On the Road with Luc and Janet

Guest blogger Tim, #3. Janet and Luc don't visit a city, they attack it. Find a clean, safe and cheap hostel/hotel in the center of the action; put your bags down and start exploring. Landing in Tana, Madagascar; every guidebook said "Do not go out after dark"; "Get out to the country, Don't spend time in the city"...so here we are on our 1st night, out after dark, exploring the city. This ain't your neighborhood cruise ship.

So, how'd we get here? 4 days ago we bid farewell to Zobue, hopped a chappa ( mini-van designed to seat 12, seating 26 ), rode shotgun in an 18 wheeler we picked up at the fried chicken crossroads ( at least 20 open air road side fried chicken and chips stands by side of road ), taxi ride from upscale Malawi couple that met each other on Facebook, playing pool with locals, another chappa, hanging with other PCV's at the Mufasa hostel in Lilongue, plane ride to Jo'Burg, mini-Africana tour to and from hostel-airport, and voila! Here's Janet speaking French in Tana.

Centuries ago, people would go on Pilgrimages, where the people met along the way, their shared stories, were as important an aspect of the trip as the end point destination; so it has become with our trip; we make our plans, arrange the logistics etc., but the real joy is in the journey; the Brittany's, Willie's, Veronica's, JC's and Desi's and their adventuresome spirits and stories that carry us along our way as much as the planes and autos. There are intangibles like sharing living space with Janet and Luc, when you sleep in the same room, share bathrooms and finding those gentle compromises of not saying or saying something about an annoyance; it just seems more precious now that I'm older.

Then there are those unscripted moments that take your breath away, I call them "Creases in Time" that happen between our past experiences and our plans for the future; that moment where our agenda surrenders to intuition. I'd like to highlight a few of these creases/moments for myself from our last couple of weeks on the road.

1.Full body Lemur yell from deep in the rain forest and our guide Desi's deep abiding love and respect for them. There is something so different when you have to earn the right to see an animal in the wild, versus, the zoo experience I was accustomed to. When those Lemurs let loose their familial yell and claiming of turf they've done for thousands of years, words fail, but my body is still stunned and something very deep seems remembered.
2.We woke up early in Pretoria, South Africa; I wanted to just go to Kruger, but Melinda, Janet and Luc saw it as an opportunity to visit downtown during morning rush hour. We ended up at the Parliament buildings ( where Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president ) and toured a little museum there. It was like a 9AM vortex of energy honoring the struggle for human rights, for Blacks, for Women, for all of us...I was swept off my feet.
3."Wait, I hear something crunching, sounds bigger than birds, pull forward a little"..so said Janet from the back seat of our car as we were in the first hour of our first morning tour in Kruger national park. THEN, right next to car is a FULL ON, STARE YOU IN THE FACE, ELEPHANT. That sucker could've turned us over and crushed us with one step. I was paralyzed, didn't know whether to go forward or back, Janet whispered "Don't move", the big guy turned a bit and sauntered past our front bumper. We were in his world, not the other way around. I had to change my shorts after that one.
4.We were leaving Kruger on our way to Swaziland when I hear from the back seat "Oh look, there's a sign to the Samora Machel monument, let's check it out" - so we altered our agenda for the day. 2 hours later we're still not there and Janet is calling it the "Wild goose chase" tour. We finally arrive, it's on the spot where the plane crash occurred 24 years ago, killing 34, including Samora Machel, the hero and leader for Mozambique independence. The actual aircraft is integrated into artwork within the memorial, the struggle for independence so honored and valued, the videos compelling and the mischief of superpowers vying for power and influence disconcerting. A nations grief is palpable; for me, it is reminiscent in feeling tone to the Vietnam memorial in DC. The connection and respect I felt to Mozambique was ten fold after this visit. On an ironic note, it is located in South Africa and very difficult to reach for many of
Mozambique.

There are so many more highlights, but hopefully this is a small taste. I want to thank my wife Melinda for her spirit and determination in making this trip possible along with Janet and Luc for wanting us to come, I'm sure we have been and will continue to be "changed in a good way" from this wondrous adventure.

Lion King

We had been living in Africa for almost ten months and hadn't seen any
of the large mammals so associated with the continent, except for one
surprise hippo sighting in the Zambezi on our first trip to Tete. This
isn't unusual considering most Africans never see any safari-type
animals during their whole lives. Luckily for us we were able to visit
South Africa's Kruger National Park and see everything you would
expect from watching National Geographic channel. The park is the size
of a small country, like Belize, and full of animals - so many
animals! As soon as we entered the park we saw a leopard, which are
usually very hard to spot. The next morning we were a little worried
our lucky omen may have been a fluke since it had been nearly half an
hour and all we'd seen were some impala; maybe we weren't safari-ing
correctly? Then the impala jumped to attention at some ominous
crunching sounds and a mighty bull elephant was right there, ten feet
from our vehicle! He just strolled right across the road in front of
us. From then on it was just like the Lion King with wildebeest,
giraffes, zebra, rhinos, hippos, buffalo, antelope, tons of birds and
all the rest of the Circle of Life crew parading around us. We slept
in luxurious round, thatched huts with running hot water, beds with
fancy bedding and personal kitchens. South Africans love to 'braai',
or barbecue, and we joined the culture with sausages and veggies each
night. At Skukuza camp, overlooking the Sabie River, we could watch
the sunset as elephants came to drink and play in the water. At Satara
Camp, surrounded by lowveld grassland, we took a night drive on one of
the big safari trucks. Elvis, our guide, bent the rules and drove off
the road to take us right into a pride of lions with 11 little
3-week-old simbas. We watched them for 45 minutes as the light
disappeared. One cub came right up to our vehicle to check us out; the
thrill almost made Janet cry. With all the pictures we took, our
holiday slideshow will look a lot more African to everyone back home.

Lemurs, Lemurs, Lemurs

Lemurs are the wildlife stars of Madagascar, an island full of crazy
animals left over from when it broke free from Gondwana, the great
southern super-continent, millions of years ago. They're like monkeys
but more primitive looking and with bigger eyes and they live only on
Madagascar. Unfortunately since 90% of the country has been
deforested, it's difficult to find there critters unless you travel to
one of the isolated patches of remaining forest, which we did. We
stayed in comfortable bamboo huts at the aptly named Fean'ny Ala,
'Voices of the Forest'. It sounded like one of those funky new age
rainforest soundtracks, with all the bugs and birds chirping, frogs
croaking, and lemurs calling. This served as our base camp for several
lemur expeditions. On our night walk Luc surprised our guide by
spotting the rare nocturnal mouse lemur, the smallest and cutest of
the lemur species. We trapped him with our flashlights and called
everyone else in the park to come and see. During the day we ventured
deep into the primary forest where groups rarely go so the lemurs are
still scared of people and hide, so we didn't see many animals. We did
see huge trees covered in vines and epiphytes and swam in a chilly
waterfall. The next day we had much better luck with the animals in
the special reserve where the lemurs have become habituated to people
and go about their daily routines. We also had the best guide in the
park, Desi. He knew all the tricks for finding lemurs including
several grunts and calls. We saw golden diademed sifaka, wooly lemur,
rough tailed lemur and most impressive, a family of indri, the largest
and loudest lemur. Their siren-like chorus served as the grand finale
for our visit. We also had a chance to get up-close and personal with
lemurs at a semi free-range zoo near Tamatave where Janet had a photo
op with a particularly adventurous little lemur. Although lemurs were
definately the focus of our sojourn, we also saw several species of
cameleons, the elusive leaf-tailed gecko, tree frogs, and snakes.

This is the Indri family we saw doing its ear-splitting siren-like daily call. You might not be able to actually see the lemurs, it's more about hearing them.



Here's a good shot of the Indri taken by Janet's mom:

Madagascar - An Island Apart

We didn't know what to expect when flying from South Africa to Madagascar except that the island is a place unlike anywhere else on earth. Our arrival in Antananarivo proved us right - with the hustle and bustle of India, French bread and cheese on the street corners, locals with complexions and facial features reminiscent of Philipinos or Indonesians, the cattle culture of African Bantu peoples, and rice patties galore a la SE Asia, we couldn't easily categorize this unique place. Like other under-developed countries, Madagascar suffers from crowded, slow, uncomfortable public transportation (bush taxis), a general lack of travel info, and crumbling colonial era infrastructure, all conspiring to make getting around this large island very difficult and convinced us to hire a car and driver to help us take full advantage of our brief 8 day visit. The sinuous roads and crazy city traffic, as well as JC's (our driver) jovial personality, made us glad we hadn't braved the transportation on our own. In Tana, as the capital is known, we had panoramic views of the hilly city from our small hotel. Led by Madame Janet's French, we explored the twisted streets, staircases, markets, and shabby semi-abandoned royal palaces, while enjoying cool mountain temps, eating fried bananas, French pastries, and min sao (the local version of chop suey), and trying our best to kindly decline persistant requests for us to buy vanilla beans and butterfly collections. We also stayed in Tamatave, Mad's second city and largest port. We were fortunate to be there on a Sunday when everyone descends to the oceanside to walk near the water, ride ponies or the ferris wheel, or just enjoy the mellow carnival atmosphere while eating ramen noodles and drinking Three Horses Beer sitting on very low stools at one of the many tiny tables set up on the sand. The real highlight of our trip was our visit to Andasibe Special Lemur Reserve and Mantadia, the largest piece of tropical forest still intact on the island, but this deserves it's own blog post.

Madagascar - An Island Apart

We didn't know what to expect when flying from South Africa to Madagascar except that the island is a place unlike anywhere else on earth. Our arrival in Antananarivo proved us right - with the hustle and bustle of India, French bread and cheese on the street corners, locals with complexions and facial features reminiscent of Philipinos or Indonesians, the cattle culture of African Bantu peoples, and rice patties galore a la SE Asia, we couldn't easily categorize this unique place. Like other under-developed countries, Madagascar suffers from crowded, slow, uncomfortable public transportation (bush taxis), a general lack of travel info, and crumbling colonial era infrastructure, all conspiring to make getting around this large island very difficult and convinced us to hire a car and driver to help us take full advantage of our brief 8 day visit. The sinuous roads and crazy city traffic, as well as JC's (our driver) jovial personality, made us glad we
hadn't braved the transportation on our own. In Tana, as the capital is known, we had panoramic views of the hilly city from our small hotel. Led by Madame Janet's French, we explored the twisted streets, staircases, markets, and shabby semi-abandoned royal palaces, while enjoying cool mountain temps, eating fried bananas, French pastries, and min sao (the local version of chop suey), and trying our best to kindly decline persistant requests for us to buy vanilla beans and butterfly collections. We also stayed in Tamatave, Mad's second city and largest port. We were fortunate to be there on a Sunday when everyone descends to the oceanside to walk near the water, ride ponies or the ferris wheel, or just enjoy the mellow carnival atmosphere while eating ramen noodles and drinking Three Horses Beer sitting on very low stools at one of the many tiny tables set up on the sand. The real highlight of our trip was our visit to Andasibe Special Lemur Reserve and
Mantadia, the largest piece of tropical forest still intact on the island, but this deserves it's own blog post.

South Africa - Reverse Culture Shock

After nearly a year in Africa we've become accustomed to the advantages/disadvantages and many of the eccentricities of living in this part of the world, many of which we've written about. Traveling to South Africa with Janet's parents was like leaving the continent; arriving in Johannesburg's Oliver Tambo International, still decked out in World Cup regalia, felt like being teleported into modernity, where everything is big, bright, clean, and functional, a place where you can drink tap water and flush toilet paper. Stuck in bumper to bumper evening rush hour traffic on an 8 lane highway under a thick blanket of smog on our way to our hostel in gritty downtown Jo'berg, everything kept reminding us of our previous life in LA. The World Cup vibe is still everywhere: Bofana Bofana billboards, leftover vuvuzelas and FIFA merchandise on sale, the omnipresent flags of SA and the other participant nations, all the shiny new and renovated stadia in every city,
and the pride on everyone's faces for successfully having pulled off such an event. But under all the euphoria and talk about the Rainbow Nation and how everyone is one big family now in the post-racial South Africa lie persistant tensions and inequalities between rich and poor, white and black, and the posh suburbs and the underdeveloped townships. Still, SA is truly a world apart from neighboring Mozambique, and nowhere was this more evident then in the supermarkets, which are just like in America, overflowing with products, and lights, and aisle after refrigerated aisle of meats. Not only the quantity, but the tenderness of the beef in SA, is unlike anything we've experienced since our arrival in Africa. We worry about how we'll readjust to life in our small Mozambican town after our exposure to South Africa.

Catching Up

We've been back in site for a few days now and have finally caught up
on sleep (thanks in part to a couple mid-day siestas in Janet's case)
after our three weeks of non-stop adventure. The whole community was
very excited to have us back, and although it was great to see so many
happy faces, we eventually had to close the door to be able to get
some rest! Apparently a rumor had been circulating that we had
returned to America with Janet's parents and people wanted to verify
that we had actually returned. Its nice to feel appreciated. Some of
our family and friends expressed concern, via email, over our three
week blogging hiatus. No worries, it wasn't due to any African
calamity, just the general difficulty in accessing the internet away
from our cell network. We have plenty of posts in our notebook and
we'll get them online pronto. So even though we had to jump straight
into the classroom on our first day back, its comforting being where
everyone knows our name and people aren't constantly trying to get us
to buy souvenirs.

Back in Site

After four days of early morning travel and about 500 kms a day, we are back at home from the capital! Our sunflowers are all blooming and we found everything in our little house as we left it when we entrusted it to Romão three weeks ago to housesit when we set out on vacation with Janet's parents. We spent our school two week spring break traveling through exciting destinations in the Southern Africa region, including a few days in Malawi, a week in Madagascar, a three day safari in Kruger National Park, South Africa, a two day tour of Swaziland (luckily its a small country), and finally lunch with our host family at our original training site in Namaacha. There we parted ways with Tim and Melinda after five weeks together as they returned to Jo'berg for their flight back to America, and we headed to Maputo, were Luc had a three day training session with Peace Corps. Usually we would fly when on official business, but since this only applied to one of
us, we decided to travel back home together overland. Despite the discomforts and challenges associated with ground travel in such a large country, it was a nice opportunity to visit people and places we normally fly over. We returned very briefly to Janet's original site-visit location from training, the palm tree lagoon side town of Quissico, then after a painfully slow ride on an 18 wheeler big-rig, a too short stay at the beach town resort of Vilanculos, where we slept in the swanky teacher housing provided for two of our colleagues at a fancy new World Bank school (with not only running water, but running hot water!), a night in Chimoio where we had our favorite pizza in the country, and finally a 4am bus to Tete and a very uncomfortable two hour chapa up into the cool mountains on the border of Malawi where we live. We had permission to miss the first week of school, and the other teachers said with cold weather and rain not too many students
showed up, so we did well to extend our trip. So now back to class and village life. It is nice to be home!