Phil's Phworld

ENTEBBE – The Long Way Home

2009-11-22T17:10:00.005-08:00

Uganda may be officially at peace, but it’s a country prone to explosion. Like all of East Africa, it treads a fine line between nationalism and tribalism. My final days in Uganda were marked by the latest in a long line of flashpoints in the country’s long, tortured history. The day after our return to Kibaale from Kisoro, it became clear that there was a situation brewing in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. The king of Uganda’s largest tribal people, the Buganda, was meant to be speaking at a youth rally close to the capital but the national government had made moves to stop him. This angered the king’s supporters, who protested and, soon, that protest became a riot. (The BBC covered the rioting and you can read more of the background at this page on their website.)

Most of the pics for this, final, entry come from Entebbe because, well, folks were distracted with other things elsewhere in the country. So, we start with pretty lilys...

The rumours were soon followed up by alarming e-mails from the Canadian embassy warning expats to stay out of the capital and to consider evacuating the country. A standard response for most western countries when local trouble kicks off; and a slightly unhelpful one since most road routes to the international airport at Entebbe pass through Kampala. However, what became clear over the course of the day as we scanned the Internet news headlines was that the violence was spreading south from Kampala and throughout the Buganda region. In other words: right towards us. When gunfire was heard in Masaka, a number of the Pacific Academy’s volunteers decided to leave town and head to Kibaale. But with the army beginning to shut down major routes to contain the riots, they were forced to take a long, circuitous route along back roads. Friday evening was uneasy as it appeared that protests were beginning in Kibaale as well… The Canadians gathered to play board games (as fine a distraction as can be conceived) and see what would happen on Saturday, when the controversial visit was scheduled to happen.

Thankfully, by Saturday morning, the king had decided to call off his visit and the announcement quickly ended the rioting. Kibaale and Masaka returned to normal but reports from Kampala suggested that the army’s presence in the city and manning roadblocks wasn’t going to end soon. This was destined to be a problem for me since I was due to be flying out of Entebbe on Sunday evening. So, after receiving advice from locals and from Kampala, we decided to make the trip a day early and try and find a different route to Entebbe. We travelled in two cars, each of which had an armed guard in the front seat. (Another first for me: a road trip in which someone really was ‘riding shotgun’) First stop was in Masaka where we left the rest of the Pacific Outreach team. The city appeared to have gotten straight back to normal; with only the occasional ominous black smudge on the road to mark where a tyre fire had been burning the day before.

... the impressive sounding Dragon Spider. Another of those charming species where the females kill and eat the males; and other such delightful things like that!

The main route to Masaka was also quiet and, although there were soldiers posted along it, none of them seemed to be blocking travel. Before Masaka we turned to the south east and towards Lake Victoria. Jeff had been told about a possible means of evacuation for those needing to avoid Kampala in a fishing village by the water’s edge. A series of motorized fishing boats on the beach seemed to be running an impromptu taxi service which, for only a few dollars, would take me across the mouth of the lake to Entebbe. A ten minute journey which would bypass an hour’s congested traffic, and possible roadblocks, in Kampala. And, after briefly stopping to help rescue a family whose boat’s engine had cut out halfway through the journey, we buzzed through the afternoon rain to reach the other side without mishap. (Jeff, Rachel and our guard headed back to Kibaale that evening without further incident and the past couple of months have been trouble free in Uganda)

Arriving on Entebbe's rainy shores; but still a little piece of calm after excitement elsewhere.

Compared to the tension which had gripped other parts of the country, Entebbe appeared to have remained as an oasis of calm throughout the troubles. Being away from the capital had helped to ensure that all flights in and out of the country had flown as scheduled, and the dock on leafy suburban streets was calm. Without a taxi in the vicinity, I took my large rucksack for a death defying spin on the back of a boda-boda through Entebbe’s streets to my motel.

Curiously out-of-place Californian palm tree in Entebbe Botanical Gardens.

This turn of events does mean that I get an unexpected day to wander around Entebbe; which is a beautiful little town broadly ignored by virtue of the fact that most who come here are either heading to or leaving the airport. I spend a lot of time in the Botanical Gardens, which appear to have been planted by a very diverse group of personalities over the years. There are Californian palm trees, coffee plants and aloe vera spread throughout the large area. Entebbe was formally the capital of Uganda and there are signs all over the gardens of some of that past. Idi Amin used to spend time here thinking over his most important decisions; although given what he came up with you have to wonder if he wasn’t interrupted… Apparently Hollywood also found its way here in the 1930s when Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan films were shot here. Truth be told there isn’t quite enough jungle to film that much; but the dark canopy complete with hanging creepers (strong enough to swing on!) do certainly have the right look.

Hanging out in the jungle part of the Botannical Gardens.

And after a few hours waiting at the airport, I began my epic 24 hour journey home. But compared to some of the journeys I’d just undertaken on the breakneck dulla-dullas of Zanzibar, the bush roads of Kenya and with shotgun toting guard across the waterways of Uganda; it’s probably tamest bit of travelling of the entire journey...

And, of course, no Phworld journey would be complete without the inevitable, and not quite chronological, line-o-map! So here's the East Africa one.

KISORO – The Gorillas of the Impenetrable Forest

2009-11-20T20:55:00.009-08:00

It’s early morning in a misty jungle and Benjamin, our fifty one year old tracker, acts as part ranger and part school teacher as he runs through his briefing. There is no be no flash photography, no food taken beyond a certain point, anybody who is ill and does not disclose the fact to him before we depart will be removed from the group and, once we reach the appointed area, we must follow his every instruction. It’s 7am on the morning of our journey to track gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest; and the four of us are hanging on his every word.

Rachel and I arrived in Kisoro, the nearest town to the Impenetrable Forest, yesterday during a monsoon style rainstorm. We’d been driving for almost eight hours since leaving Jeff and the Kibaale truck in Masaka earlier that day. Our driver’s name is Norbet; and he’s become Rachel’s designated tour guide of choice as she’s been undertaking her various trips around Uganda. Apparently he, like our safari guides in Kenya, finds out his latest assignments at the last moment and so having just done the three day round trip to Uganda’s most south western point, he’s now about to do it all again. Most of the day’s driving was dry and sunny but as we left the plains behind and headed into the mountains, the sky began to darken and we began driving slowly through ever larger areas of mist as we ascended and descended on narrow mountain paths. We are in the Virunga Mountains, which straddle the borders of the south western region of Uganda, northern Rwanda and the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Inhospitable, rugged and under populated; this region has been a flash point for violence in all three of the countries which border it over the years. Which, coupled with the traitorous state of the roads, makes it strange that it’s become one of Uganda’s biggest tourist attraction. The reason for that is the reason we’re here: mountain gorillas.

In 1902, a German expedition to map the borders of German East Africa were the first to encounter gorillas on these mountain sides. It quickly became clear that the gorillas in this part of the world were a separate species to those found elsewhere. As it became clear that the numbers of gorillas in the region were small and in danger of becoming extinct, others came to study them including, most famously, Dian Fossey in 1967. Most of Fosse’s studies were done in Rwanda but, given the fact that gorillas rather understandably pay little attention to human borders, she would often travel to Uganda as she observed and studied the mountain gorillas (she was ejected from the Democratic Republic of Congo; the first instance of the violence and opposition which would follow her throughout her life in the region) and when she was in Uganda she’d often stay at the Travellers Rest Hostel in Kisoro, which is where Rachel and I stayed while in the region.

The Traveller's Rest in Kisoro.

Nowadays the hotel is a well developed operation which primarily houses tourists before and after their gorilla trekking expeditions. Gorilla tourism was publically condemned by Fossey, which makes it interesting that she’d constantly return to the Travellers Rest. Ultimately she probably realized that carefully controlled visits gorillas could both keep tourists away from making their own damaging treks through the delicate eco system and help to raise substantial funds for the conservation of the animals. And if the Travellers Rest is meant to be an introduction to the gorillas’ world, it’s certainly a dramatic one. The thunderous storm which began as we were arriving in town continues all night. And the morning brings an eerie mist throughout the lower lying areas; giving the region a sort of lost world / Transylvania feeling as we head out early to reach the starting point of our trek by sunrise.

The mysterious jungle which is the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

Gorilla tourism certainly isn’t cheap. The cost of a permit to track gorillas is $500 (hence my dalliance with Kampala’s ATMs!) and the lengthy list of terms and conditions makes it clear that no encounter is guaranteed by purchasing it. The permit allows a small number of tourists a day to track gorillas (no more than eight following each gorilla group, and there are perhaps four or five groups being tracked in Uganda each day) with the services of guides. Trekking is simply that; heading into the jungle and following the guides as they track the movements of the gorilla groups. Finding the gorillas can take all day and, as some of the displays at the Travellers Rest attest, in some cases it may not happen, especially if the gorillas have moved over one of the land borders.

All this and more is covered by Benjamin in his early morning briefing. As well as myself and Rachel there are two Australians making the trip with us; Jesse and James. There were, apparently, meant to be four others in our group but they do not reach the check in desk by the allotted time and so we leave without them (and, at $500 a permit, that makes that an expensive day’s sleep in…) As well as Benjamin we have a second guide carrying a gun. This isn’t, we discover, for the gorillas but for the possibility of other wildlife which might cross our path in an unwelcome way, including elephants! Benjamin tells us that this group of gorillas, the Nshong group, are always found at some point during a day’s tracking but that initial trek can last anywhere between ninety minutes and four hours. There’s no way of knowing that before we set out, although there are already three trackers in the jungle looking for the gorillas’ trail who we will be in contact with via radio.

Descending the first ridge on the trail of mountain gorillas.

We drive to the top of a mountain ridge above the Bwindi forest. The day’s hiking begins, therefore, with a steep 600m descent. This, for me, is my least favourite way to begin a day’s hiking. Downhill on sharp rocky paths isn’t a lot of fun, especially as sliding isn’t an option close to sheer drops. The early morning mist has cleared, though, so that the sky is sparkling blue. Of course, that also means it becomes very hot very quickly and we’re soon glad to finish the initial descent and find our way onto the valley floor (just to put our efforts in perspective, we pass several local houses clinging to the sides of the slopes, and their residents are nimbly making their way up and down the ridges as they undoubtedly to every day of their lives) We follow the river marking the border between the grasslands and jungle until we reach our crossing point: a fallen log over the fast flowing water. Once across, we are swallowed up by the impenetrable forest. Twisted trees are all around us and the sounds of the river are quickly extinguished. It may not be impenetrable; but it’s a different world under the boughs of these ancient trees.

Heading along the river valley towards the jungle edge.

As we get deeper into the jungle, Benjamin seems to loosen up considerably and becomes very animated as he tells us about his history with the gorillas. He’s worked in this region his entire life and, for the past twenty years has made this trip practically every day. He helped to habituate this particular gorilla group. In other words, he visited them every day and sat in their presence observing them and allowing them become comfortable with him, so that he could begin to bring in small groups of tourists without seeming like a threat. This habituation process is the same one Dian Fossey pioneered, and is still used by researchers as they seek to become acquainted with the groups of gorillas they wish to study.

During a quiet moment, Benjamin explains more about the Bwindi gorillas.

With each rest and check in with the early morning trackers, it seems like we’re getting closer and then, somewhere in the distance, we hear a prehistoric scream from the jungle. Benjamin looks into the air and muses whether it could be chimpanzees but, after a conversation with the trackers, it’s clear that they’ve found the Nshong gorilla group and after around ninety minutes walking from the bottom of the mountain, we’re shedding our rucksacks and preparing to enter their area.

Benjamin leads us into the gorillas' current habitat.

And here's what we were looking for. Mountain gorillas in their natural habitat. Or so the gorillas claim...

Benjamin goes first; beckoning and halting us as we approach the area where many of the female gorillas and their infants are waiting. The first gorilla is above us, sitting in a true and observing with a detached interest. Once we reach the resting site, though, we find that we are surrounded. There are gorillas everywhere. Sitting on the ground with infants, wandering around with even younger children on their backs and climbing some of the nearby trees. There are also huge silverback male gorillas patrolling around the area, giving us the occasional snort as if to remind us not to come too close. It’s abundantly clear just how much Benjamin loves his job; he barely contains his excitement as he points out the various family groups he has named and known for years, and shows us the best spots for photographs. Seeing as how my camera has a pretty poor zoom; I take a few token photographs then spend the time simply watching the gorillas go about their business. Really, it’s much like any family. Parents are spending time with their children and so we as the visitors are just distractions and; seeing as we’re not really moving, we’re not very interesting ones either.

Spotting gorillas through the undergrowth...

... and then just wandering around the corner and finding one right there!

As the gorillas move out of the clearing and onto the nearby jungle slopes, we slowly follow them. It’s a fascinating process as Benjamin motions around a corner and suddenly we’ll find there’s a gorilla sitting just metres away. Part of Benjamin’s briefing was to tell us that we need to keep at least six metres away from the gorillas; but obviously nobody told the gorillas as they often seem intent on surprising us with how close they will be before slowly slinking away.

These closer shots come courtesy of Rachel's camera and its zoom, which is several times better than the one I'm using!

We carry on this fascinating journey for an hour until, sadly, we have to leave. (The permits are strict in only allowing tourists an hour’s encounter with the gorillas) It’s clear that the way Dian Fossey described these incredible creatures is precisely correct: they’re peaceful, maternal and paternal and have no natural inclination towards violence. They’re not very many shades of development away from us; including the vein of curiosity which runs through them since as we begin hiking out of the jungle they begin following and observing us from afar (much as we’ve just been doing to them)

Heading out of the now hot and sticky jungle.

Being a regular hiker in Vancouver’s mountains; steep ascents in hot sun are a regular occurrence and substantially easier than doing the same route down. Rarely, for Australians, Jesse and James aren’t very quick hikers so I have plenty of time with the early morning trackers hearing stories about their daily hikes into the jungle. Astoundingly, when they have walkers who can’t make the entire walk themselves they’ve been called upon to actually carry them down the mountains and across the jungle. My mind boggles at how hard that must be; I can only assume the resulting tip for their services is very generous. I also fill them in on the latest developments in the Premier League. Or, at least, developments from two weeks beforehand when I was back in the UK.

Heading back up the hill. Hotter, yes, but a lot easier than the rocky slide to oblivion in the morning!

The excitement from everyone who observes these creatures is obvious. Once we’re back at the tracking centre; Benjamin hands out certificates detailing our day’s achievements. He takes this process surprisingly seriously. That’s partially down to his demeanour, and also because it’s clear that our experience as guests and participants is of primary importance to our guides. As an expensive and off the beaten track journey, gorilla tracking relies on positive reviews and word of mouth as advertising. And it’s vital to the local economy; both in protecting the gorillas (which is where much of the expense of the permits goes) and for the guesthouses which cater to the visitors. Whether or not the local communities see much of this benefit is up for debate. By my calculations; even if every gorilla tracking spot every day is filled there’s probably less than 100 tourists per day staying in the area and we’ve passed several guesthouses in and around Kisoro. Not everyone is going to be reaping the rewards of the industry. It’s clear, though, that what these mountains offer is an experience like no other. And with mountain gorillas still on the verge of extinction (the decline in their numbers observed since the early 1900s has stopped, but they’ve only risen by a few percent each year since) there is vital work going on here which is being subsidized. For Benjamin and the rest of the ecologists who work in the gorilla tourism industry, it’s the gorillas which are the excitement and getting the chance to share some of that enthusiasm as well as knowing they’re helping to preserve the species keeps them going back into the jungle day after day.

