By Jett Thomason

I like Djibouti in the morning.

I wake up early in the US, so jetlag throws my natural tendency into overdrive with a 3:15, 4:30, or if I’m lucky, 5:00 am wake-up call. I have spent the past week in Djibouti at a training conference for our new Somalia program. US Government restrictions on official travel to Somalia (and Puntland and Somaliland) have channeled a large number of donor conferences and foreign involvement in the Horn of Africa to Djibouti. Arriving on business, working all day and a large part of the night, I have sadly not been able to see much of the city, to say nothing of the country.

However, the ridiculous hour that my body insists is time to get up also makes it easy to be the early morning jogger. I do not normally like these people. And in fact, I do not normally like to run.  But as a good friend says about writing, I like having run. And so, after ten minutes of forcing the eyelids closed, knowing that the battle was lost, I roll out of bed and by 5 am have my tennis shoes on the quiet morning streets of Djibouti. I start my run.

There is, as with all colonial experiences, a foreign sector. The hotels used for official business are always in this zone. At this hour, though, I am the only international around. Guards laze back on their cheap plastic chairs, bored and letting their rifles droop on the ground. A few women are bent straight over at the waist, whisking the road clean of dust. They turn at the sound of my feet on the beaten asphalt. Unlike the daylight hours, our eyes meet for a moment. Whether they are more emboldened with no one watching or too tired to pretend not to see me I cannot say.

The guard at the end of the barricaded street is a worker at the hotel. I am a paying guest and there are vast gulfs of space between our two worlds. However, at this hour I get a nod as I pass by. We are both among the few awake and that is some shared bond.

In Africa, local athletes rally at city stadiums or school yard fields to run. Streets in the developing world are among the worst places for exercise – normally. Taxis and diesel fumes and vendors spreading their wares out to the edge of rushing traffic make road running impossible during the day. In the morning stillness I pad down the center of the street luxuriating in the space.

Djibouti is an old French outpost on the Indian Ocean. Strategic only for its location, the country has continued to mine its sovereignty rather than build any real industry. It is easy to get a feel for the city just a few minutes into my run. The avenues are straight and angled to the cross streets. The expat sector is on a jutting peninsula of land so I run out from this zone down the wide boulevards. Returning along residential streets is easy with the confidence of knowing my hotel is at land’s end.

I raise a hand to the small merchants in each of the roundabouts I pass on my jog. There is an inevitable clustering of these small stores lit with white fluorescents and hawking dry goods, browning bananas and cylinders of propane. They wave back. Taxis tend to coagulate at odd corners and I do not greet them for fear they will think I am a fare and fire up the cars. Most of the drivers are sleeping on a piece of cardboard next to their cars with thin cloth scarves covering them as some defense against the mosquitos.

Turning into the side street the crackle of an intercom flares up and the recorded call to prayer begins from the side mosque. A group of guards eating from a large platter of rice call out in French, “Bon Courage!” I respond with “Merci” and turn sharply down another street to avoid the stray dog that suddenly jumped to attention at the sight of me. Courage is needed indeed.

The chewed leaf stimulat khat is as prevalent here as in Yemen just across the water. Evenings on the street in Djibouti are always marked by men sitting on a stoop and feeding sprigs of khat into their mouths. The effect of each leaf fades fast so users clasp their bunch of leaves in their left, preparing the next bunch of leaves with their right. Those who are already heavily into the chew grab you on the street and try to pull you in to look at their cheap trinkets that one finds from Senegal to Kenya and that are probably made en masse in southern China. Spraying bits of green leaf and their khat eyes crazed by the prospect of tourist dollars, it’s a side of Djibouti I have come to dislike within just a few days.

Running up the side streets I can see gnawed stems of the khat and wisps of micro-thin cheap plastic used to wrap the bunches. These are always found in piles where the users stood together the day before. Sure enough, I turn a corner and see a big sign for “Khat Awady”, or “Evening Khat”. It is 5:30 am now, and instead of the huddled groups of drugged men, I am greeted by several older men passing me on their way to mosque.

Sun licks at the sky while a woman coaxes a fire into life near the taxi stand. She sells rice and meat to drivers and there are a few women like her on this street. Squat, dusty trees shelter the place and improve her stand’s marketability. She is either too busy to acknowledge me or I have crossed some time limit when foreign men are not allowed to directly into women’s eyes.

The end of the run is the hardest. The fatigue sets in and the exoticness of the place wear off and it is tough to stay motivated. I approach the end of the street and can see the hotel lights. They are preternaturally bright and speak to foreign currency establishments with generators and razor wire enclosures. This is not generally how I want to see another country but this is the job and the reality of Africa.

Sweat rolling off me in the humid air and feet beginning to hurt as much as my sides, I see someone coming down the road. He has a bag packed and the look of a night watchman coming off duty. The lilt in his step is does not fit with the other laborers I see packed onto mini-buses, driven into the foreigner zone for their menial jobs.

“Courage!” he says as I run by with a great smile and nod. I smile, nod back.

This is Jett Thomason’s 14 post at GoMad Nomad. Over the past decade his travels and work have taken him throughout the former Soviet Republics, Europe, and Africa to Afghanistan and Iraq. He blogs for GoMad Nomad at the No Leave Travel Blog.

By Jett Thomason

A few years back I got the chance to visit the Black Sea coast several miles from the Turkish border in a town called Batumi. Batumi has been a major port since the Russians won the land from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. This was the first port to begin shipping out the Industrial Age petroleum from Baku on the Caspian Sea. The resulting economic boom still defines the city’s architecture, with its crumbling facades resembling Paris much more than Moscow.

Old Turkish fort and orange groves in Batumi, Georgia

The city is hemmed in on two sides by the Black Sea. Since Georgia’s independence from the USSR, petroleum has resumed flowing out to docked European tankers.  The city’s prosperity increases markedly as the streets work their way towards the port area, the source of the Batumi’s wealth.  Heading in the opposite direction, I rode on a bus to some more distant neighborhoods. The simultaneous backdrop of snow-capped pines on the surrounding hills and the sea lapping on the pebble beach is striking.  All the homes in the suburbs have orange groves heavy with fruit. The winter rains swept fruit into the streams and into the ocean, and the ocean swept them in turn onto the high-water point of the stone beaches. Like a dotted orange line, the eye is brought from the washed line of oranges along the Black Sea shore and up through the orchards of the nearby houses.

Getting by with Russian

I was able to get by in Georgia on my grammatically terrible Russian. The Georgian language, however, is very distinct from Russian with a different script in addition to an unrelated linguistic structure. The Georgian alphabet is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.  Curly and bent letters bear absolutely no resemblance to either the Latin or Russian alphabets and traveling here is an experience with illiteracy. Finding addresses demands multiple requests for directions.  I had to wait for a sympathetic passerby before entering the correct side of a public restroom.

The Orthodox Church of Batumi, Georgia with a port crane in the background

As a devoted coffee drinker, I was exceedingly pleased to land in a country unconquered by Nescafe’s Instant Empire.  Instead, the Georgians take rightful pride in their lovely Turkish-style coffee. The heads of men and women in cafes bounce like oil derricks as everyone sips on the sweet coffee. The head activity is not just the Georgian animated conversation style, but also (as I discovered) the only way to keep the nose clean of the coffee ring around the top of the narrow cups.

