By Beau Miller

“It’s governed by a council/ All good souls and wise./ They’ve only $5 for armaments/ And the rest for cakes and pies.” -Pete Seeger, “Andorra”

As your attorney, I advise you to rent a fuel-efficient automobile and drive at top speed to Andorra, but before you start packing the trunk with ether, Wild Turkey, and limes—stop. And think. Absinthe in Andorra is as abundant as the mountains, and at 3 Euro a liter for a bottle of the Green Fairy, you have more room for the Acapulco shirts and handguns. Now for the gory details. You have to go through France or Spain to get there. No public airports in Andorra, just curving stretches of finely-manicured highway being skillfully navigated upon by peace-loving Andorrans. Here I take the risk of coming off as some pretentious jackass, and I invite you to do the same. Because somewhere, in gritty Williamsburg, Austin, and Portland bars fair-skinned hands will tremble around their cans of PBR and filterless Luckies with borderline-uncontrollable desire as you utter one of the most powerful combination of words in modern English, “When I was in Andorra…”

Undoubtedly there will be those who, while able to identify the finer points of bicycle restoration, are unable to locate Andorra on a map or think it would be a great name for a band nobody’s heard of yet. Therefore you must arm yourself to the teeth with information. Skip the CIA Factbook because I’m supremely confident that they got their information from Pete Seeger’s 1960s love ballad about Andorra. However, recent developments must be taken into account in order to rightly appreciate the evolution of Andorran sagacity. Since the 1960s, it would appear that Andorra’s approximately $5 defense budget has been decreased. By approximately $5. It now delegates responsibility for the protection of its people, cakes, and pies to Spain and France. Though, the French, it would seem, are envious enough of their Catalonian neighbors and the unrivaled quality of their queso-induced siestas, that they keep a jab at Andorra holstered and at the ready for whenever mention of this tiny Pyrenean utopia is mentioned. “What does one do in Andorra?” the joke-teller will inquire. When met with a shrug of the shoulder or the oral imitation of the sounds of quick, satisfying flatulence (the preferred method by which many French exclaim their befuddlement), the joke-teller will go for the throat: “On dort!” In English, the punch-line translates to “One sleeps,” but in French it is a clever play on words, as it is pronounced exactly as locals pronounce the name of their nation in Catalan (Andorre). Yes, one sleeps, but only after one has had their fill of outdoor activity, paella, and strong drink.

Make for the campsite of your choice. In a country 176 square miles, it’s hard to get too far out of an Andorran city, but what it lacks in seclusion, it makes up for with its ability to provide a perfect cocktail of European caravanners. Anywhere is close to the capital city of Andorra la Vella and its tax-free shopping, and if not traveling solo, “bungalows” offer cheap accommodation, with separate bedrooms, shower, and a kitchen/absinthe-drinking arena perfect for discussing the social commentary of Celentano’s “Yuppi Du” (Youtube it). Though as the propietari of the Camping Pla confessed to me, the shower is not quite big enough to fit all your friends in at once. It can be hard to find a “cheap” plate of local grub, but you get what you pay for, and a plate of local paella and a bottle of house wine split with a camarada will leave one immensely satisfied. For keeping to a budget hit up the Andorra 2000, the bastard step-child of Walmart and a medieval public market, for its cheap and affordable selection of any type of alcohol under the sun, the legs of any standard livestock you might desire, and a tremendous array of cheeses. Nutella comes in buckets.
Initially drawn to Andorra as part of the search for either a setting for a setting for workplace team-building exercises or mass destruction, the US State Department, in 2003, estimated the average daily cost of a stay in Andorra to be $226. This raises significant questions. How could four exuberant young go-getters in a brand-spanking-new Ford Fiesta make the 1,500 km, round-trip journey from Lyon, France to the illustrious Camping Pla in Canillo, Andorra, spend two nights in a bungalow, and return with a trunk full of Absinthe, Andorra-stenciled lighters, pens, fridge magnets, and the country’s Euro-style, ovular, white “AND” stickers (which identify the owner of the property upon which said sticker is affixed, as a pacifist pastry eater who will survive both nuclear holocaust and the subsequent zombie apocalypse thanks solely to Andorra’s “under the radar” status) all for the low, low price of approximately 120 €, for transportation, food, lodging, and party favors? What kicks were State Department henchmen getting in Andorra? Maybe they should be writing this article.