Looking across the ridges and farms of the Virunga mountains.

As we make our way back to Kisoro the clouds return and, as if to remind us of our fortune for finding the gorillas relatively quickly, by early evening the village is enveloped in another huge storm which we watch from the fireside at the Travellers Rest. Which makes me wonder what the gorillas and their families do each day as the rain falls around them…

KIBAALE – School Daze

2009-11-18T23:31:00.003-08:00

Just to affirm how large a project Kibaale Community Centre actually is; when Rachel takes me on a tour of the site it lasts for pretty much half the day. We begin as the students gather for their morning assembly. It’s very much like the old style British versions; except with praise music filling in for hymns. The primary and secondary schools assemble in two different groups. For the younger students, especially, it’s a chance to make sure uniforms are complete and well presented before the start of the day.

As we look into the various school buildings and see classes underway, it’s clear just how large the Community Centre’s ministry has become. There are traditional academic classes, as well as a whole vocational school with tailoring, woodwork and baking as the mainstays (sales from the produced items form part of the centre’s funding) There are also special classes for deaf students. This is, Rachel tells me, a rarity in East Africa as usually if children with special needs are able to find a place to be taught, it’ll be at specific schools for the deaf or blind and far apart from the mainstream schools. To be able to minister to those with special needs as part of the whole school community is really rather special.

A North American favourite; Duck Duck Goose.

We also take a look at the new clinic building; which appears to be very well equipped (I also get to see the corner of the old community centre where a pair of nurses ran what was the old clinic; it’s a vast improvement) and the even newer daycare centre for the children of staff members which, literally, had opened its doors for the first time that morning. Obviously the centre is well funded via its Canadian supporters, but it’s also clear that there’s a lot of passion among the senior Ugandan staff who run the ministry which keeps the centre seeking to do even more for its community. Rachel spends most of the time fielding questions and sharing ideas about what’s next for the school, she explains that the Canadian staff aim to direct the project and its funding; while equipping the Ugandan staff to actually staff the school, clinic and all of the centre’s other ministries. The trick seems to be matching the funding and resources with the ambitions of those growing the ministry!

The Kibaale Community Centre Clinic. Shiny!

Another impressive sight at the centre is the blzing hot smoke-filled kitchen where, each day, a small staff cooks lunch for the hundreds of staff and students. There’s a feast of rice, beans, chicken and matoke (that’s the name for the savoury mashed bananas which are a Ugandan staple) Like back at Alfa Gente in Brazil, the provision of a full daily meal is actually one of the most significant ministries of the Kibaale Community Centre. The school charges a nominal fee for students; but that’s mostly to ensure participation rather than for funding purposes. The need for nutritious meals is paramount and, when there is a drought and a poor harvest as seems to be the case in Kibaale at the moment, not every family can feed themselves properly.

Kibaale's kitchen. Imagine cooking for hundreds in here every day. Now that's commitment!

Later in the week Jeff and Shannon’s eldest son, nine year old Joel, takes myself and one of the other Canadian volunteers for a walk up a nearby hill to get a better look at Kibaale and the centre. Joel bemoans our unwillingness to scramble up vertical slopes of thistles as we skirt around the edge heading for switchbacks. Along the way we pass by a collection of dilapidated buildings. They look like classrooms but many are missing walls or pieces of roof. I wonder if it’s a former school but, apparently, it still is. This is one of the government run schools and the poor condition demonstrates why so many churches and foreign agencies are working on education projects in the country… From the top of the hill, the scale of the Kibaale Community Centre is even more obvious. Together with the staff housing and farm land it encompasses, it’s comparable in size to the town itself!

The town of Kibaale; you can see the beginnings of the Community Centre nearby.

Joel heading straight for the most vertical part of the hill...

UGANDA – Rigatoni on the Southern Road

2009-11-16T23:58:00.004-08:00

I’ve never eaten macaroni and cheese at an American style diner in Uganda before. Especially not one situated in the corner of a busy parkade. But then, it’s not exactly macaroni and cheese anyway; rather it’s rigatoni covered in cheese sauce. Is this the strangest cultural experience so far in East Africa?..

Flying out over Lake Victoria.

Despite the various hassles of Nairobi, it’s a little sad to be leaving Jomo Kenyatta Airport for the last time. How I will miss its identical corridors of identical stores selling identical, overpriced merchandise. Excitement builds, though, as my flight takes me north west and over Lake Victoria. The dry Kenyan countryside is left behind for lush green grasslands and jungle. It looks like that this area of Uganda isn’t suffering the same drought as Kenya. The area in question is Entebbe, a satellite town to the capital, Kampala. As my friend Rachel Leng tells me after she meets me at the airport, Uganda’s straddling of the equator means it’s prone to all sorts of diverse climate patterns. What’s true in Kampala isn’t the same a few hours to the south west close to Masaka, where she and other Canadians work at the Kibaale Community Centre.

Flying into the lush greenery of Entebbe.

Our first stop is to head into Kampala and to pick up some paint for the centre. Then, on to the local mall where we meet up with Shannon, another of the Canadians working in Kibaale. Apparently mall visiting is a high point for Canadian missionaries; for Shannon it’s a chance to buy more books for her fast reading children (after being surrounded by Swahili for two weeks; it’s strange to suddenly enter an East African country where English is the primary spoken and written language) and for Rachel, a chance to get the Community Centre’s new truck cleaned.

I, meanwhile, need to obtain some Ugandan shillings to pay for an excursion we’re planning which, first, means a trip to every bank in a mile’s radius looking for one which takes Canadian cards, and then means withdrawing a pile of notes so large I don’t need to worry about being robbed as I could easily beat someone to death with them. (A thousand dollars equates to almost two million shillings, and for some reason the cash machine won’t dispense a note with a greater value than twenty thousand) Following lunch at the aforementioned New York themed café, we head out in the sparkly truck for a drive through Kampala’s wondrously random traffic patterns and out into the countryside. The experience is probably more terrifying than Kenya since, rather than having large minibuses to dodge, on the mean streets of Kampala the cheap taxi driving is done via motorbikes; which seem to get everywhere at a moment’s notice. Traffic lights are untrustworthy devices and it seems lone traffic police at major junctions are all than stands between Kampala’s drivers and certain disaster. There’s one frightening moment where we and three other directions of traffic are all hurtling straight towards each other and it looks like nobody is going to stop until a few waves from the local police suddenly slow them all down.

On the road in Uganda

The drive to Kibaale takes several hours. We’re dodging pot holes all the way along sealed and not so sealed roads. We cross the equator but, as I’ve done it a few times and Rachel and Shannon do it every couple of weeks, we decide not to stop. Kibaale is far to Uganda’s south; within striking distance of the land border with Tanzania. On the outskirts of town is the large, guarded compound of the Kibaale Community Centre. In actuality, a community centre is just one of the functions of the site. Since the mid 90s, the site has grown to include primary and secondary schools, housing for staff, visitors and workers and, most recently, a community clinic. Much of the money for building these projects comes from Canada, via the Pacific Academy in the Lower Mainland of BC. Rachel and most of the other Canadian staff are either alumni or have close connections with the school, which is how they became part of the work in Kibaale. Rachel’s professional background is as an accountant; and so she came to Kibaale Community Centre to run the project’s finances. No small task when there’s over a hundred staff on the site and it’s easily the biggest employer in the area!

The guest house and staff accommodation at Kibaale Community Centre.

School has finished for the day by the time we arrive, so there’s enough time to meet Shannon’s husband, Jeff, and their children before settling in to the Kibaale guest house. The best feature of which is a large jigsaw lying unfinished on the dining room table. A great distraction although, sadly, it turns out to be impossible. Or, perhaps, just very, very difficult. But I prefer to think that it was impossible. It eases the pain.

The guest house at Kibaale Community Centre. All the comforts of home, including impossible chimpanzee jigsaw. Yes, you heard me: impossible.

NAIROBI – The Ol’ Sudanese Refugee Trick

2009-11-15T15:18:00.002-08:00

Nairobi has a fearsome reputation among the world’s cities. One of the most dangerous, one of the most crime ridden, every tourist is guaranteed to be robbed / stolen / mutilated etc. etc…. As with most such reputations it is, of course, mostly undeserved. The dangers of Nairobi are well away from the CBD; which is constantly being patrolled by police and private security firms. The trick with any city like Nairobi is to memorize where you’re heading to on a map and then simply to follow the Doctor Who advice for new places: just wander around like you own the place.

Nairobi’s problems, I find, have less to do with crime and more to do with the fact it’s a really very annoying city. Wandering around the streets and markets of Nairobi is the single most irritating experience you can have in a major city. On practically every single block you’ll meet someone who wants to open a conversation. And, in every single case, these conversations are leading to you hopefully handing over some money. I would like to say that these are exceptions but, no, sadly I didn’t have a single conversation on the streets of Nairobi which didn’t end up this way (and I was happy to speak to everyone who I could; at least until the twelfth or so time when pure exhaustion kicked in) Let’s run through some of the characters you might meet on the streets of central Nairobi:

1) Safari Salesmen
Stand outside travel agencies with cards and brochures and, of course, attempt to sell safaris.

2) Taxi Drivers
Same as above, but with taxis rather than safaris.

3) Market Boys
Met at the entrance to street markets. Or, indeed, several blocks away. They’ll wander in with you and follow you around. Any attempt to ask them to leave is met with an insistence that they must stay with you because “markets work differently here” and you need them to help you make purchases. And, of course, you don’.

4) Refugees / Refugee police
These folks are involved in a highly elaborate scam which involves them being a Sudanese refugee with a scholarship to come study in your country, and if they can only get 40 / 50 dollars to get out of Kenya they can escape. After dealing with them, you head around the corner and meet a couple of ‘police’ who are looking for illegal refugees. Apparently this has been going on for decades but, sadly for them, in the era of 419 e-mail scams, the formulaic scamming is all rather sad.

(N.B. Obviously this is not reflective of the entire breadth of such a cosmopolitan city as Nairobi; these are merely a few particular brands of local who happen to stand out on a visit to the city as they’re encountered so frequently)

Some of the many birds in the national museum. Ah, swallows. African and European as well. If only they listed the speeds when they're flying unladen...

On their own, these are annoyances. But after half a dozen city blocks the ‘wandering around a city’ part of wandering around the city becomes exhausting. Which is a shame as that’s my favourite part of being in a new city. So, instead, it’s time to go see a bit of Nairboi’s cultural quarter and go hit the National Museum. Like Nairobi itself, the museum is a slightly confusing place to navigate. First of all, you have to get into the place. The museum was apparently designed to be as difficult as possible to reach on foot; and is strangely located in a piece of park directly opposite a casino. Inside, there’s a whole range of conflicting design styles and dispirit exhibits. The first chambers are large and lofty, with just a few minimalist displays of art and pottery. Wander through a couple of doors, though, and you quickly find yourself in cramped corridors weaving through hundreds of stuffed birds. There’s a rough distinction made between natural history exhibits on the ground floor and human history above; but some of the temporary exhibits don’t seem to belong anywhere. A particularly incongruous contribution on display whilst I was in town was a photography exhibit which featuring the entire Manchester United squad holding doves. Oh, and Sir. Alex Ferguson as well. Really.

The mammal room in Nairobi National Museum. The skeleton in the middle is a real elephant. The others? Not quite so real.

In amongst the madness, there are some gems buried away. There’s a very impressive elephant skeleton in the mammal room featuring some almighty tusks. Most excitingly, though, is a room which is somewhat hidden away in back of the human exhibits (check out the *hilarious* DVD slideshow if you make it that far.) This chamber, which looks like every futuristic bank vault you’ve ever seen in the movies, houses a number of glass cases containing skull fragments. These skulls, found in East Africa, are some of the oldest found anywhere in the world, dating back millions of years. It’s a small, understated display of breathtaking finds. The only detraction from the wonder comes from the the bizarrely cheap waxworks depicting neanderthal life which have been erected in one corner.

A screenshot from the 'history of humanity' video at the museum. There's other great moments, but this caption is my favourite.

After scouring the depths of the museum, it was time to go shopping. Despite the annoying presence of over enthusiastic hawkers, Nairobi really does boast a fine selection of every type of tourist craft you can imagine. In fact, it’s rather too fine a selection. The problem in Nairobi’s Central Market is that every store features the same collection of beautifully made but absolutely identical wares. From ebony statues of elephants to Massai beads; there’s often no questioning the quality but there is a problem finding anything distinctive. And that’s a problem with me because, if I do find myself souvenir shopping, then I’m going to be looking for genuine tourist tack. I don’t want a beautiful soapstone carving of something which is identical to all the other millions of soapstone carvings in every other city store. I want something so utterly horrendous; so devoid of any charm, that it surely must be a one in a million or the universe is doomed to failure. Thankfully, on my careful scouring of Nairobi’s many tiny emporiums, I finally found a piece of tack worthy of my purchase.

My favourite piece of Nairobi tack. How long and hard I had to work to find such a beautiful piece of ugliness!

A successful shopping trip behind me, and a fine meal of sizzling Kenya stew in front of me, I was able to reflect on the fact that Nairobi certainly isn’t the worst city on Earth. It’s a fairly boring piece of urban design, but it there are streets of tiny stores and curios for the wanderer (touts aside) It also has another, interesting, virtue: it makes you want to get out as soon as possible. Whether it be at the beginning of a trip and you’re heading for a game reserve or a smaller town. Or you’re at the end and perhaps feeling wistful that you want to stay in Kenya just a while longer. Nairobi chews you up and spits you out; and spurs you on for the next phase of your trip wherever that may be. And in a country where supreme natural beauty and the general friendliness of rural life is a much bigger draw than the cities, anyway; that’s actually not a bad thing.

LAKE NAKURU – This Time, There Were Monkeys

2009-11-14T13:31:00.012-08:00

It’s time for the final chance to meet and greet some of Kenya’s wildlife as we head into the final days of our safari. Setting out from Elementaita, we head off to explore two of the other soda lakes in the same region. The first is Lake Nakuru; which is almost invisible beneath the masses of pelicans and flamingos who crowd its shores. Nakuru is famed for its abundant wildlife both in and out of the water. Above our heads; fish eagles wait poised on the edge of nearby branches waiting to pick off wildlife below including one poor sick flamingo who we watch... as I mentioned in a previous journal, safari turns us all into blood sport enthusiasts. There are also other eagles and even ospreys darting overhead.

Baby flamingo with an injured leg limping around. All together now: awww...

Me and a whole lotta pelicans.

The park surrounding the lake is a nature reserve; and so has a more formal system of fences, gates and artificial water holes than the sprawling Massai Mara. But that also means the wildlife are even more accessible. Early on in the day we meet White Rhinos at the side of the road. Like the ones we saw in the Massai Mara, these are huge and beautifully old looking animals. They’re not white and, as Elijah explains, that’s down to an error of pronunciation rather than colouration (early colonists referred to them as ‘wide rhinos’ which was obviously misheard at some point)

White rhinos on the shores of Lake Nakuru.

One animal which has eluded us in our travels thus far has been the leopard. With low hanging trees providing plenty of hiding places, we hope to see one as we head through the park. Heading up and down the escarpments of the park we see plenty of old favorites including more zebra and buffalo. We also see plenty of Rothschild giraffes, a sub species with slightly different colouration and which are, perhaps, a touch more graceful. There’s also plenty of monkeys throughout the reserve. Baboons roam on the ground, in large family groups, whilst colobus monkeys swing through the trees above us.

