow backpackers, who turned out to be completely awesome, convinced me to stay in Bethlehem and try to salvage the night. So after canceling my credit card we wandered over to the Church of Nativity.
The church itself was divided up by some of the various Christian factions. By a serious stroke of luck our group of backpackers, which had now grown to five, ended up joining a group of around 120 Anglicans who were attending a 10 p.m. mass in the Greek Orthodox chapel. This was quite a thrill for me, as a Christmas Eve mass within the Church of Nativity was an rare trick for the night.
The mass was very crowded, as a group of heavily-armed police inexplicably separated us from the archbishop and his crew up front. It was done in a combination of Arabic, Greek, and English, and we sang the first Christmas carols I had heard all year. The priests/pastors/archbishop up front read various passages and sermons, one of the better ones being a brief speech in English about the need for understanding in the Middle East between the various religions. Through understanding, the speaker said, we could only then achieve peace. It was a well-spoken sermon, but I was a little curious why the speaker thought that a group of Anglicans needed to hear it.
My curiosity was taken care of minutes later when it was announced that "the president needs to leave, but we are very happy that we could attend this mass with you."
"President of what?" I asked the lady next to me.
"Palestine," she answered.
I jerked my head around and, sure enough, President Mahmoud Abbas was standing up at the front of the room. I don't know how I had missed that he was there, but it sure explained the heavy military presence and the sermon. I was only a couple people away from the door he was leaving from, so as he walked out, shaking a couple hands, I reached over those in front of me (God I love being tall) to try to give him a hand shake. When he saw me towering up he gave me a crazy grin. I'll let Derek, a fellow traveler, describe what happened next: "My friend Peter actually gave the guy a high-five on his way out the door. And when I say 'high-five', I mean that Abbas gave him a full-on, reared-back, we-totally-rocked-this-shiz, high-five. It was rad."
Seriously, it was pretty rad. More than that, it was hilarious: here is Mahmoud Abbas, a main player in an almost-impossible peace process, a president of an Muslim and Arab country that doesn't technically exist, giving me this really enthusiastic, hard high-five/handshake in the middle of an Anglican mass within a Greek Orthodox Chapel on Christmas Eve in the church on the site where Christ was born. In terms of events I never pictured happening, that was pretty high up there.
After mass the Anglicans headed back to Jerusalem, but our little cadre stayed behind and went into the grotto, a little room downstairs about 30 feet by 8 feet that is the location of the true manger. We were joined by a group of around 70 Italians who told us that they were going to attend midnight mass down there. It didn't seem like anyone would toss us, so we decided to try to wait also. And as luck would have it, we made it through and managed to stick around for the midnight mass on Christmas just inches from where Jesus Christ was actually born.
I didn't understand much of it because it was all in Italian and Latin, though I knew some of the hymns and such in English. But just the very concept of what I was doing almost blew my mind. I don't know how I got so damn lucky with the whole business, but the night turned out to be absolutely, 100% top-notch awesome. Unbeatable.
I'll write tomorrow about my next, less-enthusiastic experience in Bethlehem.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Jordan
"Dad."
"What?"
"Dad!"
"What?!"
"DAD!"
"WHAT?!""
"Head for the fireplace!"
Jordan, Israel, and Egypt all share the top of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern gulf of the Red Sea that is created by the Sinai Peninsula. Having decided to travel first to Jordan and go to Israel afterwards, I had to go first to the Egyptian town of Taba by bus located at the top on the Sinai, cross through the Israeli town of Eilat, and then hitch to the Jordanian town of Aqaba. I made it to Taba easily enough and had a surprisingly straight-forward time getting into Israel. There are countless backpacking stories about the difficulties of the getting to Israel, but outside of the 5 minutes or so of the border agent (they all seem to be 19 year-old girls, literally) badgering me about my lack of solid travel plans, I got through in quick time. This time.
I found Eilat to be a good area and decided to camp out for the night instead of crossing immediately into Jordan. I set up my tent and sleeping bag and was making dinner when a helicopter came from the north and headed out over the Gulf. It banked a ways in and turned straight for me, flying in at a low altitude. It landed a short distance from where I was. I [Edit] wasn't initially concerned, as I assumed it was only military maneuvers in what was the only Israeli outlet to the Red Sea. But when a second, third, and then forth did the same thing within minutes, I started to grow curious. The helicopters were landing, I found out later, only two gorges over from me. While there was a small navy yard on the ocean, I wasn't aware of a army base inland at all. So I hiked to a nearby road to find out, and was shocked when I was told that there had actually been a major bus accident only a short distance away.
A tour bus of Russians had driven off the road and flipped numerous times down the mountain slope. In the worst traffic accident in Israel's history, the bus had been trying to pass another bus when it rolled down the embankment, killing 24 and injuring another 30. Helicopters came and went all night long carrying out severely injured and the dead. As I was hiking back to town that day I saw the bus - it's something I don't care to describe for a number of reasons, but it's something that made me wonder how 30 managed to come out alive.
That was it for me and I had no more stomach to stay in Eilat any longer, so I left as soon as I could for Jordan. I arrived around late-morning and made it through the checkpoint, easily crossing into the Republic of Jordan. My first stop, and as it turned out my only real stop, was in the ancient city of Petra.
Petra, for you Indiana Jones fans out there, includes the famous "Treasury" building, or the building where Indiana finds the Holy Grail in the Last Crusade. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city and had done little research on it because of my haste to exit Egypt, but my exploration of the town made me almost melt.
The ancient city was inhabited by many peoples and tribes for perhaps as much as the last three thousand years, but it was the Nabataeans some two thousand years ago who built the city into what it is today. Taking a water supply from the mountains around it, the Nabateans were able to create something of an artificial oasis in what is otherwise a desert area. They cut hundreds, maybe thousands, or homes into the sandstone mountains and made tremendous shrines and monuments that stand as high as 150 feet from those same cliffs.
To enter the city one must walk a kilometer or so through a gorge created from a split sandstone mountain (the very one, if you might remember, that Indiana and his group went through in the movie). The very first major temple that one sees is nicknamed the "Treasury," the Indiana Jones building, which was actually a tomb for a Nabataean leader. While not the largest, this is the best preserved and most famous of Petra. It is, without a doubt, something that can inspire only awe when first seeing. Walking through the gorge, turn after turn, you don't know what to expect, but when you finally come into full view of the monument, it's such a shock to see this nearly perfectly-preserved 2000 year old, 100 foot building built right into the mountain, that you just stand for a moment in the entry way to collect yourself. Though the inside is unimpressive - it's only a tomb, after all - the outside is a sight to behold.