All in all, Andorra offers an affordable feast for the soul and all senses. It takes a special kind of person to reach this Shangri-la of the Pyrenees, an even more special person to throw the proverbial boulder in the figurative pond of its quiet mountain towns, and a rare breed of animal to successfully arouse the (wander) lust of those susceptible to stories of raucous adventures in countries they weren’t quite sure existed.

To do it right, go in June, just before the tourist season picks up. By beating the rush, you guarantee yourself a wide berth to roam about Andorra spontaneously and irrationally, and you are more likely to succeed in finding lodging only a short stumble away from local bars and restaurants. July and August bring in the summer hordes before the short fall and the ski season. Accommodations and other information are easily found on Andorra’s tourism website. Andorra is perfect for a weekend experience, but its mountain walls start to close in and the rental car will get restless for any time longer than that. And for God’s sake, don’t go during ski season.

Beau Miller holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from Syracuse University and is America’s greatest long-distance driver, having recently learned to drive manual, at 29 years young, on the way to Andorra. This is his third article for GoMad Nomad. His previous dispatches have been from Nepal and Oman.

Entering Andorra le Vella, Andorra's capital.

The view from an alleyway in the bustling metropolis of Canillo, Andorra

Stopping to enjoy the great Andorran past-time- hitting snowballs with a stick

Bungalows often include wifi, kitchen, and showers

Andorra's reduction in defense spending has allowed it to increase its budget for the arts

All the comforts of home...

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

By Avery Sumner

My mother crossed the border of the United States for the first time in her life two years ago. It was to visit me during one of my off-season excursions. When I owned the cafe on Chokoloskee Island in Florida, I often traveled in the summer months when my business was closed.

I recall my usually insightful mother saying how she looked out the airplane window for her first glimpse of foreign soil and mused, they have the same dirt. As if dirt would be an entirely different substance over here. I laughed when she marveled at how the baby of foreign speaking people played the same peek-a-boo game as American babies. Not realizing the whole purpose of the game is to play with a child not yet old enough to speak any language.

I laughed at her not because of the foolish thoughts, I mean I’d had those too. My first trip to England led me to Brighton Beach, which wasn’t a sandy beach at all, but a coast with lots and lots of rocks almost like you’d find in a playground. I thought, why, and better yet, how did they put these here? My brain process makes perfect sense to a person who’s only seen natural sandy beaches and man-made rocky playgrounds.

But to the rest of the knowing world, the idea that people would haul enough rocks to cover an entire shoreline is evidently absurd. So I understood my mother’s mindset. It was just funny to see her where I had been years before on my first trip across the ocean.

I’m living in France now, for the next year or two. Since moving here, I’ve found many occasions to throw myself the same condescending smile I gave my mother. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve traveled, when in a new world, you think and regretfully say the craziest things.

I’ve recently been wondering why this is so and I think I can give two pretty good explanations. The first is that, for me at least, traveling represents adventure. I expect everything to be dazzlingly different. So I’m always surprised when the ordinariness of life meets me in my exotic travels. You mean dogs bark here too? Truly, some of the most surprising finds are not the differences, but the similarities, because you’re not expecting things to be the same.

The other instigator of complete foreigner stupidity is the consistent discovery that basic facts are not at all facts. Like the fact that hammers have two sides, the hitting side and the forked extracting side. This is not something I remember learning; it’s just something that Is. Do I know how to put a nail in the wall to hang a picture? Yes. Do I know how to do this in France? No. Here, hammers are missing the forked side, like mini sledge hammers, like pencils without erasers. How do you get the nail out if you make a mistake? I can’t say.

Something as second nature as flushing the toilet now consumes quite a lot of my mental energy, so much so that I get nervous if I have to use a bathroom I don’t know. No two toilets are the same in France. Some have a chain to pull, some have a button to press, some have two buttons to press, some have a foot pedal, some have a button to pull and some flush themselves only after you’ve exited the automatic door. I’m certain there are other varieties I have yet to encounter.

Basic facts about drinking have since been disproved as well. To have a beer does not mean to hold and sip as often as you like. I noticed this when Alain and I were at a small working-class bar where all the tables had been moved outside for the summer solstice festivities. Grilled sausages could be had and beer and cocktails circulated. It was summer, it was outside, we were grilling. Yet every single person sat in a chair with a drink on the table, not even a hand around the glass.

I thought, if I was at Leebo’s in Everglades City there’d be people wandering about all with drinks in hand, some even double fisted. Suddenly the beer glass I had been clinging to became extremely apparent to me and I felt the need to put it on the table. But that felt even stranger so I picked it up again. My lawlessness lasted a mere seconds before I decided to conform and set the glass back down on the table.