Another giraffe, this time a Rothschild varient.

Baboon family at Lake Nakuru.

But as the afternoon wears on, it becomes clear that the leopard will remain elusive to us. Elijah and Samuel are disappointed; they haven’t found one for several safaris now and I think they take it as a bit of a personal failure. It may be that the drought around these lakes has driven the leopards somewhere else temporarily. For us, however, there’s no disappointment. Not just because of the abundant wildlife we have got to see, including a glimpse of the elusive leopard tortoise (the one animal on nobody’s Kenyan animal watching list which jolly well should be) but because we truly feel like we’ve had an experience of discovery and exploration. We’re all pretty sure that no zoo will be able to complete anymore.

The infamous leopard tortoise. I'd like to think it climbs trees and pounces on passers by, but I can't prove it.

Late afternoon gathering at the watering hole.

No trouble spotting the most famous residents of our final stop, Lake Naivasha. Unlike the other Rift Valley lakes we’ve visited, Naivasha is fresh water. But that means it has suffered more problems than just drought; increased irrigation of nearby commercial vegetable and flower growing operations have reduced its size exponentially in the thirty plus years since Lois last visited, and the change, she tells us, is startling. Fresh water also means different animal life and we exchange trucks for boats to go around the lake and see it’s most famous inhabitants: hippos. Hippos are reputed to be protective of their young and therefore rather dangerous, but they seem rather unimpressed with us as we float past. More interested are the fish eagles who, for the incentive of some fish thrown by our boat driver, make speedy high angle dives under the water’s surface before soaring back to their perches.

Hippos on the shore of Lake Naivasha.

Fish eagle grabs its prey!

Naivasha is also a reserve, and we spend a few minutes on dry land where buffalo and giraffes are roaming around. This is the first time we’ve been able to take any of our game viewing on foot (because, y’know, those predators in the main reserves can be somewhat pesky) and we’re treated to the thunderous roar of running wildebeest who dash across the fields just a few metres in front of us.

The running wildebeest. Not included; the ground shaking!

Boating among the hippos. Forgot to mention the extra large life jackets which would have been fairly useless in the event of an emergency. Having just been working at summer camp a couple of weeks before, these are the things I notice!

Once more back in the truck we head for our final journey back through the Rift Valley and up the escarpment to Nairobi. We return to Rock House and have a number of farewells to make. Demetrius, having cooked three meals every day for two weeks, finally gets to return home to his family. As do Samuel and Elijah; although they don’t know if they’ll be called upon to head out on safari again soon after. They have been fabulous guides and travel companions; and may possibly have picked up some new card games from us to take up Mount Kenya the next time they make the trip! The Capes are also off: Jon, Doug and Ruth have one more day before heading home to Scotland whilst Lois will be staying on to attend a conference in Nairobi. It’s always strange to go back to travelling solo after been part of a group for a week, especially when we’ve had a lot of fun getting to know each other and the country we’re exploring. But it’s time to move on… back to the Kenya Comfort Hotel for a day’s layover before I fly to Uganda.

The whole gang. From left to right: Elijah, Samuel, Ruth, Douglas, Lois, Jon, Demetrius and me!

Thanks to the wonders of slightly-underpowered-photo-stitching-software; a panoramic view of Lake Nakuru.

LAKE ELEMENTAITA – A Distant Cloud of Pink

2009-11-11T18:19:00.003-08:00

We are walking across a dry lake bed to a cloud of shimmering pink shapes in the distance. The ground alternates between soft patches of mud, and crunchy areas of salt which have been left as the water has receded away. At certain points, this is a huge lake. In the dry season, though, the water recedes into the far distance. The shimmering pink cloud in the distance hovers over what’s left of the water. It’s a large flock of flamingoes, the last of the thousands which rest all over the lake in the wet season. Of course, it’s meant to be the wet season right now…

Sunlight breaking through above Elementaita

The dry lake bed of Elementaita

Elementaita is a soda lake situated to the north west of Nairobi; and driving here from the Massai Mara has taken us back over the escarpments of the Rift Valley. This time, though, it’s the greener farmland which represents a large part of Kenya’s agriculture. It’s also the hotbed of tribal tension which saw some of the worst violence after the 2007 elections. Perhaps there is still something of unease about the place; as small private farms struggle for position alongside large, new commercial operations which produce for Kenya’s export market.

Bungalows on the hillside above Lake Elementaita

A few hours of ascending and descending later, we reach our next overnight spot on the shores of Lake Elementaita. It’s an impressive sight from the highway. A vast lake bed surrounded by rugged hills. We’re staying in bungalows perched right over the lake’s eastern edge. In the last of the day’s light we take our first walk across the lake bed, but aren’t able to get as far as the flamingos just yet. The view at sunset is stunning; the heavy metal doors and large padlocks which make everything look a bit like jail cells, are a little disconcerting.

My bungalow at Elementaita. Complete with alarmingly heavy and solid metal door

The next day we return to the lake bed, this time heading for the southern edge. This time we manage to reach the flamingos which, even though are apparently far less in number than they should be, are still an impressive sight, standing still as they do without wavering in the water. Heading around the water, we reach the Kekopey hot springs. These springs seem to serve as the main bathing, washing and social spot for the local villagers. Basically, they’re like a community centre. Spending some time swimming here gives plenty of chances to speak to the locals about life, language and to explore conspiracy theories regarding the death of Michael Jackson. The hot springs are *very* hot, and leave a rather strange mineral residue which we can’t identify. (Further exploration of Wikipedia tells me that the local Massai believe these springs can cure AIDs…)

Flamingos standing on the lake shore.

The hot springs at Elementaita.

There is more time to share with the Kenyans in Elementaita in the afternoon when we head out to the home of George and Lucy, who run a small farm from their property. The youngest of their seven children, Virginia, shows us around the farm whilst wearing a Santa hat. As well as explaining the many fruits and vegetables crammed into the tiny garden, she tells us all about her school and her desire to become a doctor. We also meet her sister, Regina, who’s much quieter and their nephew, also called George, whose energy is boundless.

Sitting in the hot waters, and maybe feeling the beneficial health effects, of Elementaita.

After walking through the grounds (and after Ruth and I have taken turns bouncing Little George the whole way) we’re invited into the house to talk to George. It’s clear that he’s both used to meeting overseas visitors, and that he enjoys holding court. We tell him who we are and where we come from, allowing him to launch into a speech or story which may or may not be related. Renewable energy provides one sorts of interesting discussion, as does the politics of the Anglican Church of Canada (a somewhat inevitable debate in the highly evangelical churches of Kenya) Whilst all this is going on, Little George is busying himself trying to force feed Lois and Ruth tea and fruit; whilst stealing the pieces of fruit he wants from everybody else’s plates.

Looking across to the hills on the other side of Elementaita.

It transpires that George is enamored with both Scotland and Canada; and he produces a book of photographs from Canada which a previous guest sent to him. He’s very proud of it, and excited when I’m able to point out where I live on a photo of the snow capped North Vancouver mountains. He insists on me putting my contact details in the book; and I happily give him my number at the switchboard at the Diocese of New Westminster. Clearly the women of the house know to let George do his thing when he has visitors, and so when he takes a break we get a chance to speak to Regina and Virginia again. Regina is a physics fan; which according to Elijah means she has to make a choice between studying it or agriculture in the future. George clearly has a lot of traditional views; but it’s clear that the education of his family is important to him as well as his fascination with other cultures and those are the marks of Kenya’s growing aspiring middle classes.

Sunset over Lake Elementaita.

We head back to the bungalows for another stunning sunset, set against the ribbon of flamingos standing tall in the far distance…

MASSAI MARA - We’re Surrounded. The Entire Place is Crawling with Living Things…

2009-11-05T23:41:00.004-08:00

Living in the UK and Canada isn’t the best preparation for an African safari because there’s a temptation to think of nature reserves as very large zoos. Going through the front gates (where one can’t help but be reminded of Jurassic Park…) you look intently from side to side waiting for the first elephant to lumber out of the undergrowth, swiftly followed by a cheetah at full sprint. Instead, what you find is an area of over farmed dirt stretching off into the distance. Those who remember the last blog entry will remember my references to Massai cattle herds sneaking into the Mara; and that’s what you see when you enter the reserve. It’s brown and bleak; with a few lone gazelle or zebra climbing over the rocks on one side or the other.

The Massai Mara, though, is a huge ecosystem covering 1500 square kilometers. And as we reach the head of the first set of hills, a sight familiar from postcards the world over greets us. Vast expanses of grasslands stretch out under the glint of the morning sun, with occasional acacia trees breaking up the flat horizons (wildfires are common here, and the acacia trees are the only ones which tend to survive) The next lesson to learn is this; safari is a systematic blend of tracking and opportunism.

The tracking comes from Elijah and Samuel who, with an incredible knowledge of the on and off road tracks of the Mara alongside their short wave radio, are able to systematically guide us through most of the reserve’s habitats. The opportunism comes from following the vultures. Either the animal kind, which stick close to dead animals and can be a good way of finding recent kills, or what we come to refer to as the ‘white vultures’: the legions of non descript minibuses carrying safari tourists who congregate in large groups around interesting animals. The practice seems a little distasteful, except for the facts that (A) We, of course, join them as well to see what they’ve found and ( B) It’s clear that, as most drivers seem to be adept at the practice of watching, the animals pay their watchers little or no regard.

And there are, of course, always the groups who have their own particular focus for their day’s viewing. We encounter our Canadian agri-foresters several times during the day and realize that, more often that not, the thing that has gripped their attention and caused them to reach for their zoom lenses is not some great moment of animal activity, but a rather interesting tree.

Our first moment of excitement during the day comes when we spy our first lion. A lioness, to be exact, lying out on a mound beside some bushes. For a moment it looks like she is sleeping; then we spot buffalo moving amongst the undergrowth nearby. It becomes clear that the lioness is hunting; watching the buffalo (who are big enough to defend themselves and give a single predator some nasty injuries, Elijah tells us) and waiting for her time. We wait with her. The situation looks like a stalemate until a curious warthog wanders into the fray. The lioness’ attention switches and, a few minutes later, our patience is rewarded as the warthog steps just slightly too close and she makes her move. Unfortunately for us; her move is a rather lazy jog towards a warthog which is more than prepared to make its dash for freedom. It’s soon over; as the warthog reaches safety long before the lioness seems to get very interested in the chase. The incident gives us two major pointers for the rest of the day: patience is important in the course of a safari, and it’s astounding how nature lovers become surprisingly bloodthirsty when it looks like we’ll see an actual kill.

Lionness preparing to do... well, not much as it transpired.

Radio contact from other safari expeditions brings us to our next major sightings: a group of three male lions lying under a tree, followed by a family of cheetahs close by. The lions are a particularly prized sight, remarks Elijah, since male lions rarely spend time together once they reach the age to gather their own prides. Our three are young and lazy, but astoundingly impressive all the same. The cheetahs are livelier; a mother watches on as her two cubs scrap atop a nearby ditch. It transpires that the sprinting for which they are famed is such an exhausting process that they can only do it for a few dozen metres at a time. As we get deeper into the park, the numbers of the animals we see at any one time become larger; to the point where we’re driving through uncountable groups of zebra, buffalo and gazelle all grazing in the same watering holes and grasslands.

Bachelor lions lying out in the shade.

Young cheetahs at play.

One of the most impressive natural wonders in the region is the annual wildebeest migration. At the end of the winter, thousands of these animals flood over to the border from the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania (of which the Massai Mara is, effectively, the northern continuation) and then once the grass has been eaten for the season, they head back in late summer. We are in the Mara at the end of the return process, and we see versions of it throughout the day. Sometimes up close, as we watch herds of wildebeest at watering holes and river crossing, and often from afar as we’ll be driving across grasslands and see hundreds of the animals in the distance walking single file across the border. It’s fascinating to observe although, as with everything else in the reserve, there is a nasty temptation to want to see animals come to harm for our entertainment.

Grazing in the foreground whilst, in the background, wildebeest migrate southwards.

This reaches its zenith in the early afternoon when, as we approach the Mara River, we see groups of wildebeest standing at the edge of the river canyon. They need to cross if they’re going to reach the Serengeti but, as becomes clear as we drive along the edge of the river, there’s plenty of good reasons for them not to want to. Crocodiles and hippos are clearly visible in the waters below. It’s clear that if the wildebeest make their move, at least some of them will be sacrificed. So we wait to see what will happen, along with several other safari vans. Having dozens of long lenses focused on the site of an impending massacre is all rather gruesome but, clearly, the wildebeest are aware of this and they do not move. At all. For almost an hour. Finally we decide to head off to other pastures, leaving the wildebeest to contemplate their fate under the watchful eye of the remaining white vultures.

Hippos in the water.

The white vultures (well, not so white this time) await the wildebeest massacre. They are to be dissapointed.

Leaving proves to be the better course of action since, on our way back towards the gate, we have two of our most impressive encounters of the day. First there is a group of elephants we encounter on open grasslands. For a while we believe it’s just one lost young elephant, wandering alone under gloomy skies. But after following him for a while, we find the rest of his group who have trudged much further ahead. We’re able to gently coast along beside them, admiring their graceful lumbering. Just as we leave them, the clouds finally break and we’re treated to an intense bout of rain. As we splash along the road we see the remains of a recently killed zebra to the side of it and, on closer observation, a group of lions lying down in the grass around it.

Lone elephant wandering the plains...

... not so lone elephant wandering very, very close to us.

Clearly what has happened is that the lions made their kill but their eating was interrupted by the rain. We decide to wait and see if we can wait out the rain and see them resume eating (because, again, safari going seems to make us all want to see things die and be eaten as much as it does live things) We wait for some time as water pools on the road ahead and the smell of fresh earth fills the air. Finally, the rays of the sun return (along with an impressive rainbow) and the lions too seem to come back to life. First they wander into the road and spend time playing with, or possibly taunting, each other. The group is a pride of one male and two females. And as they move back to their kill, we can see the group dynamics as work. The male begins to eat alone, with one of the lionesses picking away beside him. It’s only when he leaves that both the females eat together.

Lionesses playing, or maybe fighting, after the rainstorm.

Male lion gets sleepy as it waits out the rain.

The male lion begins his feed. Moist zebra! Yum!

The lionesses move in for their share of the meal.

Watching the lions play and eat is incredible. So much so that we barely notice the sun begin to dip and our final drive to the gate has to be made at some speed. The Mara isn’t open to safaris at night, and the fines for leaving late are steep. Elijah and Samuel are used to the phenomena of the most impressive sightings occurring in the evening, though, and we’re soon heading back to our tent camp for a second night’s stay. Leaving the animals of the Massai Mara to hunt, play and eat away from the observation of the death obsessed human vultures!

Zebra and distant rainbow following the late afternoon Mara rainstorm.

Following an evening where we regale the rest of the camp with the sound plastic cups being slapped down on tables (thanks, Ruth!) we head back into the Massai Mara at dawn to see if we can find some of the animals we missed. Including the elusive, and rare, black rhino. In the quiet morning, our first encounters are with giraffes. Having not seen any close up the day before, we spend a lot of time watching one of them feeding alone; fascinated by its extraordinarily long tongue. They're very deliberate eaters, and seem to be the animals most aware of the human presence.