Stalin’s Time in Batumi

One of the few tourist sites here is a museum dedicated to Stalin’s short stay in Batumi from 1901 to 1902.  It is impossible to enjoy such an experience – akin to a Hitler museum in Vienna – but it is insightful. Stalin, a Georgian, came to Batumi to organize a Communist cell at the end of 1901.  As far as I could tell from the museum, this work only contributed to a single demonstration in March of 1902 and a few illegal newsletters.

More interesting than the amateur paintings documenting these episodes from Stalin’s youth is the history of the museum itself. Opened during Stalin’s rule in 1936, the building housing the museum was one of his boarding house residences for a few months. The exhibits include a simple bed where he slept and a rag that was apparently a towel indicative of that which he may or may not have used during his time there. These are displayed as venerably as saintly relics in a Catholic church.

A city street in Batumi, Georgia

After his death and denouncement in the mid-1950’s, the museum was closed by Soviet authorities. Georgians still regard Stalin as a great leader and an important native of their land. Despite despising their domination by Russia through Czarist and Soviet times, the Georgians re-opened the museum in 1995. The curator and her husband had nothing but warm regard for the native son who was responsible for tens of millions of Soviet deaths.

Stalin’s Legacy in Georgia

After being led through the museum and fending off all my historically provocative questions, the curator asked me to join her and her husband for coffee in their office dominated by a massive portrait of Stalin. I tried to ask them their opinions of this man that the world finds so hideous. But for them, this was ancient history.

As their single visitor of the day, I instead discussed salaries and housing prices in America, sipped coffee, and ate toasted hazelnuts with my hosts.  As they sent me off with instructions of how to get to the train station, it was impossible to connect them with any of the evil perpetrated by the namesake of the museum. Instead, Batumi is marked for me by the hospitality, and the coffee, of the Georgian people.

Read Part I: On the Water in Guinea

Part II

By Jett Thomason

We have been following the other boats. There is an art to seeing the schools of fish playing just below the water and on each boat men are standing tall, not even realizing their legs roll of the boat. There is an art to seeing the fish and anticipating where they will move next. Then there is the more practical approach of assuming that if there is already someone out there with a net in the water, it might not be a bad idea to cast yours, too.

After half an hour of following the crowd, we take the latter approach and pull ahead of the first boat with what feels to me a nautically polite distance apart. One fisherman strings out the top of the net which is buoyed with small plastic balls and cut up soles of old flip-flops. The other man holds out the bottom of the net that is lined with hand-beaten lead pieces. The buoyant and weighted ends will create a 30-foot vertical wall in the water snagging any passing animal. Hopefully a lot of them.

The net rolls through the fishermen’s hands. The captain guns the outboard from time to time to give us enough forward momentum to lay out a clean line. The bottom of the net billows out in the blue water before sinking out of sight. In ten minutes, all 2,000 feet of the floating trap is in the water.

I had not been briefed on what to expect next and I realize I have nothing beyond a general guess as to how the fish are caught and brought out of the water. We are bobbing in the water, rolling with the waves, and waiting to see what comes our way.

Fassiney looks at me from the stern of the boat, making a scooping motion with his hand. Two realizations hit me. The first is that they are breaking for lunch so this could be a long wait. And second, while I appeared to be impervious to sea-sickness when the boat was moving forward, this is no longer the case. We drift, rolling up and over the tops of the waves.

The fishermen scoop rice into their mouths. I just feel nausea creep up on me.

“Captain,” I look at him, “Bon appétit.” He nods. “How long do we wait?”

Fassiney pulls over a plastic bucket and pries off the top. Unwrapping a plastic bag and then unzipping his little cigarette bag, he pulls out a small watch.

“It’s fifteen past eleven now…” Fassiney looks up for a minute. “So let’s pull in the net at two.”

Eddie knows this routine and makes himself comfortable on a cross beam, draping an arm over his eyes. I try to keep my focus on the horizon, on the islands on the other side that are faint and dark blue though the water-heavy air. Forced thoughts of how vertigo is all in the mind give me a quarter hour of control before I get ill. The fishermen politely look away as if they haven’t noticed. While my pride stings, my real fear of this moment was that they would insist on going back. I needn’t have worried. No one says a thing.

I lie on a wooden seat across the frame, adjust my hat over my eyes, and fall into a half-sleep. The fish are there, swimming along with only a distant cloud in their sky – our boat – hinting at the danger. Schools of them must be there now, arcing back and forth in the shallow, warm current below us.

They will be swimming along and then, suddenly, rushing into entanglement. All their efforts to free themselves will only make the binds tighter. Wrenchingly pulled into what must seem like a terrible vacuum of space, water will flow out and they will gasp for breath as the poisonous air fills their gills. I jerk up from my rocking sleep and realize that this idyllic tropical ocean setting is as brutal a scene as any abattoir.

The captain is awake and smoking a cigarette. Well past mid-day, the humidity clouds the boundary of the horizon and the sky and it feels far from shore. Eddie sits up. He has slept poorly, too.
“Mr. Jett,” he grabs the sides of the boat, “Imagine this space for five days, a week. It was like a prison sometimes for me.” Eddie hasn’t been back on a boat in ten years and I know he is glad he has gone out with me. Still, these are not the statements of a nostalgic man.

Fassiney tosses his cigarette in the water. “OK, we pull in the net now.”

His men put on loose pants and wind breakers. The strongest goes up to the bow and grabs at both sides of the net. He leans up, straining with the effort.

Fassiney looks at me, “This is why we call the boat bon-ta-bon.” I look at him a bit dumbly. “This work hard! You pull your muscles ‘bone to bone’. People know this boat is a hard work boat.”

The captain is right. One man in the front pulls the net from the water. Eddie and I grasp the bottom, straining to keep the weighted rope straight. The captain handles the buoy side and untangles the lines. The last fisherman is at the stern, grasping both sides and folding the net in ready for the next deployment.

I was being spared the real bon-ta-bon work, but pulling a net out of the water by hand is no easy thing. The hours in the water have lined each bit of twine with sediment and slime. Pulling the ropes flicks these particles up in a mist that quickly coats all of us with sea filth. I see now why the others first clad themselves with the windbreakers and pants.

Then up comes our first fish. It is vibrantly and deeply blue. I never quite imagined how blue a fish could be there in the middle of a dirty net, a moldering boat, under a white sky. The quivering life in the fish is short as I tear it out of the binds and toss it into the brown bilge water roiling in the bottom of the boat. There is no time for romancing the moment as the net keeps coming and we keep prying out the trapped fish, pulling in the ropes, pausing for only a split second to dip our hands in the water and wipe sludge from our brows.

After half an hour, the net is in and we are able to look at the catch. I let myself get carried away during the planning stage of the trip. ‘What to do with all the fish?’ I had thought. ‘What if we ran out of room in the boat?’ Suffice it to say, these are not problems we face.