From here I was free to explore the spread-out city by myself, and I had an incredible time doing so. The city is perfect for my tourism preferences - a map is provided for visitors and a brief plaque is put up on the major monuments and sites, but other than that it's a matter of setting out by yourself. You can go with everyone else, or can see some of the smaller but less traveled areas. Either way you're walking and climbing yourself. My first day I took the main trek and explored some of the larger temples and monuments. I was impressed by the shear number of people of all ages who made the admittedly difficult trek to the far end of Petra and climbed 800 steps up the mountain to visit the "Monastery," the largest of the Petra tombs and close to 150 feet tall. Though less known than it's smaller counterpart the Treasury, the Monastery holds the same mystique of its sibling and I spent hours sitting outside of it enjoying its presence over the two days I spent in Petra.
The second day I bypassed much of what I had earlier seen and took a hike on the outskirts of Petra, exploring the tunnel built by the Nabateans to control flooding and the aqueduct built later by the Romans, as well as the more isolated caves and gorges that are all over Petra but typically are seen only by the nomadic Bedouins who still graze in the area. As the day began to wane I eventually made my way back to the Monastery to watch the shadows overtake it.
I found that as the sun sets people tend to leave Petra quickly, so I made it a point both to hang around so I could have the monuments pretty much to myself. The ensuing darkness made the trek back to the entrance a bit more perilous with the 2000 year old steps and crumbly rocks, but seeing the light fade from this fantastic city is an experience unto its own. Indeed, Petra as a whole is easily my favorite stop so far in my trip and I'm extremely happy I ended up going there. The place is a testament to humanity, a reminder that we can make indescribably impressive cities without even our modern-day technology, and that we can live anywhere and do anything.
I wanted to make Israel by Christmas and planned on spending a couple days in Amman and the Dead Sea, so I set off for the Jordanian capital soon after. Unfortunately, I found Amman to be amazingly unimpressive. The huge city is built from the desert mountains and the buildings are all the same depressing shade of light brown that the ground around them is. Trees and greenery are rare, and the smog is nearly choking. While the food was relatively cheap, this was the only benefit of the city and I decided after less than a day to leave for Israel and get to the Dead Sea from that side.
Because I won't be posting again until after Christmas, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas! To you Jews, I hope you're having an equally great Hanukkah. I've been keeping on on the snow fall in Minnesota, so I know that you'll have a white one, but I hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and gets everything they want along with the coal that I know more than a few of you will receive.
Personally, I'll be making the trip to Bethlehem to see Christmas there and I'm very pumped for it. I'll be thinking of everyone back home.
Keep well, all.
"What?"
"Dad!"
"What?!"
"DAD!"
"WHAT?!""
"Head for the fireplace!"
Jordan, Israel, and Egypt all share the top of the Gulf of Aqaba, the eastern gulf of the Red Sea that is created by the Sinai Peninsula. Having decided to travel first to Jordan and go to Israel afterwards, I had to go first to the Egyptian town of Taba by bus located at the top on the Sinai, cross through the Israeli town of Eilat, and then hitch to the Jordanian town of Aqaba. I made it to Taba easily enough and had a surprisingly straight-forward time getting into Israel. There are countless backpacking stories about the difficulties of the getting to Israel, but outside of the 5 minutes or so of the border agent (they all seem to be 19 year-old girls, literally) badgering me about my lack of solid travel plans, I got through in quick time. This time.
I found Eilat to be a good area and decided to camp out for the night instead of crossing immediately into Jordan. I set up my tent and sleeping bag and was making dinner when a helicopter came from the north and headed out over the Gulf. It banked a ways in and turned straight for me, flying in at a low altitude. It landed a short distance from where I was. I [Edit] wasn't initially concerned, as I assumed it was only military maneuvers in what was the only Israeli outlet to the Red Sea. But when a second, third, and then forth did the same thing within minutes, I started to grow curious. The helicopters were landing, I found out later, only two gorges over from me. While there was a small navy yard on the ocean, I wasn't aware of a army base inland at all. So I hiked to a nearby road to find out, and was shocked when I was told that there had actually been a major bus accident only a short distance away.
A tour bus of Russians had driven off the road and flipped numerous times down the mountain slope. In the worst traffic accident in Israel's history, the bus had been trying to pass another bus when it rolled down the embankment, killing 24 and injuring another 30. Helicopters came and went all night long carrying out severely injured and the dead. As I was hiking back to town that day I saw the bus - it's something I don't care to describe for a number of reasons, but it's something that made me wonder how 30 managed to come out alive.
That was it for me and I had no more stomach to stay in Eilat any longer, so I left as soon as I could for Jordan. I arrived around late-morning and made it through the checkpoint, easily crossing into the Republic of Jordan. My first stop, and as it turned out my only real stop, was in the ancient city of Petra.
Petra, for you Indiana Jones fans out there, includes the famous "Treasury" building, or the building where Indiana finds the Holy Grail in the Last Crusade. I wasn't sure what to expect from the city and had done little research on it because of my haste to exit Egypt, but my exploration of the town made me almost melt.
The ancient city was inhabited by many peoples and tribes for perhaps as much as the last three thousand years, but it was the Nabataeans some two thousand years ago who built the city into what it is today. Taking a water supply from the mountains around it, the Nabateans were able to create something of an artificial oasis in what is otherwise a desert area. They cut hundreds, maybe thousands, or homes into the sandstone mountains and made tremendous shrines and monuments that stand as high as 150 feet from those same cliffs.
To enter the city one must walk a kilometer or so through a gorge created from a split sandstone mountain (the very one, if you might remember, that Indiana and his group went through in the movie). The very first major temple that one sees is nicknamed the "Treasury," the Indiana Jones building, which was actually a tomb for a Nabataean leader. While not the largest, this is the best preserved and most famous of Petra. It is, without a doubt, something that can inspire only awe when first seeing. Walking through the gorge, turn after turn, you don't know what to expect, but when you finally come into full view of the monument, it's such a shock to see this nearly perfectly-preserved 2000 year old, 100 foot building built right into the mountain, that you just stand for a moment in the entry way to collect yourself. Though the inside is unimpressive - it's only a tomb, after all - the outside is a sight to behold.