Early morning giraffe.

Impressive tounge length from the feeding giraffe.

We then creep (read: drive really slowly) through the undergrowth looking for tell tale signs of the elusive rhino. We meet another group of elephants in the middle of a feed, and even some more lions lying out after their early morning hunt. Finally, after following an ostrich across open plains we receive a radio call which has us u-turning back towards a low valley. There we watch as two rhinos are lumbering around just a few hundred metres away. They’re fabulous animals; a sort of throwback to prehistory. To see them wandering around is exhilarating.

Sunlight begins to hit the Mara as elephants head off for the morning.

Black rhinos out in a Mara valley.

MASSAI MARA - God Walking

2009-11-04T23:45:00.004-08:00

Aside from some occasional howling (not from me, or from the Mark Kermode podcast I was listening to late at night) it’s an easy sleep in the Kenyan bush. We awake to one of Demetrius’ wonderful breakfasts, served under pink early morning skies. Jonathan has changed from traditional Massai kanga into civvies to join us for our day’s travelling. First we take a walk through the quiet morning bush. It’s clear from Jonathan and Elijah’s commentary that the aridness of the area has taken a huge toll in all the ecosystems here. Aside from a few occasional zebra and gazelle in the distance, we see few animals. There are herds of cows being driven by Massai, although Elijah tells us many of them have moved their grazing ground closer to the Massai Mara nature reserve and (at the dead of night when they won’t be spotted so easily) even inside its gates to the grasslands beyond, putting increased pressure on that area.

Dawn at the bush camp.

Elijah shows Jon and Ruth the remains of a skull.

We find evidence of where Massai have been using the area, and with CSI precision Jonathan is able to dissect the remains of an abandoned campsite to tell us how many Massai were there, how long they stayed and even what they ate for dinner and breakfast. (A skull fragment revealing the former, and various porridge stirring sticks in the nearby gorse bushes telling us the latter) All in all, the Kenyan bush is a vast, eerie place, especially in drought season, devoid of a lot of the familiar sights and sounds which would help orient a lost hiker. With the exception, of course, of Jonathan’s cell phone ringtone!

Jonathan guides us around the abandoned Massai campsite.

Rather impressively, as we reached the first dirt track our safari van trundled towards us. Obviously good tracking (or, now I think about it, the cell phones might have had something to do with it…) and soon we were on our way to the Massai Mara itself. Well, not inside the reserve just yet… Bizarrely, considering it’s one of the most travelled routes in the country, the main road heading south is in terrible shape. Elijah tells us it’s due to a dispute between the national and local government over who should foot the bill for the cost of the tarmac. It’s another interesting indicator of why Kenya’s desire to boost their tourist trade doesn’t always gel with what the local tribes want; to the ultimate detriment of, well, everyone.

We head to our next campsite literally a few minutes drive from the main gate in the foothills which mark the border to the Mara. The Mountain Rock camp is definitely a step up in terms of amenities from bush camping. The tents are permanent, and contain large beds of the solid variety, as well as various other pieces of furniture. Each one is on its own lot, with a garden out front… basically like an old colonial style camping experience, complete with English country gardens. The hot water showers built onto the back of each tent are something of a marvel of science, and very welcome.

Homes and gradens; tented camp style at the Mountain Rock camp.

With a couple of days of solid drive time ahead of us (the Massai Mara isn’t a place where walking safaris are done) we decided to use the remaining daylight hours to climb one of the local hills and get a better view of the Mara. With Jonathan having left us at a nearby village, we enlisted the services of a new Massai, Mataka, to accompany us. Mataka’s English is not very strong, but he does have a very shiny spear which he takes great delight in throwing ahead of him (he’s got a good arm for a man his age!) Ruth and Douglas are able to point out which of the nearby dung samples belong to elephants thanks to their experiences on Mt. Kenya (look for undigested plants and grass…) although that’s not an entirely comforting thought when you’re climbing a confined bit of slope with only Mataka’s throwing arm for protection.

Elijah and Mataka guding us safetly up.

Lois and Mataka conversing once we reach the top of the hill.

We reach the top without incident, although a careful check is made of one tree at the summit whose trunk has distinct leopard claw marks in it. By this point the sun is beginning to set behind low, darkened clouds. Much of southern Kenya is too dry but the Massai Mara’s ecosystem has remained more balanced; hence why it’s teeming with wildlife. Against the rainclouds, the sunbeams shine down distinctly across the plains. I forget who uses the phrase first, but it’s not long before each time we see this phenomena we’re referring to it as “God walking.” It’s a very appropriate term.

View over the Massai Mara from the hilltop.

God walking across the Mara.

Back at camp, we bump into a group of Canadians who are on a short safari following their attendance in Nairobi at a conference on agri-forestry. Not plain forestry: agri-forestry. After a few moments spent trying to figure out the odds of meeting a group of Canadians in Kenya who make a living dealing with trees (a national obsession, no matter what anyone tries to tell you otherwise) we end up talking about their afternoon’s game drive in the Massai Mara. Their tales of elephant herds and watching hyenas hunt are beguiling, as all safari stories are. And thoughts start to turn towards the wonders that may await us when we do the same thing tomorrow…

Hiking back down the hill!

Sunset over the hills of the Mara.

EWASO NGIRO – From the City to the Wild

2009-11-03T14:37:00.002-08:00

Returning to Nairobi, things got off to a more auspicious start than last time when I was actually met by the taxi I had ordered. However, on the downside, the vehicle in question was a decades old jeep which had a rather unfortunate habit of stalling whenever it was driving at low speeds in any gear higher than first. And, on a typical traffic crawl through Nairobi, that happens a little too often for comfort. Perhaps it’s a useful reorientation to the madness of mainland travel in East Africa after the relative quiet of Zanzibar (dulla-dulla racing aside.) I tell myself that as we sit helplessly on a roundabout with traffic around as snarling as it tries to get past.

The traffic eases off somewhat as we head into Karen, the leafiest suburb of Nairobi filled with large houses owned by expats surrounded with high fences and gates. Rather like West Vancouver, only with more private security guards brandishing guns. Testament to the fact that when you live behind a high wall you can construct any mad type of place you want to live is Rock House; the bed and breakfast owned by the Mountain Rock safari company. It’s a house which has been custom plastered and painted to look like something from the Flintstones. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s positioned in beautifully manicured gardens, and has a scale model of Mt. Kenya in the backyard.

Rock House and gardens.

That’s a useful visual aid for meeting Jon, Lois, Ruth and Douglas Cape that evening since it transpires they’ve spent the previous week climbing up said mountain (the real one, not the model.) We share stories over dinner and red wine. They with their days of altitude induced sickness, freezing cold nights and occasional elephant stampedes and me with my many different and varied white sand / turquoise water beaches… The Capes are from Scotland, which allows for some catching up on yet more British things I’ve missed over the past few years. I also get some insight into local history; Lois had lived in Kenya back in the sixties, when her parents came to help set up the teaching wing for Nairobi hospital and so this was her second climb of Mt. Kenya. The changes on the mountain, especially the reduction of the ice at its top, have been devastating and have had a profound impact on the surrounding area (I noticed a similar lack of ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro when flying to Zanzibar) It’s something we come to appreciate even more the next day as we headed out on safari.

After a good night’s rest in Rock House’s very comfortable, brown bedrooms (a consequence of the décor choice!) we meet Elijah, Demetrius and Samuel who will be our guide, cook and driver for the next week. Demetrius has just returned from Mt. Kenya as well, and discovered he’d be spending another week on the road away from his family just a day earlier. This, apparently, is quite normal for safari staff. At least this time he and the others won’t have to carry all their food and cooking equipment on their backs all day before settling down to cook meals at altitude! Some very impressive packing squeezes all of our luggage into the very back of our safari van, and soon after we’re heading out of Nairobi and looking out over the Rift Valley.

Perched over the Rift Valley. Just out of shot: more identical souvenirs than you can possibly imagine.

The Rift Valley is one of those natural wonders you (or at least I) feel slightly guilty about when you find you hadn’t previously registered their existence. It’s an immense cut in the landscape running thousands of miles throughout eastern Africa. And in areas such as Nairobi (which is built at altitude on an escarpment) you can really see it. Of course, no immense natural wonder would be complete without the requisite tourist traps alongside it. Up and down the road to the valley each metre of the edge has some sort of signage telling you that it is *the* viewing spot for the area. And each comes, coincidentally, complete with a store nearby. Although I don’t realize it, I’m destined for constant disappointment with Kenyan souvenirs, about which I’ll relate more when we return to Nairobi. For now, though, we get the first of many photographs and then head off for the first six hour drive down into and through the valley.

We were travelling with a British company called IntoAfrica, who mix wildlife safaris with cultural and environmental visits. So instead of heading straight for the game reserves, our first stop is the town of Ewaso Ngiro. What’s probably a quiet place most other days of the week is jammed with people and stalls because it’s the fortnightly market day. There’s plenty of cheap clothing and houseware for sale, but the real business is happening at the back of the market, where cattle are being sold. Elijah tells us that Massai from twenty km away will walk to this market to buy and sell. It’s all rather like an old style farmer’s market would have been in the UK many decades ago… just with more cell phone accessories. Phones are, of course, as big here as anywhere else in the world. Perhaps more so because, for Massai who spent their days driving their cattle and trying to find the next water hole, fast communications in the desert are a priority.

Cattle being bought and sold at Ewaso Ngiro.

From Ewaso Ngiro, we head into the bush. Quite literally, as we leave the sealed roads and head off on an indistinguishable series of dirt tracks. The landscape isn’t featureless; it’s dry but not a desert. Aside from a few gazelles and two ostriches which briefly run alongside us, it has an empty feeling. We’re told that the latest wet season is running late; and the last one was disappointing. Finally we reach a glorious spot of greenery, in which a natural spring is leaking out of the ground and gushing water around it. The tall trees and bright grass mark it out from the desert around, and here we make our camp for the night. As we put up our tents, Massai bring their cattle across for watering, and baboons cry out noisily in the trees around.

Massai herdsman and cattle at the watering hole.

One of the local Massai, Jonathan, joins us at camp and invites us to come visit his village. It’s a twenty minute walk away across the bush; whose sounds are becoming more distinct as the sun dips on the horizon. As we enter the circle of outer huts which marks the village, there is a sense of nervousness from those we meet (and from us, of course!) The Massai here are obviously somewhat used to greeting visitors from IntoAfrica’s excursions, but by virtue of its position over an hour from the main roads, it isn’t a place many visitors stumble across. Once we have greeted the many children who come to meet us (a pat on the head is the custom) we all become a lot more comfortable with each other.

Approaching the Massai village at sunset.

The village is made up of several huts, made from dried cow dung, built around a central pasture. They’re small dwellings, and rather dark too we discover when Jonathan invites us into his. As our eyes adjust to the gloom, he tours us around the dining room, kitchen and bedrooms. They’re all in the same central space, but to the Massai who live here the different parts of the dwelling are distinct and functional. There are few possessions apart from some pots and sticks (each of which has a very specific purpose for preparing part of the Massai diet) And there’s Jonathan’s cell phone, which he busies himself topping up with minutes which Elijah has brought him from town.

Elijah and children in the Massai village.

Perhaps the reason why the Massai seem to have few possessions is that each of their dung huts only has a life expectancy of between ten and fifteen years. The women who build them tend to be married to the same men in the village (the Massai are polygamous by culture; a fact which, as far as I can tell, is accepted among local churches) Some of the men, like Jonathan who trained to be a teacher, will make their way to towns for further education. Others will stay in and around the village, learning the old ways of hunting and survival.

Massai villagers and their homes.

It’s clear that, for these Massai, “Kenya” is still very much a construct which doesn’t necessarily define their own identities. We noticed chalk marks scratched over the doorways of the village huts, marking where the national government had been attempting to take a census. The perception seems to be, though, that the census takers will simply find what they want. Elijah informed us that he wasn’t at home when the census takers called; so they apparently went next door and asked the neighbours about him and his family and then extrapolated their results accordingly. The different between tribal and national identity is clearly still a deep, important one. I was to encounter this even more forcefully in Uganda a week later. But I digress…

Sunset in the bush.

In the darkness we head back to camp. Jonathan joins us to sit by our fire during the night on the lookout for any particularly curious animal life. And there we leave him as we head to bed, with occasional late night serenades from baboons and hyenas. It’s all a long way from Nairobi’s thunderous roads and traffic…

MENAI BAY – On Distant Sandbanks

2009-10-29T23:20:00.004-07:00

The resolve of Patricia and the Italians for more adventurous sightseeing holds true and so for my final day on Zanzibar I decide to join them for the excursion they’re taking with the tour company Safari Blue, who operate in the Menai Bay Conservation Area on the south of the island. Zanzibar’s costal flora and fauna have trouble competing with the growing numbers of resorts elsewhere on the coast, so the protection of Menai Bay is all the more important.

Modern dhow heading towards Kwale Island...

... and not so modern canoe moored in the shallow waters closeby.

We start the day travelling by dhow from the beach at Fumba to nearby Kwale Island. It’s a journey carried out in traditional style… except, perhaps, for the outboard motor on the stern of the dhow. Conservation area or not; Menai Bay is another big business opportunity for Zanzibar’s tour guides. There are half a dozen other dhows racing across the open water to try and get to the prime beach and snorkeling sites on Kwale Island. I’m suddenly reminded why I do most of my travelling alone.

Tour guide Idris, though, obviously has a spider sense about him and so steers us away from the crowds and into some of the mangrove lined bays around the island. The mangroves, along with the turtles who visit them to breed and lay eggs, are one of the primary conservation projects on Kwale. At low tide, with their rocky bases slowly eroding, the statuesque trees look particularly stunning in their isolation.

The northern beach of Kwale Island as the morning's boats arrive.

We return to the northern edge of the island where it’s (yet) a(nother) stunning day on the beach and in water which is all kinds of shades of blue. Accompanied by (yet) a(nother) wonderful seafood lunch. It would be easy to spend days in Zanzibar and do nothing else if one so wished; be driven off to beautiful beaches everyday and do much the same thing time after time. Watching half a dozen groups doing the same thing around us, I found myself missing my dulla-dulla. I still had my lucky find copy of “All Creatures Great and Small” to read. Which had an added interest for animal – obsessed Patricia. Explaining the finer points of James Herriot’s writing style to an Italian on a white sand beach was a rather surreal use of an hour.

In the water off the coast of Kwale. Sea and sky... perfect blue.

At sunset, and with the prevailing winds allowing us to actually sail back to the mainland, we stopped off on a sandbar for final photos and to watch the waves in the gathering dark. Reflecting on the week, the day in Menai typifies a lot of Zanzibar. It certainly feels like a place where the ancient and the modern have collided and are looking to find an easy peace. The thing about Zanzibar, and I see this as a good thing, is that it doesn’t seem to do the modern very well. From what I’ve seen of the resorts and Stone Town, they’re at their best when dealing with simple pleasures and local seafood. The dhow motor breaks down a fair amount; the sail doesn’t.

Patricia and I on a sandbank in Menai Bay. We're squinting, incidentally, because the setting sun is shining directly into our eyes!