A shallow and shimmering covering of fish in the bottom is all we have to show for the work and the wait. It might fill the one plastic box that is a standard unit of sale for the fishermen. I am paying for the gas on this trip, I am going to give the fishermen a little money, and I never intended to sell any of the fish. Still, a sense of despondency fills me as if I was depending on the sea for my next meal. It has been a while since I have felt anything like this sharp disappointment.

I look at Eddie, “I thought we’d get more fish…”

Eddie just tilts his head with a little frown.

Fassiney sees me, “Jett, don’t worry. You know, sometimes it’s like this. We can’t say what we’re going to catch. This trip though, it’s for you. You see how we live. It’s for you.”

He and the other fishermen have been here before just as they have seen boats brimming with catch pulling into port. This is just one day and one time out.

“We’re going back out tonight,” says Fassiney. “These herring, eh! They’ve been sleeping all day but tonight they come out to play. We go out four, five, six hours and then lay the net. Eh! Then we make some catch! But now we go home.”

I want to go home. It’s a long day in the sun and I wash the dirt off as best I can hanging over the side. We take turns bailing out the dirty water while the fishes’ eyes slowly lose their clarity.

Disappointment in the catch fades to resignation as we ride back towards port in the heat and humidity.

“Captain, how much do you and the other fishermen make from a trip?” I ask. I know the owner of the boat pays for the gasoline, oil, maintenance. If I had to guess, I would figure a fifty-fifty split on the catch.

Fassiney gestures to the front of the boat. “There’s five sections. Sometimes you come in and the boat is full – Full! – of fish. Sometimes the boat only has a little fish, like now. No matter, the owner, he takes eighty percent. That’s maybe three and half sections. The rest is for us. When it’s very good, then we can take 200,000 Guinean francs.”

200,000 Guinean francs is a bit less than $30. With a normal complement of five to six men, that’s less than $5 each for a long day’s work. These are not captains of the sea as much as they are tenant farmers, trapped by contract and poverty to their work.

“It’s a hard life. Hard work,” says Fassiney.

We round the sea wall and pull into port. I shake hands with the men, passing Eddie some money to give them on my behalf. It’s Africa and it would be rude to not use an intermediary.

“Take care, Mr. Jett,” Eddie admonishes me as we walk across seven or eight other fishing boats to scamper up the dock.

I do take care. You don’t fall into water this close to Conakry and its open sewers. My appearance on the dock attracts even less stares than the first time.

Fishermen are preparing their boats and loading ice blocks into plywood-and-styrofoam coolers. These are the snapper boats that will spend days in the open ocean. Women fishmongers are inspecting catches, shouting out prices over each other while other women are weaving between the people with buckets of fried bread and meat balanced on their heads, selling the fishermen their next meals on the water. Men going out, men coming in, and the fish between ocean and market.

Jett Thomason works for the U.S. government managing small agricultural development projects in Africa. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan, he has worked in Afghanistan and Iraq and traveled extensively in Latin America and the former Soviet Union. In his current job, Jett copes with responsibility and limited time for indulging wanderlust by writing the occasional blog entry and travel story.

By Jett Thomason

Part I

I’ve been living in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, for six weeks now. Conakry is a city built on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic and it has long outgrown the French planning for the town. Two million people have been living poor and densely packed for fifty years in the limited space. Each day I’m driven to and from work along this peninsula.

With long hours at work and long hours in sitting in traffic, most of my interactions with Guineans are with the staff drivers. My favorite driver is Eddie. My most substantive conversations in Guinea with Guineans have been in the half hour commute each day.

It is currently the dry season and we recently had a burst of rain – last monsoon fits of the climate making its cycle around. I catch sight of the ocean between concrete buildings, golden water with the setting sun outlining one of the islands just off the coast of Conakry and the air much clearer with the rain-cleansing from earlier in the morning. This pristine view from a distance belies the scene along the road where everyone is rushing and hustling to get by.

We roll off the main autoroute and onto the corniche road that leads to my apartment building. At each bend there are women sitting on short, squat wooden stools with fresh fish hanging for sale.

“Eddie,” I say, “how do these fish get into the city each day?”

“Mr. Jett, it’s a hard business,” Eddie says. “I did this for six months when I was living in Sierra Leone. I did this only for work, to eat, because it is too hard.”

I can see the small boats out on the horizon, seemingly stationary on the water.

“What’s it like? Do the fishermen go out in the morning, come back in the evening?” I ask.

“Some land in the evening. Some go out at night and come in back the morning. You don’t want to know. It’s hard business. Hard!”

I pause. I do want to know. “Do you know any fishermen here? Anyone who would take me out there with them?”

Eddie turns his head briefly from the traffic to me and then back again. I can see him weighing the balance of a kind of friendship with a client – me – and what it might mean to help that client get onto the water.

“I know a man. A good Christian man who helped me once with work. I will ask him to see, and if you don’t mind, I would go with you.”

Eddie is as good with the plans as he is with the drive. It’s Saturday and I am already awake for the neighboring mosque’s call to prayer at 5:00. Somewhere there is a small wooden boat bobbing in the Atlantic, and a crew that’s now two men short to make space for Eddie and I.

Fear comes to you in interesting ways. Little fantasies play out in my head of the regretful call to cancel the trip and the wave of relief that would bring. I’m tired and at 5 am, I don’t really want this experience. Thinking about the planning, Eddie was pretty insistent on the life preserver. Was that from a healthy sense of caution or should I know more about what I’m getting myself into?

As I’ve learned before, the only way to deal with this kind of pre-adventure panic is to go through the mechanics of preparation without actually stopping to sit and ponder how ridiculous the plan might be. Pack water, apply sun block, prepare a small lunch, and stash money in two plastic bags at the bottom of my sack.

Too late to back out at this point, the car with Eddie is soon outside waiting for me and I let the momentum of the planning and packing carry me along.

“Eddie, good morning,” I say.

“Good morning, Mr. Jett. Are you ready?”

I am not ready. “Yes. Let’s go.”

The morning sky is lit as we park the car and walk into the port. People are still asleep on the concrete stall slabs where the fish will be sold in just a few hours. I get some stares, but just a few. People are already too busy to gawk.

Roles at the port are framed by gender. Men are crawling over the wooden boats, adjusting the red, green, and yellow ribbons on masts, and moving equipment onto the crafts. The younger fishermen are already bailing water that has seeped in during the night. Bailing water before setting out strikes me as a bit of a bad sign about what to expect on the open sea.

The women here are the fishmongers. Older ones, dominant in stature, are milling down by the boats, waiting for the first arrivals of night fishermen. Younger women are squatting on the jetty, selling meat pies or walking down with buckets of small sundries balanced on their head.

Eddie takes me down the pier. “Take care,” he says while pointing out gutted fish and –yes- banana peels that might make me slip. “The owner is just here.”

We shake hands with the boat owner who is wearing clean jeans, a nicely ironed shirt, and shoes that are not meant for sailing. He’s not going out on the boat with us – he just owns the Arise and Shine No. 3 that is taking us out on the water. There is another man next to him smoking a cigarette. Shorter and with old clothes, his angular frame has none of the boat owner’s healthy belly.

