The Shadow of the Sun

Reading Richard Kapuscinski's beautiful memoirs on his decades reporting on Africa as a foreign correspondent...some of his striking words....

"The population of Africa was a gigantic, matted, crisscrossing web, spanning the entire continent and in constant motion, endlessly undulating, bunching up in one place and spreading out in another, a rich fabric, a colorful array."

"More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun...from the morning's earliest moments, the airport is ablaze with sunlight, all of us in sunlight."

"The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa.' In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist." 

Tanzania. Leaving.

"But did nobody realize that an improvement in economic activity would reveal a shortage of power? Didn't anyone believe that Africa's economies would start to grow? Power-or lack of it-is becoming a problem all over the continent. Africa did not plan for success."
-Richard Dowden
A quote made especially relevant in the 12-15 hours a day of power cuts facing Dar Es Salaam, the engine of the Tanzanian economy, and a mirror of the issues I lived through this year in Nepal



Last morning waking up in Sub-Saharan Africa...the bells, the light, the birds, clashing of metal trays.
It certainly has been an experience, another experience in the long chain of them, exhilerating and exhausting,
a time for learning, technical matters and the common themes of this world, the threads that bind, for both
good and for bad.,
Time for rollcall of highlights and lowlights for this trip in full, as all things in my life need to be itemized (all non-schoolsproject.org related stuff, here):

The Good.
1. Africa. In General. In extreme generality. As this continent is no more "African" than any dissonant, vast continents can be defined in a single word. It beats you up, is hard-as-hell to travel, but at the end of the day, there are few places as rewarding and truly different.

"The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say "Africa." In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist."

-Richard Kapucinski

2. Ihla de Mozambique. Hands down amazing. Still entranced. Magic.
3. Rocklands. The scene. The Camping. The climbing.
4. Cape Town Climbers. Some great, accomodating folks. Really made the time spent great.
5. Maputo. My new favorite African city.
6. Bread in Mozambique. (Pao)...one of the positive aspects of the Portuguese Empire....got me through many a day.
7. The Night Market in Ihla: $1 for 2 lbs of fish, taro, bread, rice, and beans. Nuff said.
8. INES Guesthouse, Pemba.. Despite no water and still costing $20 a nite
9. Mozambique Locals: most friendly African country I've visited (Sub-Saharan)
10. Cheap and Easy Sim Cards: a lesson that the US could pick up from the developing world.
11. Richard Dowden's Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles. A fantastic travel companion.

The Bad
1. Malaria-prophalaxis-induced-hair-loss: Flaking Scalp Mess! Praying that the malaria doesnt decide to come on now....
2. Nampula, Moz: an armpit. The place still haunts me.
3. Prices-in-general: sure is not Asia in the get-what-you-pay-for category.
4. Chapas. Insanity.
5. Horribly terrible power in Dar. See above quote. Worse than Kathmandu. Not easy to do that.
6. S. Africa Vibe-in-General: lacking, lackluster, no smiles, too many bars and elecrtrified wires and fences and supermarkets closing at 530pm for my taste.
7. The heat. Even in the "winter" one can never get used to simply being hot all the time. See: Pemba.
8. The Internet: What I would give for 30 minutes of actual broadband.
9. The number of church-based-missionaries encountered: they literally swarm through towns like locusts: for the love of god.
10. Cost of Flying: As I have developed a phobia to days-on-end-local-transport, the state mafia monopolist African airlines have been the only game in town: And they know they have you by the balls come payment time.

House of Peace

6.28.2011 Dar Es Salaam (“House of Peace”), Tanzania

The days and nights, though tedious and tending towards loneliness, pass relentlessly.
As my time in Africa winds down, the memories flash in mind, which remains cognizant
of this essential truth: now, they are just memories, just quick glimpses of the past, of the ups and down, the tedium tends to dissipate quickly in the mind, and that is all.
Trying to accumulate these glimpses is like building a house on a foundation of sand; it will not hold. It will slowly slip away, recede back into the ocean of life.
Simply move forward, move on; unceasingly, unnervingly, there is no other way.
The housemaid, clad in baby blue, sweeps the dust from the top layer of the dirt courtyard,
her wooden broom rhythmically sweeping, playing a soothing melody for my tired mind.
The generator, big, nasty, in its tin roofed shed like an angry attack dog growling at the moon, finally turned off at 7:15am after a long night of rumbling underneath my pillow.
The morning tables filled; where these folks all come from, always dressed in collared shirts, starched dresses, I haven't a clue, but the tables are always full when I stumble downstairs for my coffee, confident in my early morning prowess, always to be deflated upon entering the open canteen, the golden African dawn creeping in through the hazy courtyard.
The more time I spend here in Dar, the more aware I come of exactly how little there is to do in Dar. Yesterday, Sunday, was the most closed-up I have ever seen a major city on a weekend, weekday, or even major holiday. Other than the incessant ringing of the church bells at 6am, everything was closed, silent, shuttered, gated, people nowhere, a ghost town to behold. Could one imagine New York simply closing up shop one day a week? What is the simple cost to business? 1/7 gross profit, I would assume. I suppose the equation is simply illogical in this place, its veneer of modernity, its new glass and steel buildings being slowly unwrapped from their giant scaffolded bows, often simply a facade for very different underpinnings of life. Different realities. Different priorities. Altered states.