The trip to the airport the following day is typical. Air travel does not suit Zanzibar yet. Checking in is like living a newsreel of the arrivals at Ellis Island. Lines of passengers are everywhere, snaking in and out of the shack like terminal. You may or may not get checked in before your flight leaves, and even then all that enables you to do is to join one of the many other lines dealing with luggage, visas and immigration (of which there are many; all unmarked) There appears to be one computer in the entire building, as check in staff write information on pieces of paper and then disappear for ten minutes before coming back with boarding passes. In the days of large, anonymous airport terminals (and large, anonymous island beach resorts) Zanzibar’s is a lot of fun. It does things at its own pace and you just have to go with it. Of course, I my judgment here might be influenced by the fact that, after my check in attendant returned from his mysterious visit to the back office, he told me that my flight was overbooked and I’d been upgraded to business class for my flight back to Nairobi.

Well, you can take this whole ‘travelling on a shoestring’ thing a bit too far, can’t you?

Shell on the sand in Menai Bay.

CHUINI – Meandering around Matemwe

2009-10-25T23:27:00.009-07:00

Typically, Mangrove Lodge guests go out on a series of excursions during the day. I’ve resisted so far, as I find tour groups all sorts of annoying and it’s never the most exciting thing in the world to be the only English speaker in a group. Yesterday, though, a new group arrived. Still all Italians; but this time with English speaking special powers. The best English speaker is Patricia, possibly because until recently she was engaged to a man from Vancouver. This sets up an interesting dynamic since she loves all things Vancouver but talking about them slightly depresses her. Luckily, kittens make her happy. So as long as we talk in the part of the dining area where stray cats wander in and out, things seem to go well. Some of her companions, who are also lovely, mention to Haji that they’re not fish fans on their first night. He looks worried. I know why; I haven’t eaten a meal in Zanzibar yet which doesn’t contain some form of seafood. Crab, lobster, octopus… It’s all here, and it’s all fabulous. The Italians end up eating a lot of fries.

The dining room at the Mangrove Lodge. In a rare, non-fish related moment.

That said, the majority of the guests at Mangrove this week are much older than Patricia or I and it quickly becomes clear that their taste in excursions extends to, well, the very dull. So I make my own plans to head over to the opposite side of the island using public transport. This intrigues Idris, the tour guide who leads most of the excursions. “How many people are you used to on a bus?” he asks, quizzically. I tell him about the time I once travelled to Foz do Iguaçu on the floor of an overbooked bus. Satisfied that I will not be mortified by Zanzibar public transport, he gives me the numbers of the dulla-dullas I need.

The bay outside the Mangrove Lodge.

East African public transport is, for my money, a lot more efficient than that in North America. First of all, everything tends to start in the same place in whichever major town you’re in. As long as you don’t mind scanning the numbers of several hundred identical vehicles (I pretended I was in The Amazing Race…) then you’ll find what you’re looking for eventually. Dulla-dullas (minibuses, or glorified vans) then leave when they’re full. Not when they’ve been waiting five or ten minutes. And not even when all the seats are taken. When they’re *full.* And, even after that, they’ll still stop to take on board more people. That’s rather impressive when there’s no more than 15 seats to begin with and there’s already 20 people on board. The most I counted was 26… plus luggage!

The slightly annoying thing about dulla-dulla trips is that they come in two speeds. Breakneck; or snails pace. The first trip across the island is one of the latter. Every corner must be stopped at, and everyone who gets in board seems to have some huge pile of vegetables, or planks of wood or even buckets of rotting fish with them. Amazingly, though, there’s always a space for everything. And with 26 people in a confined space, the smell of rotting fish is surprisingly not the most pungent around. The trip takes around ninety minutes. Mind you, for a cost of around 20 cents, I’m not complaining. (The trip back, incidentally, took about thirty minutes. Including several occasions of being bounced around and wondering how long it would be before my head bounced high enough to make skull crushing contact with the roof above…)

Matemwe village, built on the sands...

We arrived into Matemwe village just after lunch. Back in Chuini, the weather had been rather grey but Zanzibar’s reliable microclimates meant clouds on one side of the island gave way to clear blue skies on the other. Matemwe isn’t just close to the coastline; it’s built right on the sands of the beach. With turquoise water lapping on the coral white shore, Matemwe Beach is the definition of tropical paradise. It’s also a little less built up than other stretches of coast on the island, perhaps because of the proximity of the village and the dozens of dhows owned by the locals which are parked on the beach during low tide. It takes a good few minutes of concerted wandering down the beach until I find the first resort and snag a free chair thanks to the deployment of a few words of Swahili to the man who’s minding them. (Jo Russell taught me maybe half a dozen words of Swahili before I left the UK. Most of them variations on ‘How are you?” and “I’m okay.” For the first time ever in my learning of a language, every one of them was not only useful, they pretty much covered every eventuality)

A view from a beach chair. Blue skies, white sands and turqouise waters. Mmmm...

It’s an(other) easy afternoon on a Zanzibar beach; with a few breaks to explore the crystal clear lagoon and to watch the occasional soccer ball get pelted up and down the shoreline by the local kids… After my harrowing dulla-dulla ride back, I have a half hour walk from Chuini to Mangrove Lodge, watching farmers working quietly in the fields whilst an orange sun disappears behind the horizon. I arrive back in time for dinner (fish again, of course) and Patricia explaining the non-wonders of the day’s tour. Apparently the south of the island was grey all day. I try to downplay Matemwe, but after she gets hold of my camera and sees my day's photos, she demands to know how to get there. I explain dulla-dulla etiquette as best I can and draw maps on napkins. Her travelling companions look horrified at the thought of using such horrendous sounding transport, and resolve to do a more interesting excursion the next day to avoid the possibilities of bone crushing accidents, or having to share air space with anyone’s bucket of rotting fish. It leads to a good night for all; with a momentary moment of cultural horror for Brit, Italians and stray cats alike when a Swahili remix of “Who Let the Dogs Out” starts playing on the stereo.

Looking down Matemwe beach; white sands stretching into the distance.

STONE TOWN – The Cautionary Tale of Princess Salme

2009-10-24T23:48:00.006-07:00

Among the many displays in the questionably named House of Wonders museum in Stone Town, there’s a stamp dated from the 1960s entitled ‘Religious Tolerance.’ The stamp has images of several of Stone Town’s major places of worship, including both the Anglican and Catholic Cathedrals as well as several mosques, all closely packed together on the same street. It’s a stylized representation of how life in Stone Town seems to operate. This is a tiny piece of land, filled with buildings from several centuries and different cultures (particularly Arabian and Portuguese) built within a few feet of each other. With the differing colonial influences also came different faith groups; so as you wander around the Anglican Cathedral you can quite clearly hear the midday prayers being broadcast from the mosque across the square.

The Zanzibar religious tolerance stamp. Postage should always make good statements.

And it works. It has to; there just isn’t any room for anyone in Stone Town to get territorial about their religion or anything else for that matter. That’s especially true during Ramadan; when many of the city’s eateries close for most of the day and the usual East African occupation of relentless selling seems oddly muted. That may either be because the island’s mostly Sunni Muslim population is spending all their time in prayer, or possibly because even in the cooler season in which I visit, it’s still warm enough to make twelve hours of fasting a day a rather tiring thing to do. And relentless selling is rather hard work. That means I’m relatively unhassled as I wander around the narrow rocky streets (and it is wandering; using a map sort of misses the point of the possibilities for discovery in the maze of Stone Town) The only thing I end up buying is a battered copy of “All Creatures Great and Small”, and the seller simply *insists* on giving me a discount which I hadn’t even bargained for.

So, what to do in a slightly sleepy East African version of Morocco? Well, there are two cathedrals in town… The Anglican Church arrived in Zanzibar in the middle of the nineteenth century, just as slavery was being abolished. So much so that the Anglican Cathedral is built on the site of the old slave market; with the altar being on the very spot where slaves would be whipped and beaten. That might seem rather distasteful, but then I could tell you a thing or two about some of the more gruesome pagan sites on which English churches got built… Also, it’s fairly clear to me that the choice of location for the Cathedral was intended as an act of healing rather than an expression of colonial power. That’s a response which fits right in on an island of outstanding natural beauty which religious tolerance is a way of life. Here, figures like David Livingstone are regarded with a great deal of affection (his campaign against the slave trade and time of residence in Zanzibar make him much revered) What’s left of the slave markets themselves are two small holding cells across Cathedral Square underneath St. Hilda’s Youth Hostel. They’re just two dark rooms with iron chains still in place. But it’s enough to make the point.

Anglican Cathedral with mosque just around the corner.

One of the sobering holding cells underneath St. Hilda's hostel.

After signing the Anglican Cathedral guestbook on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, I headed over to the much more gothic looking Catholic Cathedral. After reading a tip in the Lonely Planet which mentioned a perennially open back door, I headed inside to be greeted with a garish pink and yellow paint job, and a local resident playing extremely slow praise music on an electric keyboard. The whole atmosphere was too surreal; I had to leave before anything weirder happened. I ducked into a local Internet café for the first e-mail of the trip and found a rather large selection of pirated DVDs for sale whilst I was waiting. If you had any doubts about the influence of tolerance weighing against the local conservatism, it all fades away when you find a copy of “John Tucker Must Die” on the crowded shelves. E-mails away, I then continued on the British-tourist-abroad trail and hit up the local museums.

The Palace Museum viewed from the balcony of the House of Wonders. Top marks for museum naming!

Of all the local heroes, none seems more revered in Zanzibar’s public history than Princess Salme. Born to the life of a Sultan’s daughter in Zanzibar, she left to Europe to marry a German merchant. After his death, she seems to have made some attempt to return to Zanzibar but (to the obvious regret of whoever wrote the displays in the Palace Museum) was never quite accepted back. I wonder if it’s because, by that point, she was neither one thing or the other. Not quite Arabian, not quite European. Zanzibar’s tolerance, perhaps, requires a little loyalty to go along with it… Neither the Palace Museum or the House of Wonders are quite as exciting as they should be. The former has a number of rooms decorated in the style of the former Sultans over the course of their rule. By the time Zanzibar was approaching the end of its independence, the palace living room was looking suspiciously like a middle class British sitting room. It was probably best they unified with Tanzania before the eighties fashions arrived.

The Sultan's sitting room. Where I can imagine the Sultan and family gathered around to open Christmas presents and listen to the Queen's Speech.

The best thing about the museums is their top floors, which open out onto large balconies with views across the crowded town. You can see where buildings are almost falling into one another because of their proximity, and where power and clothes lines weave in and out of multiple residences high across the streets below. For a confusingly designed cityscape, Stone Town really does make much more sense than it lets on.

Painter on a balcony in front of the towers of the Catholic Cathedral.

Old Fort ampitheatre and the rooftops of Zanzibar.

ZANZIBAR - Why Did God Create the Sinus Cavity?

2009-10-21T23:36:00.003-07:00

Obviously as an act of revenge for my covering up my cough when I entered the country, my head was aching as I boarded my plane for Zanzibar. Having travelled when all kinds of sick in the past, I didn't think anything of it. We flew south east, on a surprisingly overcast Kenyan morning. The only sight - and what a sight - was as we entered Tanzania and Mt. Kilimanjaro poked up through the clouds. I happily snapped away at that, and the Tanzanian coastline as the water became bluer and more beautiful. And then comes the descent. Anyone who's ever been on a descending plane with a blocked sinus will be able to tell you something of the plane. Here's my version. Imagine your head feels like it's going to explode. You're there, right? Okay; now imagine a tropical paradise island is below you which you are desperate to photograph from the air because you are an enormous geek. But everything about operating your camera makes this pain feel many times worse. And, yet, with beautiful coastline being joined by stunning town, you just can't stop snapping...

Mt. Kilimanjaro; the landmark in the cloud between Kenya and Zanzibar.

The stunning west coast of Zanzibar, as seen through my stunning sinus splitting headache.

By the time I'm through Tanzanian immigration (who issued a Visa upon which every piece of my identity was recorded incorrectly) and baggage claim (four burly guys throwing luggage from a truck onto a table and folks clamoring to grab it) I realize that, although the sinus pain has eased, my ears which haven't popped are not going to do so for quite some time. This makes communication with my new cab driver (on Zanzibar, they are called Stephen) somewhat difficult. In fact, it makes all conversation somewhat difficult. And considering that English is the third language of Haji, the manager at the Mangrove Lodge, check in promises to be rather difficult.

Thankfully, though, this is East Africa and not the US or Canada. Can't hear because your ears are hopefully blocked? No problem; just head over to your bungalow on the beach, relax and come deal with the hotel register when you're not so deaf anymore.

One of the bungalows of the Mangrove Lodge. No editing necessary on a photo of a place like this...

I tend not to get into long explanations or recommendations of accommodation when travelling. Because, really, there's nothing more boring than someone telling you about how wonderful this place-you-aren't-at really is. But I'll break my rule for the Mangrove Lodge. Ten beautiful bungalows nestled among palm trees and mangroves; just a stone's throw away from Zanzibar's western shore close to the village of Chuini. (Quieter than other parts of the island, but no less beautiful) Great service, good meals and for a ridiculously small price. It's owned by Italians, and Italians are mostly the ones who stay there (Haji informed me that they did have Canadians from Vancouver just a few weeks before; but I tend to hear that a lot in East Africa so can't vouch for his veracity) but considering this was meant to be the wind down / decompress part of the vacation, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I spend the rest of the afternoon and the next day on the beach ploughing through pretty much every book I brought with me (note to self: yes, children's books are almost always the most satisfying of reads, but they're always going to be short. Remember that!) and chatting with the locals who pass by. "Pass by" is a nominal term since, given that everyone speaks perfect Italian it's clear that this is premiere tourist interaction territory. But there's none of the Brazilian beach style hard selling going on here.

Sunset on the beach outside of the Mangrove Lodge.

I get chatting to Mustafa, a teenager who lives just down the beach. He tells me how he's looking forward to leaving Zanzibar to go almost anywhere else. That's, obviously, a strange thing to hear when you've just stepped off a plane into paradise. But when you look at it logically: a small island with one major town and a whole lot of tourists to flash their wealth and tell you about the wonders of the rest of the world, I can see where the urge comes from. It's probably less enchanting than it looks fishing all day or hauling rocks up and down the beach via reluctant looking cows.

Cattle with rocks being driven down the beach. Daily life on Zanzibar's shores.

I wander down the beach to the next resort; passing the fallen ruins of a Sultan's palace on the way. This resort is called Hakuna Matata. It's owned by Germans; and costs twice as much as the Mangrove Lodge despite (from my cursory glances) looking roughly the same. Perhaps slightly less beautiful. There are locals here as well, doing the same beach bound occupations which look staged but which really aren't. Except here, they speak German as their second language, instead of Italian.

NAIROBI - On the Street without my Breathalyzer

2009-10-20T23:37:00.005-07:00

(These are the journals I took whilst travelling in August and September 2009. Not wanting to spend all my vacation in Internet cafes, I decided to handwrite them and then type them up when I got home. I hope to post regularly over the next few weeks, but that depends on both time and discipline. But we will get there! We begin in Nairobi on the evening of August 23rd.)

Things get off to a less than promising start when the promised cab is not at the airport to pick me up. They may be avoiding meeting flights because of the imminent danger of swine flu; as well as the inevitable visa forms I'm asked to fill in a questionnaire to ascertain my probability of having H1N1. "Are you suffering from any of the following?" it cheerfully asks before reeling off a little list including "Headache", "Sore throat", "Cough", "Sneezing" etc. etc. You know; the sorts of things which you might get from, say, sitting on a plane for twelve hours. I answer no, and stifle my coughs as I hand over my Yankee dollars to purchase a tourist visa. (Don't worry, world, I didn't have swine flu. But more on my exciting illness later!)