From here I was free to explore the spread-out city by myself, and I had an incredible time doing so. The city is perfect for my tourism preferences - a map is provided for visitors and a brief plaque is put up on the major monuments and sites, but other than that it's a matter of setting out by yourself. You can go with everyone else, or can see some of the smaller but less traveled areas. Either way you're walking and climbing yourself. My first day I took the main trek and explored some of the larger temples and monuments. I was impressed by the shear number of people of all ages who made the admittedly difficult trek to the far end of Petra and climbed 800 steps up the mountain to visit the "Monastery," the largest of the Petra tombs and close to 150 feet tall. Though less known than it's smaller counterpart the Treasury, the Monastery holds the same mystique of its sibling and I spent hours sitting outside of it enjoying its presence over the two days I spent in Petra.
The second day I bypassed much of what I had earlier seen and took a hike on the outskirts of Petra, exploring the tunnel built by the Nabateans to control flooding and the aqueduct built later by the Romans, as well as the more isolated caves and gorges that are all over Petra but typically are seen only by the nomadic Bedouins who still graze in the area. As the day began to wane I eventually made my way back to the Monastery to watch the shadows overtake it.
I found that as the sun sets people tend to leave Petra quickly, so I made it a point both to hang around so I could have the monuments pretty much to myself. The ensuing darkness made the trek back to the entrance a bit more perilous with the 2000 year old steps and crumbly rocks, but seeing the light fade from this fantastic city is an experience unto its own. Indeed, Petra as a whole is easily my favorite stop so far in my trip and I'm extremely happy I ended up going there. The place is a testament to humanity, a reminder that we can make indescribably impressive cities without even our modern-day technology, and that we can live anywhere and do anything.
I wanted to make Israel by Christmas and planned on spending a couple days in Amman and the Dead Sea, so I set off for the Jordanian capital soon after. Unfortunately, I found Amman to be amazingly unimpressive. The huge city is built from the desert mountains and the buildings are all the same depressing shade of light brown that the ground around them is. Trees and greenery are rare, and the smog is nearly choking. While the food was relatively cheap, this was the only benefit of the city and I decided after less than a day to leave for Israel and get to the Dead Sea from that side.
Because I won't be posting again until after Christmas, I want to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas! To you Jews, I hope you're having an equally great Hanukkah. I've been keeping on on the snow fall in Minnesota, so I know that you'll have a white one, but I hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and gets everything they want along with the coal that I know more than a few of you will receive.
Personally, I'll be making the trip to Bethlehem to see Christmas there and I'm very pumped for it. I'll be thinking of everyone back home.
Keep well, all.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Egypt, Part II
My Sudan visa issues have continued unabated and my temporary good feelings towards Cairo dissipated quickly enough. This meant breaking camp again from Cairo while waiting for permission to head across the border.
I decided that because I had already been west and south - and would eventually travel south again - that it was time to go westward. There is a limited destination choice in west Egypt, because you immediately run into the Sahara Desert and the only real population centers lie on the Mediterranean coast and in any oases that may pop up before the Libyan border.
The most entertaining place seemed to be the far-away oasis of Siwa. It was so far away, in fact, that it was a mere 30 miles from and the last oasis before the Libyan border. Of the two paths to get there, only one is practical for real travel, so I jumped on a bus that went through Alexandria and dropped me off at what I found to be a quaint town whose main mode of transportation was the donkey cart, with the motor bike following as a distant second.
The town itself is nothing outstanding, but spending time in an actual oasis in the middle of the Great Desert was a thrill in itself. Siwa is famous for its olives and dates, neither of which I'm particularly fond of, but I was content to live on fresh fruit and falafels while I was there. I spent my time exploring the various hot springs within the oasis and the giant salt lakes that surround it. The lakes themselves were formed as the Dead Sea was - a constant flow of water comes into the lakes and has nowhere to go. So while the incoming water is potable and palatable, the minerals within it have over time have accumulated as the water evaporates. This is what created the salt lakes.
I rented a bike for two days and set out to the lakes to explore and spent some truly serene time alone. A wonderful experience, with only the occasional gust of wind to keep me company among the salt flats and sand dunes. Other than that, there was pure silence and pure stillness for me to enjoy. For anyone heading to Egypt, I would recomend spending time here.
After a few days I decided to join a small group that was trekking across the desert to the oasis of Bahariyya, which lies to the east of Siwa. I was particularly excited about this because the trek was via the only other route to Siwa, one that virtually nobody took and was, I had heard, a hell of an experience to have.
It turned out to be just that. In small convoy of three 4X4's we set out on what can only charitably be described as a road. Paved at one point in the distant past, it now was a wreck and filled with cracks and giant holes, covered in some parts by the desert, and largely an irrelevant feature to the landscape. The majority of the road was so broken up, in fact, that we drove through the virgin desert in order to save our tires and shocks. Over the great dunes and mountains, occasionally stopping to dig out a stuck vehicle, we slowly struggled from checkpoint to checkpoint.
Under normal circumstances, these military checkpoints would be something for me to ridicule or hate for being a waste of time. Save for ourselves, no others were on that road as we traveled, and the frequent checkpoints we had to stop for could for all intents and purposes be considered stupid - there were no other paths for hundreds of kilometers and nothing at all threatening to the Egyptians. Jesus, if the Libyans wanted to invade, the Egyptians would have months before the Libyans made it through the desert to any respectable city. And that's fine if you want to make sure that travelers like us all have our passes, but with no joining roads, why the multiple checkpoints when one should suffice? Not to mention that these poor guys had the Siberian outposts of Egypt, what with their tiny and depressing one room building, the rubble-strewn yards, and their seemingly obligatory mangy stray dogs that would inevitably trot up to our approaching vehicles.
But it turned out that I was thankful for these checkpoints, if only because they would be our saviors if anything went wrong. A vehicle stuck in the sand was a common occurrence, sometimes as much as a two to three feet down. Likewise, spare tires could be used up alarmingly fast on the broken road and rocky desert. Really, there is an endless list of things that could potentially go wrong out there and these guys could potentially be life savers.
