Black Santa

A bit of real time blogging here. We drove downtown today for a meeting and passed a huge Christmas themed Coke billboard featuring a giant black santa. We thought that was pretty interesting and at lunch asked two of the Kenyans if they have the same story about Santa living in the North Pole, flying in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, hopping down a chimney and delivering toys. I don't think I've ever seen Africans laugh as hard as they did, literally to the point of tears. This was not helped by my next question of "What? Does he use wildebeest?"

Anyways, had a great time in Rwanda, I'll post some stories and photos soon. We voted last week, annoylingly Denver never sent me my ballot so I used had to use the write in version, but at least I got to vote for myself for Recorder of Deeds. Also talked our way into the actual US embassy compound to check out their "morale store" (which supposedly has Fat Tire) but it was closed. Next time.

13 Months of Sunshine

According to my Ethiopian visa, I arrived in Addis Ababa at 11:45am on Friday 1/29/2001. Which is a little odd since, as most astute readers will recognize, it is October 2008. Turns out Ethiopia is on the Julian calendar which in addition to being 7½ years behind the rest of us, consists of 12 months of thirty days plus a 13th of five or six days. And their time starts at sunrise, so when they say 11:45am, they really mean 5:45pm. It had all the makings of a great, lost in translation weekend.

We ventured to the Sheraton Addis which was incredibly ridiculous and looked like it belonged in the French countryside instead of Africa's fourth largest city. But at $600 a night, we peaced out and checked into our government run hotel that looked exactly like it belonged in Africa's fourth largest city, but as an insane asylum. Got up early the next morning and went to the Mercado, supposedly the world's largest outdoor market. It started out sane enough with gridded streets lined by little shops offering yarn, construction equipment, furniture, ya know, the usual. After a few turns we were quickly immersed in narrow, twisting alleys full of people selling chickens out of shopping bags, huge chunks of salt and a blacksmith who was probably the most amused person in Ethiopia when I tried to hammer some burning metal. So we wandered around, had some fifteen cent coffee and the first of many sprees: a really tasty mix of layered fresh fruit juices (papaya, passion, guava, avocado, orange, etc).

We then hightailed it to the airport for our flight to Lalibela, an ex-capital of Ethiopia with these incredible five hundred year old churches. But not just old churches, old churches that were carved from a single piece rock. But not just from a single piece of rock, they were carved from the top down into the mountain, then the insides were excavated. Pretty amazing. The city itself is also really nice, bisected by a big cobblestone road and set amongst a bunch of gorges, hills and green farmland. We checked into our "tukol", a really nice round house with a balcony overlooking the churches, then ventured around the town with a steadily growing gaggle of children trailing us wherever we went.

The next day we woke up early and started our tour of the churches. They are really incredible to see, supposedly took 25 years and 40,000 people to construct 11 of them. They are pretty well preserved (I guess that happens when you just use one big rock) and have some sweet old paintings, wooden doors in rock walls, altars, carvings and manuscripts in cool languages. Probably the coolest part was the people that were in the churches, all wearing white robes and head coverings that looked really Muslim even though they were all Christian (there were also Jewish stars of and Hindu swastikas on the temples) and praying in an ancient biblical language. The priests were also pretty decked out and most would happily dawn sunglasses so the tourists (not me of course) could take flash pictures of them inside. We hit up all the rock churches, took a bazillion photos, learned how to write Saint Gore in Ahmric () and then headed back to Addis.

We decided that the asylum/hotel that is Ras hotel wasn't quite going to cut it for us, so we stumbled into the lovely Addis View Hotel which was really really nice and gave us a really really great rate (twin room for $40 including breakfast). Went out for some Ethiopian food which consists of a tangy pancake covered with lots of different veggies and meats and Tedj, a traditional Ethiopian honey wine (as we would continuously discover, Ethiopian wines, both grape and honey, have a way to go). Barhopped a bit, checking out some traditional dancing, a cool rooftop bar and a really strange bar under a mockup of an airplane (one really nice thing about Addis was being able to walk around at night and not be very concerned about safety).