Then the singer broke out with an REM song, albeit with a hint of Frenchness. “Zat’s me in zee corner, zat’s me in zee spaut light loosing my reeleezgion.” It was like my own personal soundtrack, wondering how much of myself I stood to lose by relearning all the facts of life.

So this is my new foundation; a world turned backwards and inside out. Even as I type I see the “A” coming out as a “Q” because French keyboards have some letters in different places. When the simplest things that you understood as common sense fail to work for you, something bizarre (to use a French word) happens to your frame of reference and you begin to question the very laws of nature, like the make-up of dirt I suppose. I’m not sure I even know how to walk down the street anymore. In French, to convey that I miss home I have to say, home misses me very much.

Then just when you begin to expect all things to be alien–all of life–the strangest thing happens. You realize some things are the same. And then you say it out loud because it’s just such a profound discovery. Like the other day when I was at our little grocery shop I noticed the woman in front of me had a scrap piece of paper with the things she needed scribbled down. I caught myself, but truly, I almost remarked out loud how strange it was that she used, gasp, a grocery list, just like us. I don’t know, I guess because the shop was so small or something, or because people tend to shop everyday or I don’t know, they just do it differently. So the list seemed extravagantly the same.

In a way, my expectations for everything to be magically different, for the adventurer in me, translates as hoping for things to be better. I guess I was hoping to suddenly be a morning person. But no, motivation is just as hard to come by here in France. Loneliness and purposelessness float around here too. I walk the same, lay down and wake the same. Gravity pulls just as heavy and all the same things I struggle with at home are here. And you know, they have the same dirt.

Avery Sumner lived on Chokoloskee Island for seven years where she owned the store begun by C.G. McKinney in 1890. She lived in France for two years after that and currently resides in northern Georgia with her French husband Alain.

By Jett Thomason

Ramadan is entering its final week and the holy day of Eid is beginning. The people here in Kandahar are much more observant of the traditions of Islam than anywhere else I’ve been. The fast is a true one, no drinking of water, eating of food, or smoking is allowed during the daylight hours. People go to work, but everything tends to trickle off into just a drizzle of activity by late afternoon. However, like any generalization the individual experience is much more different.

I’ve been working on the base like mad lately. Our company is constructing concrete pads for prefabricated buildings. As I have quickly learned, even a “small” foundation requires a tremendous amount of gravel, sand, and concrete. All of this must enter through the base checkpoint that varies in attention to procedure and intensity according to who are the guards on duty. However, as an American, my citizenship is the one thing that gets goods inside with the least amount of difficulty.

Our gravel supplier is a little square man named Kabir. During the Soviet occupation, he lived in Moscow for more than three years as a university student. “Three and a half” as he always corrects me. The fact that he lived in a modern city and saw something more than the backwardness of Afghanistan he holds very dear.

After a few days of working together, I questioned the cubic measurements he gave me for a particular load of gravel. He stood up straight and looked me square in the eye.

“I am an educated man! I lived in Moscow for three and a half years! Educated men do not try to lie or cheat. But now in Afghanistan, these illiterate and uneducated men are in charge. You cannot trust them.” As he talks about the warlords, the busy mustache bounces emphatically and his nostrils flare.

“These generals! What have they ever done besides hold a gun? They have so much money and no knowledge! Not like in America!”

I add no comments. But I’ve since learned to measure each truckload and have Kabir read off the number (with my assistant looking over his shoulder).

We joke in bad Russian. He’s apologetic for being out of practice and uses his quaint Russian with a little hesitation. I laugh and chat along with my terrible grammar and construction-worker profanities slipping out.

“Next time you have a little drink, you will invite me along, won’t you?” he asks with a little rise to his eyes.

“Of course,” I assure him, “We’ll sit down, share a bottle or two.” As all Russians euphemize a good vodka session, I tell him, “We’ll have fifty grams together.” Any ex-Soviet worth their medals knows that 50 grams of a shot quickly becomes 500 grams of a bottle.

“I remember my student days,” Kabir smiles. “I sat with friends, a little vodka, a little music in the park,” he leans in with a wink, “And let’s not forget the Russian girls!”

The procedure for getting the gravel delivered into the base seems straightforward. The gravel delivery is scheduled and announced to the base operations. Upon arrival, the gravel is escorted inside the base and taken to a secure searching location. The drivers are searched and sent to the side, and the K9 units are called out to sniff the cars for explosive residue. When the cars are clean, soldiers search the vehicles and then escort them into and out of the base. As with any long procedure in Central Asia, this never works out perfectly.