Baharriya itself wasn't that special, though the dinners and music we had every night were very pleasant. We camped one night in the desert and enjoyed some great food with the Bedouins (including some lamb that had been slaughtered for Eid Al-Adha) and in general I had an extremely pleasant time.
Soon enough I was back in Cairo, which had once again become something of a nemesis to me. It was the 4th time I had entered the city, and I was growing tired of the smog and the constant hustle. But incredibly, after once again going to the Sudanese embassy - I could go there now backwards with my eyes closed - they told me that it would be at least another two weeks. I muttered some curse words as I walked out and stalked back to my hostel, determined to do SOMETHING if I wasn't able to get to Sudan right away. Staying in Cairo was out of the question, and I had pretty much visited all of Egypt I cared to visit. Geographically limited because of visa issues for Libya to the west, I decided to go back on my earlier promise to myself and head north, into the Middle East.
Many countries within the Middle East have visa issues as complicated as Sudan's, so I made up my mind to travel to Israel and Jordan. Both were friendly, relatively hassle-free to get in and out of for Americans (I thought), and in general close enough to Sinai that I could come back to Cairo in a relatively short amount of time.
As I'm hoping to keep this country-by-country, I'm going to leave this post there and continue soon with a Jordan post. I hope everyone is well and nobody is snowed in right now.
I decided that because I had already been west and south - and would eventually travel south again - that it was time to go westward. There is a limited destination choice in west Egypt, because you immediately run into the Sahara Desert and the only real population centers lie on the Mediterranean coast and in any oases that may pop up before the Libyan border.
The most entertaining place seemed to be the far-away oasis of Siwa. It was so far away, in fact, that it was a mere 30 miles from and the last oasis before the Libyan border. Of the two paths to get there, only one is practical for real travel, so I jumped on a bus that went through Alexandria and dropped me off at what I found to be a quaint town whose main mode of transportation was the donkey cart, with the motor bike following as a distant second.
The town itself is nothing outstanding, but spending time in an actual oasis in the middle of the Great Desert was a thrill in itself. Siwa is famous for its olives and dates, neither of which I'm particularly fond of, but I was content to live on fresh fruit and falafels while I was there. I spent my time exploring the various hot springs within the oasis and the giant salt lakes that surround it. The lakes themselves were formed as the Dead Sea was - a constant flow of water comes into the lakes and has nowhere to go. So while the incoming water is potable and palatable, the minerals within it have over time have accumulated as the water evaporates. This is what created the salt lakes.
I rented a bike for two days and set out to the lakes to explore and spent some truly serene time alone. A wonderful experience, with only the occasional gust of wind to keep me company among the salt flats and sand dunes. Other than that, there was pure silence and pure stillness for me to enjoy. For anyone heading to Egypt, I would recomend spending time here.
After a few days I decided to join a small group that was trekking across the desert to the oasis of Bahariyya, which lies to the east of Siwa. I was particularly excited about this because the trek was via the only other route to Siwa, one that virtually nobody took and was, I had heard, a hell of an experience to have.
It turned out to be just that. In small convoy of three 4X4's we set out on what can only charitably be described as a road. Paved at one point in the distant past, it now was a wreck and filled with cracks and giant holes, covered in some parts by the desert, and largely an irrelevant feature to the landscape. The majority of the road was so broken up, in fact, that we drove through the virgin desert in order to save our tires and shocks. Over the great dunes and mountains, occasionally stopping to dig out a stuck vehicle, we slowly struggled from checkpoint to checkpoint.
Under normal circumstances, these military checkpoints would be something for me to ridicule or hate for being a waste of time. Save for ourselves, no others were on that road as we traveled, and the frequent checkpoints we had to stop for could for all intents and purposes be considered stupid - there were no other paths for hundreds of kilometers and nothing at all threatening to the Egyptians. Jesus, if the Libyans wanted to invade, the Egyptians would have months before the Libyans made it through the desert to any respectable city. And that's fine if you want to make sure that travelers like us all have our passes, but with no joining roads, why the multiple checkpoints when one should suffice? Not to mention that these poor guys had the Siberian outposts of Egypt, what with their tiny and depressing one room building, the rubble-strewn yards, and their seemingly obligatory mangy stray dogs that would inevitably trot up to our approaching vehicles.
But it turned out that I was thankful for these checkpoints, if only because they would be our saviors if anything went wrong. A vehicle stuck in the sand was a common occurrence, sometimes as much as a two to three feet down. Likewise, spare tires could be used up alarmingly fast on the broken road and rocky desert. Really, there is an endless list of things that could potentially go wrong out there and these guys could potentially be life savers.
Baharriya itself wasn't that special, though the dinners and music we had every night were very pleasant. We camped one night in the desert and enjoyed some great food with the Bedouins (including some lamb that had been slaughtered for Eid Al-Adha) and in general I had an extremely pleasant time.
Soon enough I was back in Cairo, which had once again become something of a nemesis to me. It was the 4th time I had entered the city, and I was growing tired of the smog and the constant hustle. But incredibly, after once again going to the Sudanese embassy - I could go there now backwards with my eyes closed - they told me that it would be at least another two weeks. I muttered some curse words as I walked out and stalked back to my hostel, determined to do SOMETHING if I wasn't able to get to Sudan right away. Staying in Cairo was out of the question, and I had pretty much visited all of Egypt I cared to visit. Geographically limited because of visa issues for Libya to the west, I decided to go back on my earlier promise to myself and head north, into the Middle East.
Many countries within the Middle East have visa issues as complicated as Sudan's, so I made up my mind to travel to Israel and Jordan. Both were friendly, relatively hassle-free to get in and out of for Americans (I thought), and in general close enough to Sinai that I could come back to Cairo in a relatively short amount of time.
As I'm hoping to keep this country-by-country, I'm going to leave this post there and continue soon with a Jordan post. I hope everyone is well and nobody is snowed in right now.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Egypt
I had hoped to make my first travel post after crossing the Egyptian border into Sudan, but for some reason it looks like Hermes has not willed it for me to cross over yet and instead I'm writing from Cairo.
The problem, as I had feared, is that getting a Sudanese visa is damn tricky and I'm striking out at every turn here. I've got no chance because of holiday here for the next week, so tomorrow I'll hopefully be off to Siwa, to the West. Staying for this extra time might be for the best, however, as Cairo (and Egypt as a whole) has grown on me in the extra time spent here and I've discovered a side of the country I would have otherwise missed.