“This is the captain, Fassiney,” says Eddie.

“Hello sir! You come from America?” he says.

“Yes, I do,” I say.

“Ah, great country!” He’s beaming and continues, “We are going to show you how we fish. We go for herring today. They’re good fish, lots of them here.”

I nod, looking at the Arise and Shine No. 3. There’s a bit of water in the bottom, but it’s visibly in better shape than its neighbors. It looks about five years old, maybe a bit more.

“Nice boat, captain,” I say, “How old?”

“Not yet six months. It’s good, no?”

“Yes, it’s good.” This is the experience I asked for and can’t back out now.

Eddie jumps in first and nervously watches me clamor down into the boat. I hand him my flip-flops and plastic bag of supplies and get myself seated on a crossbeam. The captain and two other fishermen climb in, arrange the outboard motor, and then we pole ourselves out of the scrum of boats.

Fassiney looks at me and looks down at the t-shirt I’m wearing.

“Ah, you’re a sailor?” he asks. I look down, realizing my college tee-shirt is from the rowing team’s bar.

“No, no, I’m not a sailor,” I say and uncomfortably trace the outline of an oar that I really wouldn’t know how to use here. I pause, and then I check my baseball cap. ‘Harpoon Brewery’ is written in big letters with a big whaling harpoon on the front. I’m not a sailor but you could be forgiven for guessing it from my outfit. When did our clothes become so nautical?

“Well, good shirt.” The captain gets in the boat with us. On the dock the owner is already involved on his cell phone, walking away as he talks.

The captain gestures to one of the fishermen squatting on the stern. At that motion, the fisherman yanks on the cable and revs the outboard to life. Black water gurgles up behind and the engine pushes us out into the open port and past the seawall.

The water is smooth and the waves do not even break. They are just swells in the surface as we coast along with the palm-lined islands rising up on our right.  These are the remnant shells of an ancient volcano and an echo of what the mainland used to resemble before post-colonial concrete and tin roofs sprawled across the landscape. The sea fills our view and we forget the city quickly.

“Captain, the water’s nice today,” I say to make chit chat.

“Yes,” Fassiney nods. “It’s the dry season. We fishermen love the dry season! Waves are small. You get waves in the rainy season, oy oy!” He sticks out his hands, waving them up and down to illustrate the tossing of the boat. “We Africans, we confuse God. While farmers praying for rain, fishermen praying for sun!”

“But you go out into the water in the rainy season? When the water’s rough?” I ask.

Fassiney nods again. “But we not resting! We taking out water the whole time.” Fassiney picks up the bailing bucket and strains with imaginary effort.

Eddie nods his head. “One time I was out there in the deep ocean. We were fishing for snapper. We went out for four, five days. Mr. Jett, I thought it was the moment I was going to die. The boat went up one wave,” he leans back for emphasis, “And then the boat goes down the other.” He lurches forward and for a second I imagine cresting a monster in a wooden boat like this with just an old plastic jug for a bailer.

“Mr. Jett, I thought I would die,” he says again and I believe him. “We took turns emptying the water. The man in the front bailed and the other men hung onto him. When he got tired, he passed beneath our legs so not to fall out and he took the last position. Then someone else took a turn bailing water. We lasted like this for six hours, up and down, rain and waves. That was my last day as a fisherman.”

I want to ask Eddie about the other men, if they kept up with work. I wanted to ask if he’s lost friends like that, but you can’t ask this question. Someone can only tell you the answer.

(End of part I)

Go to Part II: On the Water in Guinea

Jett Thomason works for the U.S. government managing small agricultural development projects in Africa. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan, he has worked in Afghanistan and Iraq and traveled extensively in Latin America and the former Soviet Union. In his current job, Jett copes with responsibility and limited time for indulging wanderlust by writing the occasional blog entry and travel story.

By Jett Thomason

Lamu Travel

Lamu was to be the crown jewel of my East African coastal journey. I had read about the town and the imminent construction of a new port. After Mombasa, which is already at capacity, Lamu is the only natural spot for a harbor in Kenya. The construction of a port is a few years away, though some dredging has already started. Roads will be built, rail lines introduced, and an oil pipeline for South Sudan’s crude will likely be in place within ten years.

The article I read described Lamu as an unspoiled Swahili town. Swahil is Arabic for ‘coast’, and the mélange of Arab and African created a hybrid culture along the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya that still feels quite distinct from the interior. This pristine town, preserved in many ways since the 19^th century, is about to be overrun by the new port and modernity with all its disposable income, improved standard of living, and destruction of traditional ways of life. Go now, the article implies, because Lamu the living historical fossil is soon to be no more.

The trip started with a bus ride from Malindi, further down the coast. Unfortunately the journey progressed in the opposite way you would hope with the road steadily worsening as we went along. I was in the back and my bus-mates and I suffered as the ripples in the tarmac magnified into assaulting waves of pain by the time they reached our seats.

When we turned off the asphalt and drove onto a mostly packed dirt road, the bumps got worse. I could feel a headache coming on from the shocks my brain was absorbing. There was a distinct point where I began to question what I was doing. Was I chasing a dream here? The bus trip would be adventurous and great material for my stories when I was nineteen, but now headed towards thirty-three the charm seemed largely gone from this sort of thing. And yet, for the people living here, this was life, this was their only choice to get to Lamu where friends and family lived.

It is not a good place to be, simultaneously filled with weariness of the road and new questions about the path my life had taken while also realizing the incredible insensitivity of these concerns faced with the stoic acceptance by my fellow passengers. The bus hit an incredibly large rolling bump and we all sailed into the air, the bus dropping below us, and then the entire rear coach population came down hard.

This was, apparently, too much even for the locals whose stoicism I had been silently admiring. I do not speak Swahili but the last half of the bus screamed in unison, “Hey! What the heck are you doing up there?!? That bump was too much too fast and don’t you dare do it again!”

I guess we had all been silently suffering and questioning our sense in taking this bus. Misery loves company, and the rest of the ride suddenly seemed a bit more tolerable.

On the ferry from the bus stop of the mainland, the sight of three young German backpackers was my first indication that the unspoiled dream of Lamu was not to be. Arriving at the wharf, my second indication that my expectations needed adjustment was the teeming mass of people eyeing our boat and its arrival. I did not realize I had all these apparently long-lost ‘friends’ and ‘brothers’ calling out for me, eager to get me to my hotel. The image of a cow wading into piranha-filled waters suddenly entered my head.

The hotel manager in Malindi told me, “Don’t worry. My friend Sayd will meet you at the boat. He will have a sign with your name on it and he will take you to several places, you just pick the one. It’s no problem. Hakuna matata.”

The boat grew closer to the waiting pack and I clambered off the vessel with the others. The wharf was a flurry with passengers scrambling up the port steps, porters scrambling on, and hotel agents screaming out “JAMBO!” at me, the lone traveler. Jambo is Swahili for ‘Hi’, but it was anything but friendly in this context. Where was this Sayd person who should have been waiting for me?