The next day we toured the city, catching a really cool Ethiopian wedding (lots of singing and dancing and drum banging) and visiting Lucy, our 3.2 million year old great-great-great-great-great-great-you get the picture-grandmother. While Lucy wasn't terribly impressive (she's only 3.2 feet tall), the rest of the people in Addis really were. Tons of people came up to us offering help when we were looking at maps, they stopped us on the street to say hello and shake our hand and were really happy to show us the way to a restaurant or tea house. I admit that I was initially suspicious of most of the people, but in the end I think Ethiopians are some of the most genuinely friendly people I've met. Unfortunately, on the flip side of that, the poverty in Ethiopia is much more striking than most places I've seen. People begging on their hands and knees or just lying in the middle of sidewalks (but hey, at least there are sidewalks!), a guy very resignedly picking food out of a trash pile or the woman who (best as we can tell) offered us her child because she couldn't take care of it. And honestly, thats probably a very small slice of the true rural poverty and famine that affects Ethiopia. So, like most of Africa, Ethiopia is a country of contrasts.

Anyways, we had a mediocre dinner of Arabic food (overall I was not that impressed by the food there), smoked a little sheesha, had a hilarious exchange of the waiter trying to figure out whether he should hand us the bill or put it on the table and called it a trip.

And just in time for me to finish this post, I'm off to Rwanda to go gorilla trekking.

Tuta Onana

Blog Action Day: Poverty

On October 15th, thousands of blogs around the world will focus on the global issue of poverty. This is a particularly interesting topic to discuss while I'm on a project in Nairobi, Kenya. From the children begging for money outside the Westlands supermarket to the tens of thousands of people living in the Kangemi slum where we eat lunch to the man solemnly picking through a heap of trash by the side of the road in Ethiopia, poverty is something we see almost every day. Sometimes it is easy enough to look away, other times the realities can be gutwrenching.

I don't think there is any sort of big, universal answer to poverty. Which is good in a way since big, universal things are really hard to do, especially at an individual level. Luckily, there are lots of organizations, doing both big and small things, that we can get involved with to make a difference:

• Kiva - A neat organization that allows you to make microloans directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Given the state of the economy, not the worst investment in the world.
• World Bicycle Relief - Bikes are one of those disruptive things that can provide a tremendous benefit by increasing the distance people can travel and how much they can carry by over 500%. WBR builds bikes locally, distributes them and creates maintenance jobs.
• Heifer International - In the same thread as Kiva, except instead of giving loans you give animals (chickens, goats, water buffaloes, bees, etc). The recipients get eggs, milk, plows, honey, etc (not meat) and then gives  two of the offspring to other people in need.
• Habitat for Humanity - There's not a much more concrete way to battle poverty than helping to build a house for someone. Plus, its a lot of fun and you get to build shit.

So go make a loan, give a bike, donate a cow or build house!

Have other cool organizations or ways to get involved? Leave em in the comments.

Mombasa

The Fokker is the second coolest name of an airplane that I've ever flown in (that honor belongs to the Twin Otter). It is also the plane that took us to Mombasa , one of the oldest cities in Kenya, a huge port town with a strong muslim influence and a former stop on the East African slave trading route.

We headed south to Tiwi beach and after a quick bribe stop by the police (apparently the tint was too dark on our taxi), a thirty minute ferry ride across a 100 foot wide river and then a bumpy ten or fifteen miles, we arrived at the Sand Island Cottages. It was, in a word, magnificent. We had a five bed cottage with a huge patio that looked right onto the palm trees lining a completely deserted beach.  The tide was out, crashing against the reef, and creating a shallow sand island in the middle of the bay. We wandered, we swam, we frolicked, we ignored Kenyans trying to sell us fresh octopus and "medicine".

Eventually we headed back into town, getting there just in time to see them close the gates at Fort Jesus (a big ole Portuguese bastion). No worries, we hung out with the kids playing soccer in the courtyard then ventured into the old town. I really liked the old town at night, there were tons of people walking around, lots of restaurants and street food, and a really lively atmosphere. We had dinner at Tamarind which is one of the more renowned restaurants in Kenya, it was good but nothing spectacular (though the tree tomato sorbet was scrumptious). Had a few rounds of Pontoon in the casino and called it an early night.

Saturday morning we caught sunrise over the beach and started our day long dhow boat trip with Charlie's Claws. We had breakfast in an old cave that used to hold slaves before they were sent to Zanzibar which was a bit creepy and kinda the exact opposite of the champagne breakfast we had in the Mara. But shortly after that we jumped on a really nice wooden boat, sprawled out on some deck pillows and were cruising towards the little islands that dot Kenya's east coast. The scene reminded me of Australia's Whitsundays, white sandy beaches, palm fringed islands, blue water, sea breezes and a few dolphins thrown in just for kicks. Did a quick dive (pretty mediocre: 10m vis, lots of dead coral, no whale sharks) and some snorkeling then we headed to Wasini island for lunch.