When I first arrived, my first order of business in Egypt was to visit the pyramids, Nile, and National Museum, which I did in quick succession. Unfortunately, I quickly decided that the city fell below what were very insignificant expectations to begin with. It seemed that every cab driver tried to overcharge me, every shop keeper tried to sell me outrageously priced perfume, and every smile directed at me was fake. The city, I felt that and still feel, is essentially like Rome on blow - history every twelve feet and cats every ten feet (in what I can only imagine is a nod to it's ancient history of veneration towards cats), crazy traffic, and a lively population. But where I like Rome, I didn't like Cairo because these effects are multiplied ten-fold and the "bustleness" of the city is just plain crazy.
With many millions of people, the city is understandably cramped and the city suffers not only from human pollution but from the desert sands as well. In some areas I can see no more than a quarter mile because of the smog. And the traffic. God, the traffic.
You know how in some movies the good guy or bad guy will gain control of the traffic light system and then make all lights turn green at a traffic intersection? Of course what inevitably happens is that a dozen or so cars will crash into each other and the drivers will emerge shouting "Hey, what the hell's the matter with you?!?!" at each other. Well it's like that in Cairo, except nobody ever crashes! Seriously, I've been to some of the largest cities in the world and crossed streets in some pretty ridiculous traffic, but Cairo is the only city where I've truly had an adrenaline rush from navigating some of these streets. You don't think about it, you just dive into the traffic and cram into any wedge you can before you're struck by the honking cab drivers. Because they're always honking. Or shouting at each other.
So anyway, I decided Cairo was not for me. After failing in my initial attempts at a Sudanese visa I fled to the seaside town of Dahab on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Still fretting about security from when Israel took control in 1967, security checks are frequent and I had to show my passport four times from the Suez Canal to Dahab and four times back.
Still, the hassle was worth it for the comfort that Dahab offers. It is billed, indeed it was built up for this reason, as a backpacking hot-spot in Sinai and has worked hard to keep itself into a low-key tourist location. Set along the Gulf of Aqaba, the Saudi Arabian mountains can be seen to the east across the channel and, at night, some lights from settlements across the way on the Arabian Peninsula. I was sorely tempted to cross the channel via fishing boat or head north to Jordan and Israel, but I figured that it was best to keep these destinations safe for another trip and instead keep to Africa.
To the west of Dahab lie crumbling granite and sandstone mountains, courtesy of the Great Rift Valley. They had no vegetation and were pure desert, so it seemed very appealing to check them out. After a brief day of snorkeling along the reefs of Dahab I put together my camping pack and set out with three gallons of water and some food to explore these hills.
In every spot it seemed the rocks are just ready to fall off and crumble to the canyons below, so it made me wary of climbing on top of the hills. Instead I stuck to the low points and crossed over ridges as little as possible. Heading north, I trekked along the coast keeping the water in site. There were times, when the gullies went straight down or house-size boulders blocked my path, that I was forced to climb the walls to find another path, and even though I know it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do I couldn't help myself. It's a great feeling having to navigate the rocks and boulders by my own wits. Even the feeling of fear, when I was edging around the cliffs as I felt a rock begin to crumble or break free beneath my hands, or worse, beneath my feet, was an emotion I hadn't felt in a good while and I took a certain perverse pleasure when it coursed through me.
But that feeling was luckily rare and I spent the great majority of my time simply trekking. Nights were spent sleeping beneath the beautiful desert stars. Sunsets were a great time, because while the sun would set in back of me, over the Sinai Mountains, the Arabian Mountains across the gulf always reflected the gorgeous colors. Their brown color would always turn red first with the setting sun. Then it would fade to a pink, next purple, and finally brown again as the sun finally went down. Then the stars would explode into the sky that was otherwise pure blackness.
The mountains weren't safe for mules or camels because of their make-up, and the Bedouins seemed to largely avoid traveling in them as well, so I never saw anyone my entire time there save for a lone bird my second day. If there is a use for the word serene, it is within these mountains.
Eventually I made my way to a road on the coast and followed that back to Dahab. I had forgotten my passport back in the hostel and my trekking had unknowingly put me on the wrong side of a security checkpoint, but after some good natured gesturing with their unnecessarily large automatics, they decided to let me through anyway. Walking back, a man in a shop gestured me over and asked if I was hungry. As I had run our of both food and water the day before, I emphatically told him I was and he invited me in to share his lunch in a most welcoming gesture of Bedouin hospitality. I am told that this is a common occurrence in the next country on my list, Sudan, but still it came as a wonderful shock to me. Especially considering how much I love eating and think of every morsel of food as a wonderful gift from the Gods, having a stranger share their food with me for no other reason than to be nice is incredibly impressive.
I returned to Cairo to wander around the city a bit but quickly became as annoyed as before, especially around the tourist areas where the shop keepers have some pretty well thought out plans to get you to buy stuff. I fled once again and decided to get a train ticket down the Nile to Aswan.
After walking into the train station to buy the ticket with my head down, I was mortified to realize that I had actually walked into what turned out to be one of the largest mosques in Cairo during prayer time. Now, I gotta say, if you ever want to feel like a complete idiot, nothing, nothing, not even setting yourself on fire, makes you feel as stupid as doing something like that. There is no way to get extract yourself gracefully. I thought about kneeling down to pray and hope they didn't notice I had no idea what I was doing, but I decided that the best thing to do would be to cut my losses and flee the area before I did anything dumber. As it was, not many people saw me as I walked in the back way, but still . . . whew.
After failing to a get a visa down in Aswan I quickly came back up to Cairo. I say quickly because I didn't want to get in transit during Eid ul-Adha, the huge Muslim holiday that celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God (who, it turns out, was just yanking Abraham's chain, the jokester!). Eid ul-Adha is a four day long festival in Muslim countries (which is actually far longer) that I was hoping to experience in Sudan, but that obviously isn't happening, so Egypt it is.
Anyway, these last few days I've spent wandering the streets of Old Cairo, a section of town that I have grown to love. The buildings here, which appear as old as Egypt itself, are in a cramped section of town where the roads are more alleys than anything else and have no sense or purpose, the trash has piled up, and the people look at your strangely not because you represent money but because it's just weird that you're there. It was here that for the first time in ages I got my first whiff of burning rubbish, a smell that any traveler of a third-world country should be familiar with and maybe even welcome.