The biggest impediment to the entry of vehicles is the two warlords of the area. One is President Karzai’s brother. Major General Gulali lives in a house that I’m sure he considers imposing, but has been nicknamed Kentucky Fried Chicken by the soldiers on base. I don’t get called to meetings at the General’s residence, but drive by each day and smile at the appropriateness of the unofficial name.

For all the help the warlords were in getting rid of the Taliban, they have an elaborate system of revolving monopolies for all business on base. The US military purchases materials, rents cars, and hires workers through the two “generals”. Every week Major General Gulali and Major General Sherzai sit down and decide who gets the gravel contracts that week, which workers get the fence construction work, and who gets to rent the bulldozers. My initial market research quickly discovered that the Army pays about 75% on top of everything.

In order to keep our costs low, we’ve arranged side deals with the suppliers, brought in goods directly from the city, or run around the “official” contacts provided by the U.S. military contracting office. It’s good for us, but for Kabir, he has to sneak into the search zone, meet us a kilometer outside of the base, and be driven in personally by the American—me—to avoid problems from the militia that watches the main gate to the base.

The Mafia-ness of these rackets may be justified on a national political arena. There is something to be said for keeping the country peaceful through flowing dollars. But it does nothing at all for the little guys in the marketplace. After a while, sneaking around the militia guards and other local agents has come to seem like standard operating procedure.

Kabir—with his formative years spent out of the country—has greatly enjoyed our daily business interactions also for the chance to have a drink of water during Ramadan. He has been eager to come in for a single truck in spite of the expense of time. Once the bomb-sniffing German shepherds have failed to find anything but sand and rock on the trucks, Kabir jumps into my cab.

“Where is the water Mr. Jett? You know I am very thirsty!” He smiles and looks around the floor. I hand him a bottle of water.

Kabir cracks it with fervor. Then, like a passenger sneaking a slog of whisky in a moving car, he leans down to slurp up gulps before any locals spy him. The militia guards are small potatoes compared to the Ramandan peer pressure in Kandahar. Kabir legitimately fears physical injury if he’s caught breaking the fast during this month. I wish I could lend him my foreigner status for these weeks. He was never the kind of person meant to abstain.

Once he’s had a swig or two of water, a rising tone builds up in his accented Russian.

“Mr. Jett, you know I need one more thing!”

“Yes, Kabir?” I feign puzzlement as I feel the single cigarette in my pocket.

“Did you bring a cigarette?” he looks at me with pinched eyes and a tight mustache.

“Kabir,” I say, “you know I don’t smoke. It’s bad for your health.”

Agitated, “But you know I do! I ask you to bring me a little cigarette!”

I fumble around, watching as his eyes bounce from pocket to pocket as I pretend to search.

“Oh, I don’t know if I brought one….”

His face crumbles.

“Here we go!” I shout and hand him the forbidden tobacco.

“Ah! Thank you Mr. Jett!” He lights it and holds the burning Korean cigarette below the dashboard. His smoking reminds me of teenagers smoking behind the high school, severe inhalations and attempts to blow the smoke downward so that it’s too dispersed to see. Just like high school, the illusion fails.

After this routine, he sits back in the shiny blue outfit and maroon vest he always wears. The relief of a tested man shows on his face. Only ten more days to go. I know he’ll be calling me tomorrow morning to see if I need any gravel delivered.

This past Sunday I went in to the city ostensibly to purchase steel reinforcing rods for our project. Handing over $17,000 in cash seemed to be worth doing myself, but the real motivation was to get out of the insular airbase environment for a while.

Our company has three employees who handle procurements from the city. Abbos is an Uzbek I’ve worked with before and trust with any sum of cash. We also have a Pashtun buyer, Amin, from the north and Muchtabo, a taxi driver hired for the two months of this project. Muchtabo told me his friends call him ‘Fido’. We had a quick discussion of American culture and pets before I reverted back to calling him by his full name, Muchtabo.

We drove into the city of Kandahar in the early afternoon. The desert steppe was just starting to catch the sun’s shadows. The highway from the airport into town gives a great perspective down into the basin of Kandahar. Stark and jagged hills surround the area. It rains, or drizzles, about a dozen times a year here and greenery is sparse. Driving through the western part of town, the ex-Taliban president Mullah Omar’s house can be seen. It’s a low white compound lying across a shallow hill, not the impressive citadel I was expecting to see.