Thankfully, East Africa is full of cabs. Really. They're everywhere. So twenty minutes later I'm driving through the cold Kenyan night in the company of my first of many drivers called John. He's typical of most of Kenyan cab drivers. Not only because he's called John, but also because he's unerringly enthusiastic despite it being 10pm on a Sunday night. "This is the worst night to be driving," he tells me as he weaves round some questionable road users, "everyone drinks all day on Sundays, then don't think about it when they drive." That strikes me as a slightly odd statement to make. "Don't the police catch on to that?" I ask. John shakes his head. "They know. But they can do nothing. They do not have those..." He then begins to make a Darth Vader style heavy breathing mime. "Breathalyzers?" I offer. "Yes!" he slaps his hand on the wheel with great enthusiasm.

After giving me his business card with both work and home numbers, he leaves me at my first night's stop; The Kenya Comfort Hotel. I mostly chose this place because it's cheap and right in the heart of the city's central business district. In the middle of the night, the area is somewhat seedy ("That's a lot of women just hanging out by themselves...") but the hotel is really rather good. It has doors; which lock. It has a shower and a toilet; which work. And it has a 24 hour restaurant; which is good. They are using their immensely large flat screen TVs to play an episode of Oprah. But I can forgive them.

By the morning, the hookers have left the corners around the hotel and have been replaced by cab drivers. They stand. They wait. And then they pounce on anyone who wanders out of the hotel. It doesn't take long to be whisked back to the airport by another John who, also, is extremely enthusiastic and keen to hear all about the mysterious country of Canada. This is my first chance to talk about Kenya's current favorite son: President Obama. I tell John that his first international visit was to Canada. This makes him very impressed. I don't have the heart to explain that it was just a hop over the border for him.

For just one night's stay, Nairobi has been somewhat exhausting. Everyone is interested, and intrigued. You don't want to disappoint anyone by not participating fully in the conversation they offer. You will, of course, eventually disappoint nearly everyone if you don't buy the inevitable service offered by conversation's end. But I'm getting ahead of myself; the true touts of Nairobi aren't in full swing at 6am on a Monday. And in Zanzibar during Ramadan? Well, they have other things to think about...

VANCOUVER - Infrequent Flyers Unite

2007-08-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

I decided to do some research on air miles (long story). Here's the most fascinating of the many facts about the aviation economy;

There are around fourteen trillion air miles in circulation. Fourteen Trillion.

There's some debate as to how that equates to monetary value. In my experience; an air mile varies in value from airline to airline (for the difficulty of earning them from British Airways or Cathay Pacific, you'd think they were priceless where as, in fact, they just don't want tourists to earn any) but The Economist had a stab by putting an arbitrary amount on them. Five cents.

In that equation; the value of the world's air miles is $700 billion.

To put that in perspective, that's more than all the US currency in circulation in the world today.

If that seems rather a lot; it's because it is. There are far more air miles in circulation than there are eligible seats for them to be redeemed. If everyone in the world who had accumulated miles were to cash them in all at once; it would take 25 years to get through the backlog.

Be afraid, American Airlines. We're coming for you...

Does this seem like a bit of a problem to anyone else? That the world's airlines have created a system of currency which has left them with an impossible liability? Not really. The potential for such a crisis to occur is, after all, fairly small. And even if all the miles in circulation were to be eventually cashed in; airlines have over the years been gradually squeezing more and more clauses into their redemption.

American Airlines, for example, informed me a few months back that the expiry date on the miles I had accrued during my trip around the world had jumped forward from 2009 to the end of this year (yes, all air miles have an expiry date attached to them. Typically you need to post activity to your account every eighteen months or so to keep them active) There's also the possibility to squeezing the value of miles by limiting the types and times of flights they can be redeemed on.

In other words, and just like any other type of currency, air miles are prone to inflation and will become increasingly worthless as time goes on. Therefore, the sensible thing to do would be to spend them whilst they still retain something of their value. Especially if you're an infrequent flyer, since yours will become the most worthless most quickly. In fact; let's all do it together and force an air miles meltdown!

OHIO - The Sense of an End

2007-07-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you were all expecting, it's time for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows review. As I'm sure you were not expecting; it shall be short and contain no spoilers. This is because I have just one point to make. It's about endings.

Broadly speaking; there are three ways to end a series. Typically, I find that people have a particular favorite and, therefore, a good ending is one which fits in with their view on what endings should look like and anything else is, therefore, a disappointment.

You can tell a lot about a person, I think, by what sort of ending they prefer.

The first type of ending is the completely open kind. One which takes us out of a story right in the middle of the action; sometimes literally mid-scene. Good examples of this type of ending are Joss Whedon's Angel which left our heroes standing in front of an impossibly large army and said 'Let's go to work' and David Chase's The Sopranos which left our anti-heroes in front of an impossibly complicated meal and said nothing. This sort of ending really doesn't turn up in literary series very much and tends to court controversy whenever it rears its head in TV and the movies. Those who enjoy these endings typically point to the fact that series are about ongoing threads and that, just because we will no longer be viewing events, does not mean they are not occurring without us. Life goes on; there's no such thing as an 'ending.' Those who loathe these point out, of course, that they're not necessarily proper endings at all.

The second is the one I call 'winning the battle but still fighting the war.' Victory has been achieved on one level and the central struggle of a drama has ended. However, the larger over arching conflicts remain unresolved. The characters, though, will not be left the face the coming onslaughts with the same frailties and flaws they have suffered in the past. Something has fundamentally changed underneath and, somehow, we know that the tables have turned. Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a fine example of this type of ending (I choose to ignore his entirely unnecessary "Season 8" graphic novel nonsense) as are the closing moments of Chris Carter's The X-Files as Mulder and Scully realise they've pretty much *lost* their war, but are probably more invested in fighting it than they were at the start of the series. These endings are enjoyed by those whose imagination is sparked by the idea of ongoing adventures and stories happening of which they have no knowledge but which keep their favorite characters alive. This type of ending is loved by those who find endings traumatic, and who like to still have a sniff of a potential sequel to ease the pain of their favorite series passing; but others point out that this sort of ending is surely reserved for episodes in the middle of a series (the endings of Harry Potter 4, 5 and 6 all fit the bill, for example) and to put it at an end is rather anticlimactic.

And then there is the third type of ending. The 'happily ever after' ending, or maybe the 'ten years later' ending. The battle, the war and the story are all over. We are now given assurance by the author that we have witnessed the most significant parts of their characters' lives. Of course, those lives go on and we may find ourselves brought in at a later point to see where everyone has ended up and who married who and what they named all their children etc. etc. We are safe in the knowledge that we have not missed anything, and that our characters are no longer in danger. Obviously, this is often the chosen ending to fairy tales but other great series have utilized it to great effect. Tolkien saw fit to tie up each and every dangling thread of The Lord of the Rings; and when he couldn't quite squeeze it all into the main text he provided a whole raft of appendices just to make sure that the finality of the ending was not undermined. Similarly, C.S. Lewis saw fit to end the Chronicles of Narnia by ending Narnia itself. Interestingly, Lewis actually acknowledges that the characters' stories won't end simply because he is not writing them, but he leaves us in no doubt that the story is most definetly over. It's really rather good, so I'll quote it:
And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
This type of ending is, of course, loved and loathed in equal measure. The need to see a story through to its very end is seen as deeply romantic and effecting on the one hand, and as sentimental twaddle on the other. 'Happy enders' are typically portrayed in criticism either as people who know nothing of the tapestry of life; or people who appreciate it far more deeply and profoundly than those who clamor for troubling or abrupt endings.

I guess that I'm unusual, then, in that I enjoy all three types of ending. When, of course, each is used in their right context. I equally enjoyed the endings of Buffy, Angel and Narnia

I do, however, have a favorite type of ending. Everybody does.

Deathly Hallows probably isn't the best of the Harry Potter series but its problems are irrelevant. The only thing that matters about Deathly Hallows is how it brings to an end the Harry Potter series. Not just in its final pages; but throughout the story. It's a great one. A really great one.

And obviously; it's my favorite type of ending.

WASHINGTON - The Bitch is Back

2007-07-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Another month or so of silence and then the blog returns. Apologies, as usual, for the delays but the end of term squeeze for youth group matters followed by quick trips away and then relentless reconfiguring of my brain for summer camps has rendered me almost incapacitated as a blogger... And, at the end, a review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; a film which has puzzled me more than any other this year.

But firstly: Desolation Peak.

Of the many joys about living in the Pacific Northwest, none is more joyous than the fact that just a few hours away in every direction there is wilderness (well, an awfully wet kind in some directions...) and incredible glacial landscapes waiting to be explored. Over the long weekend, three of us headed down from Vancouver to the small town of Hope (where they filmed Hope Floats, Colin Firth fans!) and then south along gravel track across the US Border to Ross Lake on the northernmost point of the North Cascades.

Brown bear by the side of the road on the way to Ross Lake. Brown bears are the dangerous ones, but this one didn't seem too bothered by three hikers in a car. On the bear intelligence scale, he's obviously a little closer to Winnie than Yogi.

The aim of the weekend's hiking was Desolation Peak; a charmingly named outcrop surrounded by such cuddly named features as Starvation Ridge and Nightmare Camp. Obviously someone had a pretty lousy experience or two in the region at some point in their life (so much so they even named one of the other mountains Jackass) But, for some, isolated wilderness is not just something for the weekends but a real way of life. On top of Desolation Peak's two thousand or so metres of elevation there sits a lookout hut. Like many around the US, it's home during the summer to a park ranger whose job it is to look out around the surrounding area for fires. Unlike others, though, which are often towers in forests, this is one of the most isolated in the country. It's a four hour hike up on a good day; meaning that if you decide you need to get hold of someone it's a seven or eight hour round trip and there's no guarantee of encountering anyone without another eight hours hike at the bottom back to civilisation.

The shack at the top of the world.

For some, then, hiking up to such a place is a way of life. To others, something to aim for during a strenuous hiking trip. But for many it's a type of pilgrimage as this shack was once home to Jack Kerouac; who spent a season as a fire lookout on one of his many Beatnik travels. And then wrote a string of books and poems about the experience. Depending on which you read it was either the greatest, or the worst, experience of his life.

Purely from a hiking perspective, the experience is nothing but rewarding. From the gradually widening views of the lake beneath you on the way up, to the deer quietly munching beside the path to the awesome views of the craggy landscape as you break out into the alpine vegetation; there's plenty of incentive for the walk itself. The final ascent up the pillar of rock which houses the hut feels almost designed to inspire achievement, especially early on in the summer when you may have just spent five minutes trudging through still heavy snowdrifts in the blazing sun and wondering how fresh the bear prints and bloodstains are... And then there are the moments you can spend wandering around the lookout hut and the summit and viewing the snow capped peaks in every direction. It's a landscape which one might find lonely, but impossible to see as empty.

Jack's shack

Although lugging a backpack two thousand metres isn't always hilarity; it's worth making camp up on the mountain for the night. As the three hundred and sixty degree sunset gives way to starscapes (and, apparently, the Aurora Borealis over Mount Hozomeen according to Jack. We couldn't see it, though) the sense of the world being closed off around is palpable. Yet what remains in the darkness is no less enchanting; especially as when you're living in the city you miss so much of it.

One of the questions about Kerouac is why a man who spent so much time with and writing vividly about living life with a host of colourful characters would want to spend such extended periods of time alone and in such complete isolation from the world. Modern personality testing might provide some of the clinical explanations. But spending a night up on the roof of the world is how you can really begin to suggest some answers.

And now, onto Harry Potter.

Funny thing; when I first saw this poster for Harry Potter:

I was immediately reminded of this one for Alien 3:

... Which, for those who remember such things, is probably the closest cinema has ever come to producing a truly nihilistic film. From the opening minute culling of the remaining supporting cast of Aliens through to Sigourney Weaver's suicidal plunge in the closing moments; Alien 3 is an almost relentlessly bleak story of ever increasing loss against a seemingly unstoppable series of foes.

I then forgot all about that until I saw the film. Harry Potter 5 is great. It's the best of the series by far. But it is also incredibly grim. Cold, remote and unrelentingly dark from beginning to end. It may not be nihilistic; but it's certainly the most hard going film I've seen for a good couple of years. And most of those weren't marketed towards children. Like I said right at the top of this post; this film *really* confused me.

Harry Potter 5 is a fascinating lesson in the process of adaptation. The film's greatest strength is that it takes a pretty poor, overly convoluted book and turns it into an incredibly tight piece of character storytelling about how Harry, trying to cope with the darkness of film 4, sees himself at a crossroads between giving into anger and revenge or embracing his friendships and human connections. It's really the only one of the films to have a strong emotional arc for Harry which makes sense. And the credit for that belongs to new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg because those threads were all lost in the mess of the original novel. The storyline is outstanding, Dan Radcliffe's performance as Harry is mesmerising and David Yates carries on this series' fine tradition of making each entry grow up along with its characters. Prisoner of Azkaban hit the raging hormones of thirteen year old life spot on, Goblet of Fire successfully showed the change to fourteen with the utter confusion of relationships and Order of the Pheonix gets fifteen completely right with mood swings and a sneaking mistrust of all authority added to the mix. And, for once, the film makers have done it better than J.K. "CAPTIAL LETTERS TO SIGNIFY EMOTIONAL RESPONCE" Rowling. Order of the Pheonix is the best cinematic adaptation of J.K. Rowling's work.

All good, right? Here's the problem: Order of the Pheonix is also the worst cinematic adaptation of Rowling's work. Because, despite the ever growing sense of darkness and insecurity in Harry's world, the Potter world has never been so unrelentingly grim as it is during the two hours of this film. We begin with scenes of horror, progress to witch hunts (figurative and literal), take a quick stop at child torture before a trip into mental illness and, finally, some more torture and a good dollop of death to top things off. Pheonix may have gotten away with a PG certificate on this side of the Atlantic but I'm not sure I'd want anyone under the age of fifteen watching a scene in which a children are physically tortured and mentally abused by sadistic authority figures, as happens at least half a dozen times in this film.

All of this comes, of course, from Rowling's original novel. But that's not all there was in that book. Although the physical and emotional torture was at the centre of Harry's story; there were plenty of brighter passages to lighten the load. Characters like Tonks and the Weasleys provided comic relief and subplots like the "Weasley is our King" Quiddich saga lightened the load between he tragedy. The problem was that, without any sense of an editor's pen on the manuscript, Rowling's book was too unwieldy for cinematic adaptation. The film makers were right to focus on Harry's story (it's the film's greatest strength) but the price they've paid is to suck all the heart from the original story. And, more worryingly, to create some really rather problematic characters.

Take Luna Lovegood. Easily my favourite character from the books; Luna is from the Emma Woodhouse and Cordelia Chase school of characters who are present in the text to say all the uncomfortable things which usually remain in the subtext. In the books, Luna is a delightful character who has a kookiness and paranoia which allows her to operate on a different level to the emotionally repressed teenagers around her. She brings a childlike innocence to exclaiming and dwelling on home truths, which Harry eventually realises make her an authority... In the film, though, there is no time for Luna to be a speaker of truth. She is a kooky cipher who throws out non sequitors which all serve plot exposition rather than humorous asides. We learn quickly that she's a victim of personal loss; and Harry continually identifies with this side of her. Barely anyone else interacts with her. As such, there is no other conclusion to draw from the character of Luna in the film than that she is a terribly emotionally damaged young woman who cannot deal with the pains of the real world and so decides to live in a self created fantasy. She is a symbol of madness which Harry could become; rather than a loveable kook. It's wrong, it's unsettiling and it deeply bothers me.

So is it the best of the series? The worst? Or something in between? So much of myself tells me that it is the best; it's certainly the first time I've ever become emotionally invested in Harry's character, for example. And, coming from such a poor novel, that's an outstanding achievement. Yet (and speaking as someone who is a firm believer in the vital importance of carefully used darkness in children's books and films) I can't possibly recommend something so unrelentingly grim and horrific which clearly is advertising itself to children. If it were for adults, I might not have a problem (although it's *still* a dark film, even then) but it's not. And I do.

Ultimately we have to go back to Alfonso Cuarón's Prisoner of Azkaban to answer this question. Possibly the most important children's film of the decade; Azkaban is the perfect blend of darkness and levity. It redefined the series by basically picking up Christopher Columbus' first two efforts, shaking them violently and yelling 'grow up!' until all those starched school uniforms loosened. Its production design was second to none (and, indeed, it's interesting to note that Pheonix has taken a step back from Goblet of Fire and looks and feels almost exactly the same as Azkaban. All Cuarón's contributions to Hogwarts are revisited multiple times, from the courtyard set to the covered bridge, pumpkin patch and fabulous Clock Tower. Note that Mike Newell's Owl Tower is nowhere to be seen) but I've always had a lingering suspicion that the script wasn't quite as good as it needed to be. The greatest moments of Azkaban come from off-the-cuff interactions and pure comic improvisation which make it an *hilarious* film, as well as a dark one. So although the script is weak, the necessary story beats are all there and there is plenty of time for cinematic flights of fantasy on the side. As such, it was the definitive cinematic interpretation of Rowling's work.

Order of the Pheonix beats Azkaban on the script and performance front but chooses to confine its adaptation of Rowling's world to the grim side. As such, it is a wonderful, wonderful horror film and a great adaptation of The Order of the Pheonix, but a lousy adaptation of Harry Potter

Random points which need making:

1) Having moaned that Voldermort's return in Goblet of Fire wasn't scary enough, I was pleased to see that David Yates went in completley the opposite direction this time and made him utterly, utterly terrifying. From appearing in suits on Platform 9 3/4, to a surreal shot in which he takes over the eleven year old Harry's body (a terrific bit of referencing to his original plan in Philosopher's Stone) he is truly the stuff of nightmares. At last. Although I'm not keen on some of the other darkness of the film I do firmly believe that the Lord of all Evil should be, y'know, actually evil rather than pantomime...

2) ... On the other hand, Imedla Staunton's Umbridge is just demonic and I suspect the film makers didn't quite realise just how scary it is watching a woman in pink and her cat pictures all smile whilst a teenager is (basically) self harming. The trappings don't lighten the tone. As Rowling well knew when she created the character, these things make her *more* scary.

3) Another example of how topsy turvy the film's tone is: Harry and Cho's super sexy kissing scene is ended with a lingering shot of blooming mistletoe; a confusing image to say the least; given that mistletoe is a symbol of death if ever there was one. It's like Yates and team took every possible light moment and said "now how can we make *this* one horrible as well?..."

4) Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith, bless them, continuing to mine whatever they can from their half a dozen lines and minuscule amount of screentime. Rickman's "obviously" is wonderful. Helena Bonham Carter, meanwhile, continues her career with another barmy performance. For those who follow such things, Bonham Carter has two performances within her: corseted or MAD MAD MAD!!! Needless to say, this is one of the latter.

5) Do try and see the film in Imax if at all possible. The 3D sequence at the end rocks beyond all measure.

Basically; it's Alien 3 for children. And, as much I love both that film and this one; I don't think that's a good thing.

VANCOUVER - The Movies Sucketh

2007-05-31T16:22:00.000-07:00

I'm mildly irritated by the almost uniform awfulness of everything I have seen at the cinema for the past month. I feel I need to vent; and this is my favourite exhaust pipe to the world. Now this isn't a "I hate sequels, I like art" rant. I love blockbuster films; I think genre films are almost always more satisfying cinema going experiences and back in my journalistic days I was always "Hollywood defender" when some precocious first year film studies student wanted to publish yet another rant about how brilliant Scorpio Rising was; purely on the basis that they'd watched it in their previous week's lecture. I live and breathe big budget nonsense. And, yet, even I must conceded that the cinema of summer 2007 is in a dire state. Let's rundown the usual suspects and worth out why:

Spiderman 3: So, okay, I wasn't crazy about the first two. The interesting thing about the Spiderman series is that it's the only successful comic book franchise which has remained truly close to its original source material and style. Batman and X-Men quickly ignored their brightly coloured roots and went straight for the modern gloominess and heavy philosophising. Spiderman was all about the colour, the thrills and the fact that it really might be quite fun to be a superhero. Trouble is that when you're painting adolesents with such bright colours you don't really get to any psychological depths. So Spiderman for me has always been a little disposable. Like the OC with action scenes.

And Spiderman 3's problem is not just that it's the same as the others but that, this time, there isn't anything left to say. Here's where movie franchises have big problems (and we'll come back to this in every review): unless you have some sort of Lord of the Rings cast iron guaranteed way of knowing you have sequels to continue a story; you have to wrap everything up at the end of each film in case you deliver a clunker and the whole thing is scrapped. Sometimes you can hedge your bets (George Lucas knew he could put a cliffhanger on The Empire Strikes Back because, by that point, he was pretty much financing Star Wars himself) but with a mega money gargantuan like Spiderman, nobody is willing to.

To recap: at the end of Spiderman 2, Peter Parker has successfully overcome both the desire to use his superpowers for revenge against folks who personally wrong him, and a whole bunch of normal fellas turned super villains by ever more unlikely industrial accidents. He has managed to get things together with the untouchable Mary Jane Watson...

What happens in 3? Well, basically, Peter Parker has to overcome to desire to use his superpowers for revenge against folks who personally wrong him (in the most unlikely bit of continuity wrangling you'll see all summer, it turns out the random killing of his uncle wasn't quite so random as once thought. A turn of events so dumbass it not only messes up the film, but also messes with our experience of the first) He also has to battle a normal fella turned supervillian by the most unlikely industrial accident in the history of industry (frankly, any city which allows a 'Particle Physics Facility' to operate with such shoddy safeguards deserves to get smashed to bits) and, after a quick bit of mid relationship angst, he managed to get things together with Mary Jane Watson.

It's pointless. It's insulting and it's really, really annoying that the whole thing takes half an hour longer than the last couple of films when nothing of importance is actually happening. Anything to redeem it? Well, the action is all good, especially in Imax. But, you know what? It cost two hundred million dollars, of *course* the action is going to be good. And I did enjoy the EMO sidetrack; only because it reminds us that Sam Raimi is the sort of guy who finds pretentious superhero cliches as pretentious as the rest of us and is happy to undercut it with ludicrous dance numbers whenever he's allowed to by the producers. Sadly, after that, we're back to the same old, same old... Also worth mentioning is the performance by James Franco who is either such a gifted actor, or so devoid of acting ability, that all his truly sinister moments take place when he's smiling in a happy and carefree way. Those teeth can cause damage, man. Just put them away.

Shrek the Third: Joining Spiderman on the pantheon of 'films which have nothing new whatsoever to say' is Shrek. To be fair, the first one didn't have *that* much to say aside from 'body image doesn't matter, as long as ogres only date other ogres' but there was some reason for its existence and that was pushing the limits of computer animation further forward and yet still maintaining the simple fairy tale charms which ink and cel animation has dominated since Snow White. I love traditional animation but I'm not against a little progress. Nor exploding birds; the highlight of the whole enterprise.

Shrek 2 was more of the same; although with most of the story removed and replaced with sitcom set pieces (the embarrassing dinner with the in-laws, double entendres from the gender-ambivalent bar person, the bit where the sidekick has a fight with a new sidekick etc.) and, for the highlight, Rupert Everett turned up in a great extended cameo as Prince Charming. Not surprisingly; the first thing Shrek the Third does is to destroy those small moments of good will by bringing back Prince Charming as a *completely different* character who's suddenly not a fully grown mummy's boy but an evil genius hell bent on domination of the increasingly dull fairytale kingdom of Far, Far Away.

Can anyone explain to me what the point of Far, Far Away is and why it's so tremendously important who's the king, queen or court jester of the place? Who cares if Prince Charming takes over the place and turns into into dinner theatre? There's a perfectly good kingdom back where Lord Faquuad ruled in the first film. As with Spiderman's indecisiveness on the subject of Ben Parker's death; Shrek suffers from retroactive story dis-continuity of the highest disorder. Except this time the material is aimed at ten year olds and, although I can take crappy storytelling aimed at my age group (I'm an expert on that myself) I refuse to let it taint the minds of impressionable youngsters.

For adults, then, Shrek the Third's problem is, simply, that it's not funny. With original scriptwriters off punning away on the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels (more on *them* later) a whole raft of new gag writers have come in and attempted to string the gags together and call it a script. Not the same thing, fellas... Comic set pieces are replaced with one liners of the lowest order, Live and Let Die is utilised completely out of context (a crime in my book) and Justin Timberlake is in it. Sigh.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: Now this was the one which really hurt. I couldn't really care less about Spiderman or Shrek but I *loved* the first Pirates film. I loved that it snuck up almost entirely unawares between those tiresome Matrix sequels and produced the funniest, most imaginative film of 2003. It was flippant; it mocked the concept of blockbusters and characters needing to be deeply felt. Of course my heart sank when the 'back to back sequels' idea reared its ugly head. I mean, come on, we were there. We saw what happened with The Matrix when a great one off idea was suddenly rewritten into a franchise. We all knew Pirates 2 and 3 had to be crap.

I forgave Dead Man's Chest a whole bunch of problems on pure good will alone. Yes, it was too long and suffered exactly the same 'break up happy couples and decent endings for no reason' syndrome of Spiderman and Shrek before it. Yes, it squandered a lot of good will by taking Johnny Depp's wonderful supporting turn from the first film and repositioning him at the centre of the sequels. And, yes, Orlando Bloom's sex face is getting increasingly tiresome. But it was, generally, fun. New additions like Naomie Harris and Bill Nighy were allowed to run rampant with their characters; the location shooting was beautiful and there was that great bit where, in the middle of a swordfight between the boys, Kiera Knightley sat on a beach and pouted.

At World's End may be the worst film produced this year. Just before its release, everyone involved commented how, in the rush to get production off the ground in 2005, a script for Pirates 3 wasn't written when shooting got underway in the Bahamas. Let's just consider that again: scenes were shot, dialogue was spoken, and nobody involved really knew what was happening. This explains pretty much everything in Pirates 3. It explains why there is barely any action in the whole three hour mess (you can only write action scenes when you know where characters are in relation to each other and what everyone hopes to achieve by the end of them. The fact that, to get to the film's only two major set pieces, there are literally hours and hours of dialogue scenes comes as no surprise) it explains why Orlandom Bloom and Kiera Knightley give soul destroyingly awful performances (they have no idea what their characters are doing. First they love each other! Then they don't! Then they don't even trust each other! Then they're getting married! Usually all within the same scene! Then she becomes Head Girl of all pirates! And they stick his heart in a box! etc. etc.)

There are good moments; which there darn well *have* to be when there's this much talent involved. The afformentionned Bill Nighy and Naomie Harris: good.... Until they're both written out of the story because, obviously, somebody realised how they were acting all the 'stars' off of the screen. Geoffrey Rush is great fun as Barbossa; the only real piraty pirate in the film. And why is he there?... Ah yes, for no reason whatsoever... And then there is Tom Hollander's death scene. Best. Death. Ever. Of course, all of this is completley outweighted by the remaining two hours and fifty minutes of crud.

But the worst thing; the thing which makes my gut churn most is that it takes itself utterly, utterly seriously. Not only did the writers and director attempt to back engineer a mythology for a swashbuckler; but they've configured it in such a way that every single character buys into it whole heartedly. It's not only non sensical, it's not only badly directed: it's also no fun whatsoever.

And herein lies the problem with all three franchises and pretty much all of Hollywood's output this year: after one successful film and plenty of money made, various film makers now consider themselves to be gifted storytellers and masterful artists. They believe that because people paid a lot of money to see their work, that the work itself is elevated above the level of mere entertainment and must be far more significant. As such, when it comes to the inevitable sequels, the true purpose of the original films (in all three of these cases: to have a whole lot of fun and be flippant and offbeat) is thrown away in favour of pretentious garbage like Aunt May's hideous "heroes" speech in Spiderman 2, the whole issue of kingship in Shrek (I mean, hello; he's still an ogre) and the entire 'Davy-Jones-locker-pieces-of-eight-heart-in-a-box-crap of Pirates

These people have squandered vast amounts of money, the services of hundreds of professionals and our goodwill on producing sanctimonious drivel. And, with franchises popping up and being resurrected left, right and centre with the same idiotic delusions of grandeur, we're going to see much more of it to come. I have to confess; although I wish no ill will to one of my favourite actors I have secretly been hoping for many years that Harrison Ford will have some sort of major injury. Nothing life threatening, you understand. Just some sort of major, limp-inducing catastrophe which means he can no longer perform his own stunts. And, therefore, that Indiana Jones 4 will not get made. I've said many times that it's my favourite film series; and in many ways it encompasses the "screw you" attitude towards blockbuster movie conventions which I've professed so much admiration of in this post (is there another hero, aside from Daniel Craig's Bond, who gets so beaten up and battered as our man Jones?) The fourth one will be crap. There is no other possible outcome. And, if it is, I may stop caring about genre films. Really.

... Thankfully, there is always TV. Hurrah for TV! Constantly involving, constantly interesting and barely any back engineering / pretentious waffle in sight. Except for Battlestar Galactica, but its constantly desperate, ever despairing bleakness is what makes it so wonderful. Last week the season three finale of Lost probably restored my faith in the ability of visual media to be as involving as literature when constructed in the right way. The episode Through the Looking Glass is a masterpiece and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, in this decade, TV has definitely overtaken the cinema as the best storytelling media. And as someone who loves cinema, that does make me a little sad.

Cliche? What?...

Anyway, enough of all that, here's a picture of some lumberjacks shinning down trees in the glorious Vancouver sunshine to make this blog look ever so slightly more Canadian than it did a few minutes ago. Hurrah!

VANCOUVER - Monkies and Spreadable Lunchmeats

2007-05-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

Ah, yes, blogging. In between bouts of Extreme Youthwork (like a real job, only longer) and trundling to hang out with new crowds of exciting people who don't live on the North Shore of vancouver, it's beeen a bit of a quiet period for me and the blog. Not a quiet time for communication, though, since recently I have been discovering the many varied wonders of Facebook. You see, it turns out that those of us who previously conducted our lives via the media of beautifully laid out and structured e-mails might as well have been ripping feathers off geese and trying to scrape away on parchment. E-mail is dead and instant messaging is king. And, for those of us who hate the latter and long for the former, Facebook is a happy medium between them. So join up now and come be my friend, you have a much better chance of being aqaunited with the intricacies of my life if you do.