The lunch starter was one of the more incredible meals I've ever had. They gave us these miniature wooden baseball bats, dropped a huge platter of jumbo crabs on the table and let us go at it. There is nothing (nothing!) more fun than bashing something with a club, eating it with your hands and having it be super fresh and delicious. And when we had just about finished the first platter, they asked the most magical four words, "do you want more?" and dumped an even larger platter on the table. And that was just the starter, we also got some weird coconut bitings (bitings are like tapas here), a whole fish in coconut sauce and some fruit to finish us off. Tre bien. Had a quick boat ride back to the bus, a not so quick bus ride back to the cottage and finished off the night on our porch playing drinking games with Salvador's Pepino Surprise: vodka, sprite and cucumbers.

Sunday picked up right where Saturday stopped: drinking and eating. These guys walk around the beach selling fresh seafood, so we snagged some lobsters, prawns and generic fish. But with some very very important activities to attend to, we decided to splurge the $6 and hire a chef to prepare us lunch. So while we explored the reef and sat in hammocks, our chef shredded coconuts, made a curry, bbq'd the lobsters, uncorked the wine and served us a feast on our porch. A pretty fantastic way to cap off a pretty fantastic trip to the coast.

P.S. For the old people out there, we managed to avoid both the headless gunners and gin. Thankfully.

Its Called Pontoon

So its been a fun few weeks here in East Africa, unfortunately I'm feeling equal parts tired and sunburned from a weekend in Mombasa so this is gonna be a quick one.

• A Kenyan Wedding: Two weeks ago one of the drivers from the organization that is hosting us invited us to his wedding. Despite everyone not being 100% clear on names, we hopped in a cab, got lost in the outskirts of Nairobi, showed up half an hour late which was about two hours before the actual wedding started. The ceremony itself was a nice, fairly standard Christian affair (except replace old white church with large un-air conditioned iron roofed building) with a lot of gospel singing and dancing thrown in. Most of the service was in swahili and english, though they did most of the prayers just in swahili which was a-ok for me.
  
  
• Mount Longonot: The day after the wedding we headed up the Rift Valley to climb Mt Longonot which is an old (technically "senile") volcano. The hike up took about an hour and as soon as you reach the summit you see into this huge collapsed crater that looks totally different from the surrounding valley. Very cool, very jurassic park like (or maybe more the land before time). Had a really nice dinner at Drifters, a floating restaurant out on lake naivaisha. Most importantly, we did not run out of gas.
  
  
• Brewery, Safari, Toga: Last Friday we decided to check out East Africa's only brewpub, Sierra, located just south of downtown. The place takes itself a little too seriously, but the food was good and the beer was a great change of pace from Tusker. After trying to name all the African countries (I was not even close) and the US states (damn you Indiana), we asked a cab company to send us a van and of course they sent a pop up safari van. So we raced through the streets of Nairobi with the top up, listening to gangster rap and drinking beer. Once back in Westlands we grabbed bed sheets and some vines and headed to a UN toga party. What's a UN toga party like? Well there are people wearing togas who are actually from Rome and you end up arguing with Somalis about why they really should not have pirates any more.
  
  
• The Day After: I felt pretty much like shit. So after a fantastic breakfast burrito at Java, went over to an apartment complex with a pool and hung out, got massages, hung out, had a sauna (yeah in Africa, weird right?) and pretty much hung out.
  
  
• Its Called Pontoon: Sunday I was feeling much better and we decided to tackle the links at Puttomania in Village Market. Had a great time, though the course was ridiculously hard including one absolutely absurd hole. Had a nice dinner at an Ethiopian place here in Westlands then ventured over to the Las Vegas Casino (only replace impressive lights with christmas tree lights). The casino was reasonable, had probably 10 tables and we ended up at the closest thing to Blackjack, called Pontoon. And everytime we asked a question, the response was simply: "Its called pontoon". Why are you taking my money? Its called pontoon. What is surrendering? Its called pontoon. Why is it called pontoon? Its called pontoon. So now, instead of the classic "this is africa", we're going with "its called pontoon".

So that ended up not being so short and I'll put some good stuff on Mombasa soon. In the mean time, we found out that post system is pretty good here (took about 2 weeks), so if you want a postcard, send me your address.