Rickshaws dive in and around the traffic. All of the trucks are painted with luscious landscape scenes and veiled women with beautiful eyes. Chains hung from the bumpers with dangling triangles of sheet metal chime in the stop and go of Afghan streets. Men and boys dodge trucks and a few women in full blue veils cling to the storefronts. A busy intersection in Afghanistan is a cacophony of horns, screaming and frustrated traffic policemen, and the background jingle of the cargo trucks.

We got to the steel rod salesman’s office right on time. I wore my Afghan clothes, took off the sunglasses, and was passing myself as the Uzbek businessman in town for a little business. We tucked into the office with glass windows to the street. In the taxi outside, our driver laid back dozing between his bursts of text-messaging on his cell phone. $25,000 in cash lay in my bag next to him.

The Persian flowed past me and I attempted to catch what glimmers I could. Aside from the basic numbers and a noun or two, I was lost. Looking around the office, I could see what is a striking and yet common sight. Multiple posters of multiple candidates for the recent presidential election were pasted on the walls. It seems the novelty of the election and the quality of the prints outweighed the convention of only supporting one single person. To truly express a political allegiance, people tape the portrait of the preferred candidate on the inside of their car’s windshield.

The owner of the business had no right arm. As I looked at the walls to keep myself from being too bored from the heavy business negotiations on the phone in Pashtun, I saw a very gruesome picture montage that clearly related to the Taliban.

A young woman held a pair of bound, severed hands. A man had a raised cane up clearly about to strike the veiled woman in front of him. A bloody corpse lay face-down in the sand. A child looked on with grief as a crowd stoned two people in a square. I turned back in my seat feeling a little colder. I looked at the company owner counting money with his left hand and suddenly had a lot of questions I would never ask him.

We left the shop after only two hours, relatively short by Central Asian standards for business meetings. I was prepared to go home, but Muchtabo our driver told me, through my Uzbek interpreter, that he was inviting us to be guests at his home to break the Ramadan fast. Going to a near-stranger’s home for a meal that could make me sick in the ex-capital of the Taliban –I agreed in a heartbeat.

We drove through the town pulling away from the main streets and getting into a clearly more residential area. Abbos was talking at me the whole time, but I couldn’t pull myself away from the window. Children ran around in the swirling dirt. Too young to fast, they didn’t recognize the steady uptick of activity as people began to pull away from the sluggishness of late afternoon. Riders on bicycles, bread hawkers, and taxis all swarmed down the tiny streets brushing against the mud walls of the houses. Every single person had the first cup of water and a hot dish of the day firmly fixed in mind.

We pulled up to an alley that fell away thirty degrees towards an open ditch. I thanked the low sling of the Toyota station wagon for hanging onto the road. Muchtabo raced ahead of us into the house. Abbos looked at me, “He is going to tell the women to get in the back.”

Abbos continued, “Pashtun people are like Uzbeks, very hospitable. They say ‘A guest is a gift from God.’”

Muchtabo bounced out the door and led us inside the house. Two pieces of fabric hung across the open door – a veil for the entryway. We caught a glimpse of the mud brick courtyard and were ushered into the guest room. As is the custom, the doorframes were lower than a person’s height. This is done to ensure that no one accidentally forgets to pay respect to an elder inside the room. To enter, everyone bows their heads as they come in.

We walked into the thin tall room and sat on the cushions on the floor. Only the stray hair bow and cosmetics in the corner betrayed a female presence in the house. We sat down, relaxed, and prepared to break the fast. Muchtabo went out to relay a stream of orders and to play with his two children a bit. He came back in with an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes. As he lit up I laughed.

“You have a cigarette before a glass of water?” I asked.

Sheepishly Muchtabo nodded yes. He reached out to offer me one.

I passed on the proffered cigarettes and took a glass of water. Muchtabo nodded at me and said something to Abbos.

“Mountain water,” said Abbos. “It’s from the hills here, straight from the spring.” It was cool and perfect.

Then the rice came. Large steaming piles of Basmati rice with a little sauce on top. This was accompanied by a dish that smelled wonderful and looked like Collard greens. That seemed to be the extent of the feast. As everyone began to pull food forward, I figured that this was a simple household and I should be happy that they invited me in.

I started to eat, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the stream of food. Spicy cucumber dip, grilled and spiced chicken, steaming meatballs with chickpea sauce, a plate of sliced vegetables, soft and hard roundels of bread, and a tray of sodas were placed all around the eating cloth on the floor. I was a bit stunned, but began to do my part.