Just then, a furtive guy comes up and unfolds a piece of paper with my name written on it, “Jambo, are you this man?” Lawrence, my hotel manager from Malindi, had come through.

“Yes,” I say, and then foolishly, “Are you Sayd?” No, drat. Should have asked who he was.

“Yes, I am Sayd. I am with Sayd. Where’s your bag?”

I disregard the confusion of who he is and accept that if he has got my name, then he is probably alright. I point to my backpack, originally black but now grey-brown from the dust of our trip. Sayd leaps over the other porters onto the boat, fighting them off to get my luggage. I realize now why he had my name concealed until he saw the foreigner. The other touts at the wharf would have just copied it or told me they were there to pick me up.

Sayd, or Sayd’s guy, grabs my backpack, swings it onto his shoulders, and begins walking so fast in his flip-flops that I have to skip a bit just to keep up with this pace. Men come up alongside us just as quickly.

“Jambo, brother, I am a captain. We are going on a fishing trip today, you come?” says one man.

“Remember me? I was the one who helped you last time!” tries another.

“Do you need anything? You want to eat? I show you a nice place,” says the third. Sayd’s pace is too fast for these guys, and the fact that he has got my sole piece of luggage means that I am going to keep up. Sayd’s caught this tourist fish and I am dragged out of the clutches of the others.

Lamu, unspoiled paradise

The sales assaults continued as I checked into the hotel. A few dhow captains were lounging around the lobby, ready with package rides out to the islands and deep-sea fishing trips. An older gentleman in a neon yellow safety vest carried my bag up to my room, sat me down in the low and sagging hotel room recliner, leaned on the opposite table and told me he was the town’s tourist “chairman”, but I could call him ‘Chief’. City tours, boat tours, donkey rides, he was the guy to arrange it.

The Chief followed me out of my room, out of the hotel, into the narrow and tiny old city streets pitching his services and the remarkable impressions he had apparently left with previous tourists; all now satisfied customers. It was only the passing of a more affluent looking tourist couple that convinced him to let me go free, though with the extracted promise to let him know first about any plans I might have for spending money in Lamu.

I needed a place to hide from the claws of this tourist-churning machine. Then I saw it, “Lamu Book Point. Sell, Rent, Trade!!!”

I am a sucker for three exclamation points, so I turned the corner and ducked into the bookstore.

While the sales clerk closely examined the potential exchange value of a very dry historical review of Ethiopia, (recently liberated from an unnamed US Embassy’s lending library), the clerk’s friend struck up a conversation.

“Do you play bowel game?” she asks.

“Sorry?” I ask.

“Do you play the bowel game?”

“Ahhh…. ‘Bowl’ game?” I venture?

“No.” She sighs. “B-A-O Game. Bao game.”

Without waiting for a response, she walks over to the corner and grabs a wooden board with carved spaces arranged across the top and a large bottle of pebbles.

Introductions. “I am Rose. And  you?”

“I’m Jett,” I say. “From America.”

“Yes. So this is how to play.” She lays out the board, filling each cup space in the surface with two pebbles and starts teaching me the bao game. It reminds me of backgammon, and the other clerk takes pity on my inexperience and throws a few key tips my way, tipping the scales a bit back in my favor.

Half an hour and a couple rounds of bao later, I say goodbye to Rose and the clerk Rebecca, and walk out with a new beach read and a promise to come back tomorrow for a rematch. I take a few steps out and realize I’m a bit stunned to realize there was no sales pitch in the entire exchange.

Avoiding the wharf, I slide through the early dusk shadows in the more residential streets packed with locals who cast me a quick glance and a polite ‘jambo’. I ‘jambo’ back and walk through the north end of the town and out into the mangrove stands exposed out on the low-tide beach.

No one tries to sell me anything, dhow crews are too busy unloading coral bricks dug out on the opposite island while the light is still good. At the end of the work day, local couples have tucked themselves into the groves, just enjoying the end of the day. Sun sets and throws bright orange light on the boats in the water before dropping away completely.

Walking back into Lamu, I come in fresh and revived. I walk back in through the residential end, seeing Lamu as it should be seen. A dense mass of urbanity on a scenic island. The plots of land appear to have been only loosely planned and the sand and shanties transition in the space of two blocks to hundred-year-old houses just a few feet apart, real estate jumping up three or four stories with rebar extending upwards, optimistically implying future living space for a growing family.

Lamu might be alright after all, I think.

After two days on the island, I sit on a bench outside the arched entrance to the main square of Lamu. There is the odd tourist passing through, but mostly it’s just old men sitting and chatting. Dodging the wharf now at all costs, I have joined them at the square, drinking cups of sweet, spiced coffee brewed in a massive pot over a charcoal brazier. The vendor sets up in the late afternoon for his daily nine-hour shift, providing stimulant and pretext for conversation seekers.

Patrick, who works at a nearby hotel, is telling me about the hamali teams. These groups of four people push a two-wheeled cart – the hamali – and deliver literally everything that comes from the mainland to its destination on the island. As we speak, a team struggles by with a load of boxes, massive burlap sacks, and what is clearly an exercise bicycle wrapped in newspaper. The only other delivery method on the island is one of the 3,000 donkeys that meander through the streets when they are off-duty, scrounging for the stray corn husk or bit of grass.

Rose comes up with her hand extended out, “Jambo Jett! Greet me!” I do. “Why did you not come to the shop today?”

“I’ll come tomorrow,” I promise.

“OK, we wait you then.” With a smile she is off into the crowd.

I turn back to my new friend, “Tell me Patrick, are these really Maasai?” I ask. I was convinced the men dressed in the red robes, sporting shields and spears, and working in the ‘Maasai Market’ had to be locals dressed up for the tourists. It was akin to seeing cowboys in full outfit in South Florida.

“Yes,” Patrick nods once fiercely. “They come to work here, too. People like them as guards.”

“Really? Here on Lamu?”

“Yes. There was one problem with a hotel owner. A Swahili said he was going to cut him.” Patrick gestures a machete cut to the neck. “The hotel owner got some Maasai. They catch this guy! They not scared of anything.” We both pause in respect. “So, people like them as guards.”

I nod, not much to add there. “Even on Lamu, people are people, huh,” I say to him.

Patrick laughs, “Yeah! People are people!”

Finishing the coffee, I walk past the old men idly adjusting their skullcaps, sitting on the stone benches underneath one of the massive trees that drape over the square. Women in full veil greet their male friends. How do they recognize each other? The tumult of the center quickly gives way to narrow lanes with small drainage channels cut on the side. I recognize the now-familiar clomping of hooves and step into a doorway to let the donkey and rider pass behind me.

A young girl comes around the corner in the other direction, one hand pulling up her head scarf.

“Jambo!” she says with excitement at seeing me.

“Jambo,” I say.

“How are you?” she asks as we pass by each other.

I turn back, “I am fine. How are you?”

“Welcome in Africa!”

“Thank you.” Yes, thank you very much.

Jett Thomason is now a program analyst managing small grants projects in Africa. The views expressed are entirely his own opinion and in no way are representative of any government or other institution. Over the past decade his travels and work have taken him throughout the former Soviet Republics and Europe to Afghanistan and Iraq. He blogs for GoMad Nomad at the No Leave Travel Blog.

By Jett Thomason

I recently had my first month-long work trip to Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The trip represented a number of firsts. First time to Africa. First time to be jetting around for quick site visits rather than long-term job assignments. And first time to be representing the US government in the field with the official passport and all.

Rwanda was the first country to visit on my tour. In pre-trip reading up on the country, it was impossible to find a travel narrative that doesn’t wax poetic at the sight of small villages nestled in the misty hills and tilled plots stretching up on all sides of volcanic soil-laden slopes. And for good reason, the place is postcard bucolic beautiful. It was also impossible to find an English-language book that doesn’t also drift into commentary on “the unimaginable horror of the 1994 genocide and the subsequent re-birth of the country in an ethnicity-blind, forward-looking example of an African success story”. More on that later.

My first outing beyond the capital was to western Rwanda. In a steep mountain village several hours off the nearest paved roads, my agency has been financing a cooperative of pineapple growers that are trying to produce and sell juice for the local market. Seeing them for the first time, I marveled at the precision engineering imparted from years of selective planting. The plants rise up straight with a single pineapple resting on a short stalk. The long leaves on the top provide the perfect handle for plucking the fruit. The eyes on the side of the pineapple start to get dry just as it is at its ripest, avoiding any question about the best time to harvest, and when ripe the skin slices off easily enough but prevents birds and other animals from getting to the crop before you do.

So far, the cooperative has been making juice by laboriously slicing pieces of pineapple into small chunks and then hand-squeezing the pieces between two cutting boards. Our grant is financing a proper juicer that should dramatically decrease the amount of time and physical exertion needed for this stage. The cooperative has been incredibly productive even with this strictly manual effort, juicing, pasteurizing, and selling thousands of bottles of juice. When I saw the stockroom, the bottles had slightly misspelled English labels, but were fairly professional in appearance. It took me a minute to realize that the cooperative has recovered empty Heineken bottles for re-use. Since the beer company is one of the few in Rwanda to not recycle, it’s the first choice for a locally sustainable and affordable juice company like our grantee.

I thought that my few years of French would carry me far in Rwanda, but English is the dominant non-native language and has been ever since 1994. The genocide that started then ended when rebels, formerly based in English-speaking Uganda, swept over the country and seized control. While this linguistic heritage has served me conveniently in the capital city, out in the countryside I have to rely on the translations of our staff for communication. The Rwandan groups I have met are invariably warm and welcoming, but the intermediary translation has definitely affected my impressions of their culture.

There is a tendency for Rwandans to make a deep “mmmmm” sound as part of conversation. The sound is not a rising-then-falling “mmmmm” voicing of satisfaction. It’s much more a starts-high-then-goes-low murmur that I have decided is a mix of basic acknowledgement, indication of understanding, polite demonstration of the listener’s attention, and sometimes agreement. I have to admit I was startled the first time when the entire room filled up with this sound at exactly the same time.

“We’re very happy to see your strong progress and improvements to the facility as we begin this grant’s disbursement”, I say.

My colleague translates and then suddenly the room fills with the first “mmmmm”.

“My role in Washington is to compile the financial data and memorandums to help get projects funds to you as quickly as we can.”

Translation in Kinyarwanda, then “MMMMMM”. Increased volumes always coincided with statements related to getting funds out quickly.

photo credit: Shared Interest

I then launch into my carefully crafted statement, likening the grant process to the current preparations for the coming rainy season. They have plowed the fields and readied the grain; we are assisting with outside monies that will, like the rain, allow their work to yield a strong harvest. It is fitting, respectful, and I smugly reflect on how well the metaphor applies to the role of a rich donor country in development.

Once the translator is finished, I’m met with a quiet, fairly polite “mmm”. Not quite the rousing murmur response I had been hoping for. As we discuss some grant paperwork, the translator explains one of the first forms to be signed. A commitment to a drug-free workplace, slightly ridiculous in a country and in a village where subsistence agriculture effectively prices everyone out of a market for recreational drug use, is one of the first standard items we have to cover. It is, after all, US government money being used for the project.

Upon translation, “MMMMMM” breaks out immediately and then strong, enthusiastic clapping to this passage. The country representative and I look at each other in surprise.

“I guess they like that one,” he says.

As mentioned, it is literally impossible to find any books in my public library’s system that both discuss Rwanda but omit mention of the 1994 genocide. To broadly summarize, the majority Hutu people, who had until relatively recently been shut out of power and privilege, took up machetes and butchered nearly a million of their minority Tutsi countrymen. In the immediate wake of the genocide, the Tutsi rebel forces swept down into the country from northern strongholds, drove out the genocidaires, and proclaimed the end of ethnicity and a new beginning for the country. They also quietly re-assumed their traditional dominance of the organs of political and military power.

The new arrangement has largely worked with no breakouts of violence for more than a decade and a strong record of economic growth. That being said, for all the discussion of the genocide in the literature and even a Hollywood movie Hotel Rwanda, I have gotten a sense that any actual discussion of the events is something not suited for polite conversation while actually in Rwanda.

Instead, there are subtle clues and hints as to a person’s ethnicity. Many of the persecuted minority spent years in Tanzania and Uganda as refugees. They learned English, were exposed to more modern economies, and they have assumed many positions in international organizations like ours. There is no mention of the word “Tutsi”, but the term “returnee” seems to be an acceptable code word.

During one moment of a heated meeting with a company director on a different project visit, I caught a glimpse of the issue’s weight on the country or at least on how they want to present themselves to outsiders. I had to negotiate access to the director’s financial records by one of our staff members who the director has claimed is out to smear his reputation. As discussion becomes heated, he blurts out, “Do you know about the genocide? Do you know what happened here?”

I have no idea where this came from, we’re communicating in my slow, rusty French, and I am left slightly speechless. His colleagues struggle to jump in at this point.

“No! It’s something that cut to the heart of Rwanda! I won’t back down! I can’t allow this inspection visit from that staff member!”

Five members of his management team alternately plead in their Kinyarwanda language with him, while trying to anxiously steer the conversation away from the whole issue. My staff’s uncomfortable, I can see the managing director is angry and yet also embarrassed at his own outburst, his nearby wife appears mortified. I am more befuddled, trying to understand where this suddenly came from. Maybe a people beaten and subjected to such violence live with the scars under the surface. Or maybe this simply an irrational businessman who is used to getting his way and when pressed decides to claim victimhood so I will back down. There is a vein of truth running below the cultural surface that I won’t understand on this eight-day visit.

After visiting the pineapple growers’ cooperative, my team and I overnight in a small guesthouse.  Rising early, we drive back to the capital on a Sunday morning. The roads are crowded with people, Hutus in this case, who are making their way to Sunday church service. Shorter, darker skinned, and with broader facial features than my Tutsi staff members, there is no way to really believe that the issue of ethnicity and race is behind this country just yet. Rather than talk about the obvious features, I make a simple comment about how these rural people appear to be quite religious and diligent in their observation.

“One hand with the Bible and one hand with the machete,” says a staff member sitting in the car. “That’s the kind of religion these people have.” I say nothing. The other staff member simply murmurs a soft “mmmmm”.

Jett Thomason is now a program analyst managing small grants projects in Africa. The views expressed are entirely his own opinion and in no way are representative of any government or other institution. Over the past decade his travels and work have taken him throughout the former Soviet Republics and Europe to Afghanistan and Iraq.

By Jett Thomason

My alarm clock goes off at five. It’s been about four hours since I fell asleep. I’ve woken up to go to the early-morning festivities for a neighborhood circumcision ceremony which is locally and collectively referred to as one of several Uzbek “weddings”. I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small provincial town in Uzbekistan for more than a year now. The people of my town are exceedingly friendly and known to be the most festive in the country. If there’s a wedding to go to, it will be a neighbor of mine pouring the vodka and cracking jokes for the table.

An Uzbek man can reasonably expect to be the main participant in four “weddings” in his life. There’s the bishek-toi (new baby wedding), the sunnat-toi (circumcision wedding for boys), the niqoh-toi (marriage wedding), and the final funeral celebration. All of these are pretty similar in the arrangement. Neighbors and friends and recent companions and new acquaintances and coworkers and their families all come out for the bash. Part of the wedding which is limited to men only is the morning plov ceremony that I have woken up so early for.

We can hear the horns before we can see the house. Big bellowing long trumpets announce the opening of the wedding. Guests arrive streaming onto the street. It’s been blocked off to cars and set with plastic tables and chairs. Most everyone is wearing their skullcap with the local evil-eye preventive charms sewn on. The hosts are leading people in, and everyone exchanges head-nods with their hand across their chest in the wonderful Muslim greeting. It expresses piety, modesty, honor and deference all at once.

Once a table is filled, the serving and eating begins. One man pours the tea the requisite three times, another opens the vodka, young boys run around handing out tomato and onion salads. Older boys quickly follow them with plov, the steaming rice, carrot, and meat dish that is ubiquitous in this part of the world. The word is the root for English “rice pilaf”.  Legend states that Alexander the Great’s army chef was puzzled over what to cook with such simple ingredients. Plov, it became, and apparently the soldiers took to it heartily because there’s not a celebration in Central Asia without it. The dish is slightly different every time you have it. Or so I’m told. Plov is like fine French wine, far wiser people than I can detect the subtitles of cooking it in different ways. I just enjoy it and don’t bother with the shades of distinction.

Everyone eats. The plov is packed into spoons or palms and slid into the mouth. Neighbors mutually implore each other to eat. Vodka, tea, soda, and melon are passed from hand to hand to hand and finally to mouth. The plov portion is just finishing up as the young boy of honor is brought out in his turban and robe made of velour and gold trim.

The grandfather holds up his grandchild—today a man. Speeches are made and countless people wish the young lad success, health, and a large family. One of the elders has had a bit more vodka than he should have, and expresses his hope that “what the mullah made short today, may it be much larger in the future!” Great laughs come from the men at the tables, great sighs from the ladies looking out from the doorways.

People begin to finish their meals and work their way into the adjacent park. Today’s wedding is even more noteworthy because there is going to be a ram fight. The hosting family has spent about $10,000 on the prizes for the winning rams.  For perspective this largess is spent in a country where a person pulls down an average monthly salary of $80. All local ram owners have been invited. As such, there’s quite a crowd waiting around the field when we arrive.

As we walk in, we see the rams tied up and waiting for their moment. A few are banging their head against the trunks of trees. These are the berserkers, the ones given their due space. Other rams are congenial enough to be petted. They all have nicknames. Tornado, Gypsy, Super, and several Tysons are all ready to win their masters a rug or maybe the championship prize of a camel.

The park fills up over the course of the hour. The camel is terrified, frothing at the mouth, and difficult to control. Dust piles up around its stamping legs and passersby futilely try to keep their pants clean while inspecting the beast. The musicians have turned the music more upbeat and a costumed girl dances for small notes from the bystanders.

Finally our host comes out and takes the microphone from the band. There are yet more speeches. People are beginning to get tired and are itching to see some action. The rams peacefully look on, grubbing for grass. One man speaks for ten minutes, repeatedly answering his own rhetorical questions. The sun begins to beat down and the vodka fades. I desperately wish for a ram to dash across and butt him off the field. Finally it’s over and the crowd roars relief and satisfaction as the first two rams are brought out.

Someone notices my camera and urges me forward for a better shot.  The aggressive hospitality of the crowd has pushed me right out onto the edge of the field for a front-row view. I’m an honored guest, but having about a thousand people stare at me as I stare at the rams doesn’t feel so honored.  As the rams are squared up, I feel eyes lift from the foreigner to the real sight.

The rams break free of their owners and the heads of the animals smack together.  It sounds like fencing with logs. My unease at watching the fight disappears in the rush of the moment. The rams shake, back up slowly, and run towards each other again for a mighty smack. They back up again, but they’re not walking backwards in perfectly straight lines. They are backing up slowly but surely in my direction. Smack, another shake, another move towards me. I start to look anxiously at the ditches, benches, and speakers blocking me from an easy exit.

Smack, they crash again and one of the rams bows out. The crowd gives its solid approval at the performance, the beaten ram runs back…. towards me. I snap a picture of imminent impact and scramble to get across the ditch. Dust billows up as I try to cross over the side of the field; the shamed loser is scared and looking to get past or through me. I hop up onto a ledge full of people, the ram stops short and nonchalantly strolls in the other direction. I laugh at myself along with the rest and decide that I’ll enjoy the following matches as a local would—on the sidelines.

The other rams are brought out in pairs and steadily the rugs and other prizes are passed out. It comes time to give the camel off. A monster is led onto the field. It’s huge, at least waist high on a tall man and I can’t begin to guess how much it weighs. The horns curl back under and over its ears and the gray wool shines in the sun. He’s the reigning champion. The speaker entreats someone to challenge him. Minutes pass as the speaker assures that the loser will also get a consolation prize. It’s still a while before a smaller ram is led out. The excited owner pulls it by the horn; it’s not as willing.

The animals are arranged in the middle of the field. The speaker calls for the American guest to come out and watch. I’m pushed out to the field again. The large and imposing ram is even more so from close up. Suddenly the white challenger makes a dash at the large one. Smack. Perhaps he can pull it off…they back up, the owners, a few feet away, encourage their beasts with clapping and cursing. Smack, and they bounce off each other. Both shake, back even farther up, and run at it again. Smack, the white ram’s legs buckle but he regains.

The champion doesn’t even appear winded. They hit and retreat again. The white ram backs up, backs up, backs up, and people start falling down as he backs into the crowd. The rams start to dash towards each other from sixty feet away. Simultaneously they both dive into the air. The champion has the mass and the advantage and blows down the smaller ram.

It’s over, the white one turns and runs. For added glory the black champion encourages the flight with a hit to the rear of the failed challenger. The crowd heartily approves. The cheers could be from anywhere and from anytime.