Chickens, goats, mules, and the occasional cow wander the streets and children usually do one of three things - wave and say "hello," just stare, or run up asking for money. Oddly enough, even the asking for money is enduring. I never give it, but they never really seem to care that much. They just think it's hilarious that I'm as tall as I am.
The first couple times I asked the locals where a good place to eat was, and both times I was motioned to sit. They then went of and brought back my lunch and adamantly refused payment because "I am like a brother." I felt bad at this treatment and today vowed to find food myself. So for lunch I walked into a cafe for some falafels and almost jumped out of my skin when I walked into a huge pool of blood that was forming from the GIANT GODDAMN COW THEY HAD JUST SLAUGHTERED RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DINING AREA.
Seriously, the cow, no doubt slaughtered for Eid ul-Adha which starts tomorrow, must have been alive and kicking only seconds before I entered, because the puddle was still rapidly forming. The head was about half off, and thing thing took up maybe a third of the room that was available in the tiny cafe. At this I decided I was no longer hungry and existed the cafe as graciously and quickly as I could.
So, ridiculous cow slaughters aside, Old Cairo has become a favorite place of mine. I realize that my initial disappointment with Cairo was in it's tourist hot-spots because it's natural to try to get money off of unsuspecting tourists. I've always known this, yet for some reason I forgot it here and at first thought of Cairo only by those who represent it's tourism. Bad mistake.
So anyway right now I'm about to have a seizure because it's so difficult to get a Sudanese visa, but besides that all is well. That's all I got for now, I'll try to post when (if) I cross the border before I head into nothingness.
p.s. All of the computers here have pirated copies of Windows . . . XP. I have yet to see Vista. Suck it, Microsoft.
The problem, as I had feared, is that getting a Sudanese visa is damn tricky and I'm striking out at every turn here. I've got no chance because of holiday here for the next week, so tomorrow I'll hopefully be off to Siwa, to the West. Staying for this extra time might be for the best, however, as Cairo (and Egypt as a whole) has grown on me in the extra time spent here and I've discovered a side of the country I would have otherwise missed.
When I first arrived, my first order of business in Egypt was to visit the pyramids, Nile, and National Museum, which I did in quick succession. Unfortunately, I quickly decided that the city fell below what were very insignificant expectations to begin with. It seemed that every cab driver tried to overcharge me, every shop keeper tried to sell me outrageously priced perfume, and every smile directed at me was fake. The city, I felt that and still feel, is essentially like Rome on blow - history every twelve feet and cats every ten feet (in what I can only imagine is a nod to it's ancient history of veneration towards cats), crazy traffic, and a lively population. But where I like Rome, I didn't like Cairo because these effects are multiplied ten-fold and the "bustleness" of the city is just plain crazy.
With many millions of people, the city is understandably cramped and the city suffers not only from human pollution but from the desert sands as well. In some areas I can see no more than a quarter mile because of the smog. And the traffic. God, the traffic.
You know how in some movies the good guy or bad guy will gain control of the traffic light system and then make all lights turn green at a traffic intersection? Of course what inevitably happens is that a dozen or so cars will crash into each other and the drivers will emerge shouting "Hey, what the hell's the matter with you?!?!" at each other. Well it's like that in Cairo, except nobody ever crashes! Seriously, I've been to some of the largest cities in the world and crossed streets in some pretty ridiculous traffic, but Cairo is the only city where I've truly had an adrenaline rush from navigating some of these streets. You don't think about it, you just dive into the traffic and cram into any wedge you can before you're struck by the honking cab drivers. Because they're always honking. Or shouting at each other.
So anyway, I decided Cairo was not for me. After failing in my initial attempts at a Sudanese visa I fled to the seaside town of Dahab on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula. Still fretting about security from when Israel took control in 1967, security checks are frequent and I had to show my passport four times from the Suez Canal to Dahab and four times back.
Still, the hassle was worth it for the comfort that Dahab offers. It is billed, indeed it was built up for this reason, as a backpacking hot-spot in Sinai and has worked hard to keep itself into a low-key tourist location. Set along the Gulf of Aqaba, the Saudi Arabian mountains can be seen to the east across the channel and, at night, some lights from settlements across the way on the Arabian Peninsula. I was sorely tempted to cross the channel via fishing boat or head north to Jordan and Israel, but I figured that it was best to keep these destinations safe for another trip and instead keep to Africa.
To the west of Dahab lie crumbling granite and sandstone mountains, courtesy of the Great Rift Valley. They had no vegetation and were pure desert, so it seemed very appealing to check them out. After a brief day of snorkeling along the reefs of Dahab I put together my camping pack and set out with three gallons of water and some food to explore these hills.
In every spot it seemed the rocks are just ready to fall off and crumble to the canyons below, so it made me wary of climbing on top of the hills. Instead I stuck to the low points and crossed over ridges as little as possible. Heading north, I trekked along the coast keeping the water in site. There were times, when the gullies went straight down or house-size boulders blocked my path, that I was forced to climb the walls to find another path, and even though I know it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do I couldn't help myself. It's a great feeling having to navigate the rocks and boulders by my own wits. Even the feeling of fear, when I was edging around the cliffs as I felt a rock begin to crumble or break free beneath my hands, or worse, beneath my feet, was an emotion I hadn't felt in a good while and I took a certain perverse pleasure when it coursed through me.
But that feeling was luckily rare and I spent the great majority of my time simply trekking. Nights were spent sleeping beneath the beautiful desert stars. Sunsets were a great time, because while the sun would set in back of me, over the Sinai Mountains, the Arabian Mountains across the gulf always reflected the gorgeous colors. Their brown color would always turn red first with the setting sun. Then it would fade to a pink, next purple, and finally brown again as the sun finally went down. Then the stars would explode into the sky that was otherwise pure blackness.
The mountains weren't safe for mules or camels because of their make-up, and the Bedouins seemed to largely avoid traveling in them as well, so I never saw anyone my entire time there save for a lone bird my second day. If there is a use for the word serene, it is within these mountains.