The food was excellent. I hadn’t fasted, but I was hungry and this was delicious. After a month of eating frozen food shipped into the military base, the delicate flavor of fresh vegetables was incredible.

There was no dinner conversation; breaking the fast is not something to be done over witty comments or interesting discussion. It’s serious and we ate. I sat back, stuffed with more than half of my meal still in front of me. The crispness of the chicken, the spice of the pilaf, the tang of the sauces were all exceptional. It was one of the best meals I’d ever had, more so for being in this simple mud house.

We lay on our sides; I tried to express how good the food was with my three applicable Persian adjectives. The host, Muchtabo, was very forgiving of my accent. Then he stood up, which I thought was the cue to leave. I started to straighten my long Afghan shirt when a tea tray was shoved past the curtain. We all got a cup and curled pastries coated in honey were set in front of us. Freshly made that day, the hollow pastry broke and honey spilled out onto the tongue.

We would leave soon, but for now we drank our tea. The fast had been broken and all were grateful.

After teaching English in Uzbekistan from 2002- 2004, Jett Thomason set off to visit the rest of the republics of the former Soviet Union. Since then, he’s worked in Afghanistan and Iraq and traveled extensively throughout Asia and Europe.

By Stephen Bugno

They told me the gunfire only rings out at night. But this morning, after sunrise, I woke up to loud clashes across town in the Al Ein refugee camp and the upheaval continued until 11am. Then we checked the internet for the story: Ma’an News reported that one Israeli soldier and an 18-year-old Palestinian youth were killed.  The Israelis blocked the entrances to the camp, so the Palestinian died before an ambulance could get inside.

Children in Nablus

The day before, on the bus ride from Ramallah, I was befriended by the man in the seat behind me. He pointed out all the Israeli settlements along the way.

“That’s my land,” he shouts. Mahmood is fuming, but somehow contains his anger.

The settlements are secure, self-contained towns, built of similar looking houses, usually located on the crest of the hills. Unlike Palestinian villages, settlements have priority access over water and electricity. The settlers also have their own newly-paved highways.

For an hour and a half we crawl over the decaying old roads in our aged, beat-up bus. We navigate around terraced, olive tree covered hills, passing Palestinian villages as well. They are older, employ more natural looking building materials and blend in with the rocky dry landscape of the Holy Land.

We get held up at each checkpoint. A single file line of cars, share taxis, and buses wait. These checkpoints and settlements are what infuriate the Palestinians most. But no one gets upset today, even as we sit sweating, the hot afternoon sun beating on us through the windows.

Finally we arrive at Hawara checkpoint, the last one before Nablus. One by one we walk through metal gates and show our passports, guns pointed directly at us. We are shuffled like cattle in a slaughterhouse. This is a twice daily routine here and can add up to two or three hours to an already long commute to work.

A Palestinian village in the West Bank

Nablus is located in the northern part of the West Bank and is contained inside of a zone called Area A. Here Palestinians have the privilege of administering and policing themselves. But because the checkpoints restrict access, it is basically an open-air prison.

Once in Nablus, I meet Hakim in a share taxi. A circus clown by trade, he had been performing in Jerusalem for the past few years. He tells me he’s now blacklisted and no longer allowed to leave Area A. His distant cousin has just been identified as a rebel by Israeli intelligence.

Nablus is a center of Palestinian resistance in the Occupied Territories and given the frequency of incursions by the Israeli Defense Force it is regarded by some as a dangerous place to live. But in reality it is most dangerous for insurgents or militia men or those unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire in the refugee camps. A nighttime curfew helps to minimize casualties.

The nights in Nablus are quiet at first: a clear contrast from the typical bustle of Arab cities I witnessed in Egypt and Syria. No one here is out past midnight. I peer out from the third story window of our house. Nablus is built in a valley and stretches up onto both hills. From here I have a good vantage point to witness the stillness of night and the glow of the city under yellow street lamps.

Some nights there are incursions. When the gunfire starts, the dogs start barking, and the cocks start crowing.

Tonight I wake and rise from bed to watch the fireworks across the city: flashes startle my not-yet-adjusted eyes and tank blasts thunder my consciousness. After 15 minutes I can’t watch anymore and return to bed and lie awake.

My roommate, already here one week, has slept through the whole thing.

Stephen Bugno made his way from Istanbul to Cairo during a six-month overland trip in 2007, stopping for a month to volunteer in the West Bank. Since surviving these nights in Nablus, he has been living the life of a nomad: teaching abroad, traveling, and writing. His articles and essays have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad.