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.

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

Blog of a Modern Nomad

Like Tangier for Twain, Aleppo is the spot we have been longing for all the time:

–The Innocents Abroad

click photo for slide show

I am a bit uncomfortable in my interactions, but it’s the uncomfortable I’ve desired. The vegetable vendors at the outdoor market are not used to selling their produce to foreigners, nor am I used to their Arabic, local prices, or bartering techniques.

I am uncomfortable most everywhere, in fact, and am probably naïve too. Maybe I’m being overcharged for my freshly-squeezed mango juice at the fruit stand, but I am too absorbed to give it a second thought.

My travel partner and I are so enthralled with this complete foreignness, the foreignness that Twain describes, and we haven’t even entered the old city and souks for which Aleppo is famous. Here, the new city is a novelty to us.

The first morning in Aleppo I awoke to the call to prayer. It echoed throughout the narrow streets and radiated up from the roof tops just as it had in all the other cities we had traveled through for the past two months. But this morning, it was a real person singing. In Turkey we were used to recorded prayers that sounded harsher than a worn-out 8-track tape from the 70’s. In Northern Cyprus I buried my head under the pillow at 4am. Even though my sleep was interrupted in Aleppo, I had still appreciated its beauty.

A few hours later, at about 9am, I heard church bells. At first I didn’t think it was possible. I hadn’t heard clanking bells since Bulgaria. But later I read that ten percent of the Syrian population is Christian and the secular government is tolerant of these different faiths.

Coming from modern and westernized Turkey, Syria seems so vastly different. It is both visually shocking and stimulating to the senses. To begin, everything is in Arabic. The first thing we had to do was learn how to read the numbers. (Arabs don’t use what we call “Arabic numerals”) Adding to this, Aleppean society is very conservative. Almost no women are seen on the streets without a headscarf and many are wearing the chador.

You won’t find international chains in Aleppo and there aren’t even supermarkets here. People still do their shopping in the souqs. The souqs are covered and still preserved from medieval times. In Aleppo you will come closer to experiencing a medieval city center better than anywhere else in the Middle East.

I am often in search of places that are “thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign” but with our shrinking and globalized world, these places are increasingly uncommon.

But in Syria, on the streets of Aleppo, I found Twain’s Tangier.

Stephen Bugno, August 2007

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

By Jason Gilpin

Odessa, Ukraine

Odessa has a severely Victorian character about it; the lampposts, sidewalks and infrastructure are something out of 1812 Hyde Park. The train station and opera house are Crimean War-era. The parks are green and manicured. This place is fancy, European, cosmopolitan and cultivated. Fantastic restaurants abound. Foreigners abound, and yet the locals do not stop to gawk at their odd tongue. Still, Odessa does have much more than a hint of Slavic culture, as the suburbs are populated with colorful Cossack cottages, the outskirts are disjointed and unplanned, and the outer skyline is guarded by wall-like concrete Soviet block apartments.

Odessa is a romantic city. Women in expensive fur coats are accompanied by well-dressed men out for a formal walk in a place that oozes a need to see and be seen. Signs advertising “marriage agencies” promised to match attractive young women with wealthy foreigners. Fashionable young couples embrace on the waterfront. They saunter across an unassuming pedestrian overpass festooned with thousands of padlocks professing love, past, present and future.

Although some might call it an industrial eyesore, I found the port area to be a vibrantly colorful picture screen displaying Ukraine’s relationship with the rest of the world; a maritime commercial traffic jam seemed to crowd the waters immediate the port, probably from Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Crimea. Cargo was hurriedly off-and-on loaded from far flung places all over the world via the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

Many Americans are familiar with the word Odessa (although probably can’t tell you where it is), because of New York’s Brighton Beach’s Little Odessa, a district of New York founded by Ukrainian and Russian expats. In fact, America and Odessa have a lot in common. In both lands settlement was founded by diverse gigantic refugee populations.

Odessa’s early 19th century hay day was exactly that; it was founded as a free trade settlement bolstered by grain exports from the Russian Empire. German, Greek, Moldavian, Jewish, Swiss, and Polish mingled comfortably with the Ukrainian and Russian peasants, and the Nogay Tatars from the steppes. It was a city founded and managed by foreigners, existing with some autonomy in the Russian Empire. There seemed to be a very real sense of freedom here at that time.

The forefathers of the United States would have much in common with Odessa’s founder, a Frenchman by the name of Lycee Richelieu. After establishing the city and being credited with its economic success, Richelieu was appointed France’s first Prime Minister after the fall of Napoleon.

Like the Independence Hall crew, Richelieu was a man of the Enlightenment. I rather like the way Neal Ascherson, (author of the Black Sea where much of the historical info for this post comes from), put Richelieu’s character: “…energetic, austere, universal, lonely.”

The city evidently found much in common with her founder.

In my long afternoon stroll in this especially quixotic place, I felt like I did as well.

Jason Gilpin has just returned from being an NGO Facilitator in the US Peace Corps in Sevastopol, Ukraine and is currently an MA candidate (Int’l Administration) at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies (formerly GSIS). He blogs at Gilpin on the Globe: http://jasongilpin.blogspot.com/