Eventually I made my way to a road on the coast and followed that back to Dahab. I had forgotten my passport back in the hostel and my trekking had unknowingly put me on the wrong side of a security checkpoint, but after some good natured gesturing with their unnecessarily large automatics, they decided to let me through anyway. Walking back, a man in a shop gestured me over and asked if I was hungry. As I had run our of both food and water the day before, I emphatically told him I was and he invited me in to share his lunch in a most welcoming gesture of Bedouin hospitality. I am told that this is a common occurrence in the next country on my list, Sudan, but still it came as a wonderful shock to me. Especially considering how much I love eating and think of every morsel of food as a wonderful gift from the Gods, having a stranger share their food with me for no other reason than to be nice is incredibly impressive.
I returned to Cairo to wander around the city a bit but quickly became as annoyed as before, especially around the tourist areas where the shop keepers have some pretty well thought out plans to get you to buy stuff. I fled once again and decided to get a train ticket down the Nile to Aswan.
After walking into the train station to buy the ticket with my head down, I was mortified to realize that I had actually walked into what turned out to be one of the largest mosques in Cairo during prayer time. Now, I gotta say, if you ever want to feel like a complete idiot, nothing, nothing, not even setting yourself on fire, makes you feel as stupid as doing something like that. There is no way to get extract yourself gracefully. I thought about kneeling down to pray and hope they didn't notice I had no idea what I was doing, but I decided that the best thing to do would be to cut my losses and flee the area before I did anything dumber. As it was, not many people saw me as I walked in the back way, but still . . . whew.
After failing to a get a visa down in Aswan I quickly came back up to Cairo. I say quickly because I didn't want to get in transit during Eid ul-Adha, the huge Muslim holiday that celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God (who, it turns out, was just yanking Abraham's chain, the jokester!). Eid ul-Adha is a four day long festival in Muslim countries (which is actually far longer) that I was hoping to experience in Sudan, but that obviously isn't happening, so Egypt it is.
Anyway, these last few days I've spent wandering the streets of Old Cairo, a section of town that I have grown to love. The buildings here, which appear as old as Egypt itself, are in a cramped section of town where the roads are more alleys than anything else and have no sense or purpose, the trash has piled up, and the people look at your strangely not because you represent money but because it's just weird that you're there. It was here that for the first time in ages I got my first whiff of burning rubbish, a smell that any traveler of a third-world country should be familiar with and maybe even welcome.
Chickens, goats, mules, and the occasional cow wander the streets and children usually do one of three things - wave and say "hello," just stare, or run up asking for money. Oddly enough, even the asking for money is enduring. I never give it, but they never really seem to care that much. They just think it's hilarious that I'm as tall as I am.
The first couple times I asked the locals where a good place to eat was, and both times I was motioned to sit. They then went of and brought back my lunch and adamantly refused payment because "I am like a brother." I felt bad at this treatment and today vowed to find food myself. So for lunch I walked into a cafe for some falafels and almost jumped out of my skin when I walked into a huge pool of blood that was forming from the GIANT GODDAMN COW THEY HAD JUST SLAUGHTERED RIGHT THERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DINING AREA.
Seriously, the cow, no doubt slaughtered for Eid ul-Adha which starts tomorrow, must have been alive and kicking only seconds before I entered, because the puddle was still rapidly forming. The head was about half off, and thing thing took up maybe a third of the room that was available in the tiny cafe. At this I decided I was no longer hungry and existed the cafe as graciously and quickly as I could.
So, ridiculous cow slaughters aside, Old Cairo has become a favorite place of mine. I realize that my initial disappointment with Cairo was in it's tourist hot-spots because it's natural to try to get money off of unsuspecting tourists. I've always known this, yet for some reason I forgot it here and at first thought of Cairo only by those who represent it's tourism. Bad mistake.
So anyway right now I'm about to have a seizure because it's so difficult to get a Sudanese visa, but besides that all is well. That's all I got for now, I'll try to post when (if) I cross the border before I head into nothingness.
p.s. All of the computers here have pirated copies of Windows . . . XP. I have yet to see Vista. Suck it, Microsoft.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Almost there
A priest from Chimanimani once told me that God made Africa first, while he still had imagination and courage.
-Author Alexandra Fuller, while hiking the bush of Zambia.
Now that campaign season is finished with I'm moving on, at least for a few months. My plan is to head to Africa for a cross-continent trip starting in Cairo. It's a trip that I've been wanting to take for years and one that I've been planning for ages - being so close to lift-off is a hell of a feeling. I've never done anything like this, and the anticipation is ridiculous.
This is a great time to travel cross-continent in Africa because, with the exception of fighting in the eastern DRC and tension along the Eritrean-Djibouti border, the path provides open borders and war-free zones that typically haven't been there in the past. Starting in Egypt, I'm going to go up the Nile River across the Sudanese border and to Khartoum. From here, I'll split from the river and explore some of Sudan before continuing onwards to Ethiopia. After a slight detour to Somaliland, Kenya is up next. Then it's a Uganda-Rwanda-Burundi circuit, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo if the Kivu regions are safe and the fighting has died down. Tanzania is right after that, with that the Spice Islands (Zanzibar, Pemba, and Mafia Islands). After this I'm going SW to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally South Africa. I'm going to touch into Lesotho if my knees are still up for some climbing, as the Drakensburg Mountains are stunning and form a border with South Africa.
At this point I'm guessing I'll have some time to evaluate my options. There's a strong possibility that after five or so months I'll be tired of traveling and will want to come home. If not, then I'm going to head up north once again and go to Mozambique via Swaziland and up into Malawi. There's also a chance of exploring the Katanga province of the DRC or a source-to-sea trip of the Zambezi river with someone I met at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree online forum.
As I mentioned, this trip is one I've salivated over for years, and this means that I'm going to try to pack as much into it as possible. There is so much to do along the way - so many mountains, deserts, lakes, volcanoes, beaches, rainforests - that even now, right before I leave, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around what is in store for me. That's part of the draw, of course; the unknowns in Africa are numerous. It's what got me when I was in Africa earlier, and it's what pumps me up so much to go back there for so long. The diversity of life and landscape that one experiences within Africa is enough to stun even the most experienced of travelers. Exploring some of the recently-opened areas of Sudan, climbing the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, hiking the overland border crossing between Western Ethiopia and Kenya, and trekking through swaths of South Africa's Wild Coast are at the top of my list, but there are plenty more not far behind those.
The beginning quote from Alexandra Fuller pretty well sums it up for me. From when I was very young through my first trip to Africa and continuing to now, the continent of Africa has always struck me not as the Dark Continent but as an Unknown Continent. It encompasses the geological and geographical extremes of our world, the best and worst of humanity, and a sense of mystery that has has always shrouded it from outsiders. Even today there are entire regions of the continent which have yet to see white skin and presumably will wait decades before they do. Think about that - today, more than a hundred years after Henry Morton Stanley died and with satellites mapping out corners around the globe, there are still places in Africa you can try to get to where the sum total of information known about the climate, vegetation, people, disease, rivers, villages, and dangers is: Unknown.
But for me, those places are not on my itinerary, because my guess is that they are unknown for good reasons. My plans are for the next rung up on the ladder; places that have been searched and trekked but then forgotten or relegated. When a 50 year civil war ends as it recently did in South Sudan, that means two things. 1) It is safe for the first time in ages. 2) Few outsiders have any idea what lies there and it is just waiting to be rediscovered. Same with a desert border crossing which has seen only a handful of travelers in the last decade. Or world-class Neolithic paintings that are hidden in the cave systems of Somaliland. There are endless possibilities in Africa. Presumably the same can be said for every other continent, but for some reason it's Africa that has always held the most allure and it's Africa that I've been unable to get out of my mind since I flew out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on my way back home some 30 months ago.
Truthfully, I don't know what I am going to feel up for once I'm over there. I have already learned that things never quite work out the way one expects them to over there, so I don't really have too many specific plans except to get down to South Africa by late April. Other than that, I might have a lot of adventures, or I might just end up spending most of my time in hostels. I'll try to post at least once or twice per country.
As something of a parting toast, I'd like to offer my favorite toast, courtesy of Edward Abbey.
"May your trails be crooked, windy, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."
Cheers, everyone. Good luck with your school, with campaigning, your families, jobs, and travels over the coming months. I hope that you keep me up-to-date on what's happening with you when I'm away. Keep well!
-Author Alexandra Fuller, while hiking the bush of Zambia.
Now that campaign season is finished with I'm moving on, at least for a few months. My plan is to head to Africa for a cross-continent trip starting in Cairo. It's a trip that I've been wanting to take for years and one that I've been planning for ages - being so close to lift-off is a hell of a feeling. I've never done anything like this, and the anticipation is ridiculous.
This is a great time to travel cross-continent in Africa because, with the exception of fighting in the eastern DRC and tension along the Eritrean-Djibouti border, the path provides open borders and war-free zones that typically haven't been there in the past. Starting in Egypt, I'm going to go up the Nile River across the Sudanese border and to Khartoum. From here, I'll split from the river and explore some of Sudan before continuing onwards to Ethiopia. After a slight detour to Somaliland, Kenya is up next. Then it's a Uganda-Rwanda-Burundi circuit, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo if the Kivu regions are safe and the fighting has died down. Tanzania is right after that, with that the Spice Islands (Zanzibar, Pemba, and Mafia Islands). After this I'm going SW to Zambia, Zimbabwe, and finally South Africa. I'm going to touch into Lesotho if my knees are still up for some climbing, as the Drakensburg Mountains are stunning and form a border with South Africa.
At this point I'm guessing I'll have some time to evaluate my options. There's a strong possibility that after five or so months I'll be tired of traveling and will want to come home. If not, then I'm going to head up north once again and go to Mozambique via Swaziland and up into Malawi. There's also a chance of exploring the Katanga province of the DRC or a source-to-sea trip of the Zambezi river with someone I met at Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree online forum.
As I mentioned, this trip is one I've salivated over for years, and this means that I'm going to try to pack as much into it as possible. There is so much to do along the way - so many mountains, deserts, lakes, volcanoes, beaches, rainforests - that even now, right before I leave, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around what is in store for me. That's part of the draw, of course; the unknowns in Africa are numerous. It's what got me when I was in Africa earlier, and it's what pumps me up so much to go back there for so long. The diversity of life and landscape that one experiences within Africa is enough to stun even the most experienced of travelers. Exploring some of the recently-opened areas of Sudan, climbing the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, hiking the overland border crossing between Western Ethiopia and Kenya, and trekking through swaths of South Africa's Wild Coast are at the top of my list, but there are plenty more not far behind those.
The beginning quote from Alexandra Fuller pretty well sums it up for me. From when I was very young through my first trip to Africa and continuing to now, the continent of Africa has always struck me not as the Dark Continent but as an Unknown Continent. It encompasses the geological and geographical extremes of our world, the best and worst of humanity, and a sense of mystery that has has always shrouded it from outsiders. Even today there are entire regions of the continent which have yet to see white skin and presumably will wait decades before they do. Think about that - today, more than a hundred years after Henry Morton Stanley died and with satellites mapping out corners around the globe, there are still places in Africa you can try to get to where the sum total of information known about the climate, vegetation, people, disease, rivers, villages, and dangers is: Unknown.
But for me, those places are not on my itinerary, because my guess is that they are unknown for good reasons. My plans are for the next rung up on the ladder; places that have been searched and trekked but then forgotten or relegated. When a 50 year civil war ends as it recently did in South Sudan, that means two things. 1) It is safe for the first time in ages. 2) Few outsiders have any idea what lies there and it is just waiting to be rediscovered. Same with a desert border crossing which has seen only a handful of travelers in the last decade. Or world-class Neolithic paintings that are hidden in the cave systems of Somaliland. There are endless possibilities in Africa. Presumably the same can be said for every other continent, but for some reason it's Africa that has always held the most allure and it's Africa that I've been unable to get out of my mind since I flew out of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on my way back home some 30 months ago.
Truthfully, I don't know what I am going to feel up for once I'm over there. I have already learned that things never quite work out the way one expects them to over there, so I don't really have too many specific plans except to get down to South Africa by late April. Other than that, I might have a lot of adventures, or I might just end up spending most of my time in hostels. I'll try to post at least once or twice per country.
As something of a parting toast, I'd like to offer my favorite toast, courtesy of Edward Abbey.
"May your trails be crooked, windy, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds."
Cheers, everyone. Good luck with your school, with campaigning, your families, jobs, and travels over the coming months. I hope that you keep me up-to-date on what's happening with you when I'm away. Keep well!
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