As the prize camel is brought onto the field, the owner beams and the host makes generous gestures. He’s too far on to the pitch to speak into the microphone but it’s not needed. We’ve heard the same lines a thousand times today. The proud winner stands by its owner, avowed champion again. The camel suddenly jumps and spits, the startled winning ram turns tail and runs off the field followed by its owner. The crowd enjoys this sight as much as the fight. Old men turn grinning to each other. “There’s always someone bigger!” they mutually confirm.

I pick my way through the crowd, past the spitting camel, and exit the dusty field. Another wedding, another memory, but this isn’t one I’ll soon forget.

Jett Thomason was a TEFL volunteer in Uzbekistan from 2002- 2004 in the United States Peace Corps.  Since then, he’s worked in Afghanistan and Iraq and traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, and the countries of the Former Soviet Union. He lives in Washington, DC.

the beach at Lake Tanganyika in Burundi

No Leave Travel Blog

I know I shouldn’t complain about business travel to Africa. It’s always a rewarding experience. But it’s also an exhausting one. For nearly three weeks I had been waking up at 6, cleaning out my work emails, and leaving the hotel by 7. We would be on the road all day seeing projects. With the sun long set, I would return to my hotel room, eat an overpriced and usually mediocre hotel meal, and crash. So when I suddenly found myself with a free afternoon in Burundi, I was thrilled.

To say that post-conflict Burundi doesn’t see many tourists would be a gross understatement. Travel on the highways is banned after 6 pm when the military pulls back to their garrisons. I attended a security briefing at the embassy a few days into my visit where I learned I had been violating protocol for at least three days by such rash measures as taking local taxis and traveling without a radio link to the security station.

The threat to life and limb and the nearly complete lack of tourism infrastructure were obstacles to enjoying my rare bit of leisure time, but the Lonely Planet guide raved about the beaches of Lake Tanganyika where “the waves are strong enough to keep away the parasitic snails that infest most of East African bodies of water.” What had really gotten me excited was the brochure from the swanky hotel, “Club du Lac”, that had quietly been inserted into my passport when it returned from the Burundian Embassy’s visa desk. I guessed the Ambassador’s brother must be an owner. Either way, the lake, the hotel, and its beach sounded great. Even better, the US security officer had actually signed off on the safety of the place. But really, I needed a little downtime.

I was not totally sure that I could just walk into the hotel and onto their stretch of beach, but I have always been a big believer in begging for forgiveness rather than asking for permission. I changed in the hotel bar restroom, slipped on my cheap Chinese mirrored sunglasses, and walked out to the sand as if I knew what I was doing.

Lake Tanganyika

It was a Saturday and one of the rare beautiful days in the middle of the rainy season. Dark green mountains rose up on the Congolese side of the lake crested by white clouds. A pristine beach with ocean-worthy sand lay in front of me. A bored guard with his AK-47 was throwing rocks at a can for want of people to watch. I had the beach almost entirely to myself. A European diplomat and his wife were playing in the shade. Figuring them not to be the bag-snatching type, I asked them to watch my things while I went into the waves. They pleasantly agreed.

The water was cool and fresh with the wind blowing just hard enough to stir up some surf. It was fantastic. The view was pristine, and I was alone in the water, the only soul taking advantage of the natural peace and tranquility of floating in the lake. It was a Saturday and people in this poor country could only afford to take their Sundays off. I had the water all to myself. Floating on my back, looking at Congo bobbing in and out of my line of sight, I had to admit that while it was not quite adventuring like I used to do, the government-sponsored travel had its moments.

Half an hour later, I strolled out of the waves, glowing with the realization that I was in the heart of Africa, that it was beautiful, that I was loving my job, and that I would get to come back to all this in the near future. I walked back to get my bag from the European couple.

“How was the water?” the man asked.

“Oh fantastic,” I replied. “It really was just the right temperature and so fresh. Like the ocean but without all the salt.”

They nodded politely in agreement. “So you don’t worry about the hippos?”

I looked at them, looked down, then at the mountains as I collected my thoughts.

“Thanks again.” I grabbed my bag, slipped on the sunglasses, and walked over to the bar for a drink.

Posted by Jett Thomason, 20 Jan 2010

Vasya offers some homemade wine

I am in Moldova. Now a former republic of the Soviet Union, the region has previously been known as Bessarabia and has changed hands between Russian, Austria-Hungarian, Ottoman, and home-grown empires a number of times. The population is largely Romanian in culture and language. The elected Communist government has tried to avoid the forces of “Greater Romania” by insisting on the separation between Moldovan and Romanian. This has even led to a Moldovan-Romanian dictionary. Widely mocked, it’s about the same as writing a dictionary for Californian-New Yorkian.

I came here a bit more than a month ago at the invitation of an old friend. Overall, it’s been a great place to wait out the winter, study Russian, and see a relatively unknown but fascinating corner of Eastern Europe.

I’ve been staying mostly in the capital of Chisinau (pronounced Kishinow). You would have trouble believing it to be the capital of one of Europe’s poorest countries. The nightlife is booming and the cafes are packed with people. New BMWs and Mercedes race the streets and stores are packed with shoppers. Most of the economy is funded by the tremendous quantity of remittances from young Moldovans overseas. While the country’s official population is about four million, a huge portion of the young workforce has left to find work in Russia, Italy, and Spain.

The difference between the small towns and the capital is stark. Essentially the only people left in the villages are the very old and the very young. Once school is completed, people leave for the capital or an overseas job – usually illegally. One result of this mass migration is that Moldovans have a distinct appreciation of the difference between European and their own standard of living. I’ve repeatedly had to assure locals that I wasn’t offended by their less-than-ideal living conditions. Many of the young women have seen how modern Western women enjoy more privileges and balanced roles in the house. These experiences are rapidly changing the traditional culture and gender relations in the country.

a babushka sweeps the snow

A few weeks ago I went to a small village about an hour outside of Chisinau and had a chance to see the rural life first-hand. After a long night of shish kebabs and beer, I was woken up early, given another large meal and strong tea, and led down to the basement for a “quick tour” with the same pride an American might show off their new home theater.

The signature product of Moldova is their wine. The larger wineries have imported modern production techniques and are producing excellent wine at very inexpensive prices. Still, any Moldovan worth their salt has a large store of homemade wine from the massive barrel or two in their basement.

The basement belongs to the Moldovan men just as the kitchen is the preserve of their wives. A single glass is all that they needed to begin showing off the wares. Several pairs of eyes waiting for you to finish the drink inevitably mean the wine is drunk quickly and with vigor. After a few draughts I stopped wondering why they had complained that the two-and-a-half tons of wine they make in the autumn barely lasts the year.

We sampled the open barrel of red wine, the older barrel of red wine, a little bit of the white, a couple drinks from last year’s reserve, a few shots of the grape moonshine steeped in walnut husks (to help settle the stomach), and again a small glass of the red just to round out the visit. I emerged from the basement before noon a little less steady and with my arms full of bottles of the local reserve as well as a hefty jar of salted pig fat known as “sala” – an especially proud local delicacy. (I made a personal note to avoid complimenting the quality of any other local’s sala.)

Posted by Jett Thomason