Probably a future Church homepage picture. That whole realism thing is so passe

Easter is, of course, a marvellous time for the Church. If you're not working at one, I hearily recommend visiting around the time. If you are; you're in for a fast and furious few weeks where every concievable activity the church is involved in has to have some sort of big statement; whether it be producing a newsletter or wheeling out some bizarre decoration which nobody remembers the point of anymore for an annual airing. Between the madness we dragged dozens of eldery folk down to the local rocks for a rain fuelled sunrise service. It all rather sounds like an attempt at a mass culling, I know, but actually was one of the spiritual highpoints of the year. Big grey clouds make a good service... Of course, the day doesn't end there for your church employees who then have to drag themselves back to Church and dry off for the next service at which they might be involved in setting up, singing, managing the worship group and putting things away. Or, indeed, all of the above. At least there's Easter Monday. Unless you're a youth leader, in which case your day off comes somewhere around Thursday.

That said, the twelve hours or so of Easter dinner / egg hunting and poker with the Galvanis as a followup certainly didn't hurt (especially as gas prices rose again this month and I managed to win enough not to have to worry about them)

The West Vancouver Boys in Black. We made car rallying look *good*

Other exciting distractions have followed. The St. Francis Car Rally (which is now less of a car rally and more a version of the Amazing Race with less exoic locales) took place last weekend and was a blast. Obviously the youth groups were well represented; and the youth leader's car was looking suitably smart for the occassion. Unfortunatley, the vicar was also competing and nobody can compete with a man of God decorated with flowers... That said; there's no church bonding experience like seeing photos of members aged 8-80 gathered in grocery stores with strangers doing the YMCA dance. Or climbing into a random ice box at a local gas station... just because it's there.

And then there were confirmations, which was terribly exciting for me as I'd never led a confirmation class before let alone a whole series of preperation. Whether or not those where a success is for beings more ethereal than me to judge but everyone managed to kneel before the Bishop and have the confirmation magic happen and nothing burst into flames or showed obvious signs of Satantic interference. So a job pretty well done. T'was one of those weekends where, despite exhausation abounding, I could expereince the full scope and wonder of what youth ministry is all about and get to feel all pleased with myself about how things have been going. And then on Monday we played Kabaddi! Ah yes.

Just enough time before today's crucial Canuck/Ducks playoff (don't worry if you don't understand) to give you your film recommendation of the month: Everything's Gone Green is a good example of Canadian filmmaking and storytelling. Written, as it is, by Vancouver's foremost social commentator, Douglas Coupland. Fans of Coupland will know what to expect (and I mean that literally as great chunks of the thing have been lifted from a number of his works, especially JPod), with a whimsical tale of thirty-something angst in the offices of the British Columbia Provincial Lottery. Worth seeing for the droll dialogue and general understatement but especially for the glorious location shooting in Vancouver. You too can become familliar with my daily wonder which is driving the Lions Gate Bridge between Downtown and the North Shore, or understand why a joke about picking up West Vancouver girls on the Grouse Grind is so very funny. There's also plenty of canny Coupland observation about the social makeup of the city and the fact that greater immigration and cultural mixing does not necessarily a melting pot make. Go see it; then book your visit.

VANCOUVER - A Little Something for Easter

2007-04-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Mel!

VANCOUVER - Why We Love Shades of Grey

2007-03-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

Ah, Spring Break. A sort of break. In the Spring. Whilst my youth types are off gallivanting around the country for late season skiing or early season sunbathing; I've had the chance to go off and explore a little more of British Columbia. Oh no, wait. I have wanted to be doing that. But then came the rain. You've heard of this. yes? As a result, those travels have been postponed all week. Since, really; much of the excitement of going into the province would be to enjoy a sort of mini-roadtrip-type-of-thing. And, as we all know, mucho-rain-does-not-an-enjoyable-mini-roadtrip-type-of-a-thing make.

Until that point, I've been making do touching in on some as yet unexplored regions of Vancouver.

Big ol' mountains as viewed from another big ol' mountain. Do mountains get bored being climbed and skied upon, and looking at each other all day?

Mount Seymour is the third of the local mountains, after Cypress and Grouse. Each has a slightly different atmosphere. Grouse, with its cable car system and mountain top restaurant, feels the most commercial. Cypress is typical West Vancouver efficiency all over leaving Seymour to feel like the wild, untamed looking stepchild on the east of the North Shore. There is, of course, skiing and views galore available from the top but the more interesting aspects of Seymour are beneath the summit. It has a great deal of forest on and around its slopes; a few metres walk into being enough to make one feel incredibly isolated. (These, incidentally, were the forests used to double for numerous 'backside of nowhere' locations in The X-Files) I guess the perfect description of a couple of hours hiking around the lower, snow free trails in late winter would be 'gloomy.' But really rather enjoyable. That tells you all you need to know about the place, really. And this author.

Rock pools and the lingering smell of sea life on the air. That'll be Deep Cove, then.

Just down the road from Seymour and at the eastern edge of the North Shore is Deep Cove. West Vancouver may have the reputation but there are other pretty corners of Vancouver which are slowly becoming more built up and exclusive. Deep Cove, though, still has a fishing community kind of charm, even if the boats are all a bit too white, shiny and onboard motor filled. There is a great little ice cream place on the main street, near a tiny theatre and souvenir shops boasting all manner of Deep Cove merchandise (I didn't go in but I can honestly believe you could get more lost in the shop than you could in the Cove) Sitting on a rotten log down on the grey, rocky beach I had vague memories of New Zealand's west coast north island. But maybe that's just me mixing up my coves.

That's your travel-log for the week. Apologies for the long delay between entries but I've been without computer for several weeks (apparently my hard drive is defective. Which, if you know anything about computers, should make you feel incredibly sorry for me as that's a one-in-ten-thousand type problem for a new computer to have. Sympathise, darn you!) but I do aim to write some more interesting things soon. Maybe something about what life in Canada is really like and how it differs from the UK. Hmmm. That sounds like fun.

Mission of the week for North American readers and those who have no guilt about YouTube piracy; watch the season three finale of the marvellous Battlestar Galactica this Sunday and find out who those naughty final five Cylons really are, whilst marvelling at the scary way Mary McConnell's increasingly dark President Roslin always smiles when relaying dire news. Sorry for those for whom all that means nothing. Make it your duty to rectify such a sorry state of affairs.

VANCOUVER - Battle of the Operas

2007-03-02T14:22:00.000-08:00

I have much more blog worthy things to talk about; but I couldn't let this particular gem of a report from BBC News pass:

US woman crashes into test centre

There are two things going on in this story which I draw your attention to. Firstly, and obviously, anything about people having more trouble with their driving tests than yours truly is always pleasing to read. And, thanks to the foresight of BBC journalists who know those old adages about people loving car wrecks, they even provided video of the incident for our voyeuristic pleasure.

And I'm obviously not the only one enjoying the pleasure as, at time of posting, this was the most read story on the BBC News website (eclipsing such non-stories as the abduction of tourists in northern Ethiopia and the murder of several Iraqi police by insurgents) But even that is not the reason for my real interest.

No, that's not what really interests me. It's the last paragraph:

The videotape also shows a man in a Superman costume walking around the car, but he did not stop to help the driver or any of the victims. His identity is unknown.

Aside from the sheer randomness (always a plus, in my book) it's the implied accusation here which makes me wonder if there is any hope left for modern journalism in the Internet age. Since, apparently, not only is it relevant to tell us that there was a man dressed as Superman in a story about eleven people being injured by a driving accident, but it is important to note that the mystery man wasn't actually Superman because he didn't help anyone out. And that this revelation is more important than reporting the actual incident; since that's what the article's concluding paragrpah is solely concerned with.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this: (1) The BBC is implying that people who dress in superhero costumes have some sort of implicit mandate and responcibility to be getting involved in world events. And that faliure to do so is a newsworthy event. Or (2) Clearly, the process of reportage from this incident was someone at the BBC finding this rather funny video on some sort of file sharing site and then playing 'say what you see' to create a news story around it.

BBC News were moaning and groaning about job cuts towards the end of last year. Stories like this do not, I feel, help their case. That said; it was a heck of a lot funnier than that Ethiopia story.

VANCOUVER - Notes on an L Plate

2007-02-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

So, when I was weighing up leaving Britain for Canada-town many months ago, I drew up one of those lists where you divide the piece of paper into 'pros' and 'cons' and gradually weight the columns into the configuration you wanted them to end up in in the first place. For example, my pros list included such list-fillers as "seeing Oscar nominated movies before the Oscars take place" and "getting neck cramps when sizing up tall trees." The cons list was relatively short. However, amongst its more significant entries and, indeed, higher than pretty much anything else, was "re-taking my driving test."

I hate driving tests. I hated doing it the first time back in Britain; so much so that between my first (disastrous) attempt and the one where I finally passed, five months elapsed. And I proceeded to get anxiety attacks about the whole experience even after it was all over. Cut to six years later and I'm faced with having to do it all over again in Canada with a whole new set of driving laws and regulations to contend with. Knowing that failure would result in the confiscation of my British license (and, therefore, being unable to drive without supervision) I put it off until my grace period of three months had elapsed. Since then, and for the previous three weeks or so, I've been repeating that same cycle of anxiety attacks and almost constant inferiority complexes about the whole business.

Why I suffer so badly during this ordeal, I do not know. I am not an unconfident public speaker, I can walk through even the dodgiest areas of New York City without a care in the world, but put me in a car with someone pointing the end of their biro in the direction of travel and observing my shoulder checks in multiple mirrors and I am capable of the silliest of mistakes and the most complete of mental and physical breakdowns. Like many of my more unusual social disfunctions; I like to blame this one on genetics and the quirks of my parents. Because then they can blame it on their parents, and so on, and nobody has to shoulder the blame for anything.

Long story short is that, last Friday, I managed to pass the damn thing to become a proper Canadian drivery person. And I'm hoping that sometime over the next few months I can safely forget about the whole experience. Someone suggested to me I might want to train for a minifies license in the future. Having considered this for a couple of days; I am making the following Steve Redgrave-esque pronouncement: If I show any sign of taking a driving test ever again, everyone has my permission to shoot me. I never, ever, want to go through one ever again. If I'm emigrating again; it shall be to a country which accepts a British or Canadian driving license without the need for a further road test. End of discussion.

Of course, those familiar with Sir Redgrave's achievements will know how reliable *that* pronouncement turned out to be... So, cooking:

Some men get their kicks out of driving tests. Real men bake lasagnes.

When I've not been locking myself away from the world dealing with driving anxiety, I've been enhancing my cooking skills. Somewhat for my own delectation, somewhat to appease the ravaging hordes at youth group who demand either interesting food each week or start clamoring for culinary horrors like Kraft Dinner (the North American equivalent of heart disease in a box) I've been experimenting with making new and exciting dishes. My first lasagne was something of a victory for me; and the second was even better. Although I haven't yet bit the bullet and made my own white sauces.

The most exciting new discovery of the week, though, was bread baking. A process I've never much been interested in since, frankly, I think of it as slightly tedious. All the bother of making good cake, without any of the sugary goodness and much potential for monstrous un-bread-like hybrids to emerge. It turns out, though, that it was rather fun. And it came out perfectly. Which just goes to show; baking has nothing to do with talent. It's just about following the recipes... Doubly impressive, I feel, since I was babysitting at the time and this was a childcare pacifying activity rather than serious baking. I suddenly feel the urge to experiment with new types of bread construction. The insertion of sun dried tomatoes into the dough! The application of cheese at the crucial rising stage! But, then, I feel rather tired and need to sit down.

Random photo of the month: turtles amassing hordes of change under spotlights. Because that's the lengths a bored turtle may go to, folks.

A quick word on Oscar nominations as I probably won't blog until after the 'ceremony'. As usual the nominations reflect the needs of Hollywood's great and glitzy to feel positive about their craft rather than actually recognising the best films, performances, writing etc. of the year. Indeed, almost all the Best Film nominees this year are total garbage.

However, it's worth noting that this year almost none of the acting nominations come from Best Picture/Director nominees. That doesn't mean to say that they're in any way indicative of the best of the year's performances (Peter O'Toole, bless him, is only on the list to remind us that he survived another year) but at least it means the top honours are actually difficult to predict for once. That said; if I were looking to give up my life of Church service and retire on the back of a colossal accumulator betting win, here's where my hard earned dollars would be going:

Best Film
Will win: The Departed
Should win: None of them... Little Miss Sunshine is the best of them, but isn't nearly as scathing as it should be.

Best Director:
Will win: Martin Scorsese (The Departed)
Should win: Paul Greengrass (United 93)

Best Actor:
Will win: Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland)
Should win: Forest Whitaker (If he doesn't, I'll retake my driving test)

Best Actress:
Will win: Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Should win: Helen Mirren (Ditto on the driving test thing)

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Will win: The Departed
Should win: Children of Men

Best Screenplay:
Will win: Babel
Should win: Pan's Labyrinth

Incidentally, just so we're clear, the best five films of last year were The Last King of Scotland, Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth, Inside Man and United 93. Go watch them all and then come back and tell me how right I was.

OHIO - What is this, Miami Beach?

2007-01-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

First off; the resolution of the not-very-long-running mystery which has already been called "tired and predictable" by some commentators. It turned out that the party responsible for the distribution of illicit Harry Potter merchandise in the BC Lower Mainland area was, indeed, UK based and was, in fact, my sister. Which goes to show the trouble that can happen when you don't put a message in with your birthday presents. So, anyway - my vacation.

"Don't forget your booties 'cause it's COLD out there today. It's COLD out there everyday!..."

With freezing temperatures, an almost never ending barrage of wind and/or snow and a general disregard for central heating in my place of work, it seemed only right that I should go take my first North American vacation in somewhere equally cold, often rainy (at least whenever I'm there) and even somewhat snowy. And with more temperamental heating. Yes; I vacationed in Cincinnati in the Winter. I'm proud of the fact. Don't try raining on my parade.

As those well versed in the art of deciphering blog-to-blog flirting will already be well aware, Cincinnati is the hometown of my darling Mel (yes, that one) As an activist and wanabee world citizen, like me, Mel makes veiled threats much of the time that she will one day leave the place for some exotic foreign land. But, unlike me, she hasn't quite gotten around to it yet. Hence the reason why our first hike together in John Bryan Park was broken up by stops by icicle clad rock formations and snow covered waterfalls. Mad props to Mel, incidentally, for not complaining at being dragged through the mud for three hours, especially when her navigator managed to get lost on the subsequent, and far easier, trip to an ice cream parlor on the way home.

NOTE: At this point I was hoping to insert a picture of the excitingly named Orton Memorial, followed by a discussion of the life and works of Edward Orton who sounded like a thoroughly upright and decent, if rather dull, kind of a chap. Unfortunately, I realised when I got home I'd forgotten to take any pictures. So, instead, you'll just have to look him up on Wikipedia yourselves. Go on; you'll be glad you did.

Other highlights of the week included: the astonishing singing of a young Christian Bale in Newsies (due for a revival anytime now), more Italian food than is strictly healthy for a night out and the reactions of staff in the local store when asked where hummus could be found. Cincinnati being a sort of satellite part of the Bible Belt, we were no doubt regarded as crazy heretics trying to obtain esoteric devil food... As a penance we went to church both on Saturday night and Sunday morning. And then Mel scored extra bonus holy points by going to an alternative worship service on Sunday evening whilst I and her friends watched Jack Bauer break out his vampire fangs on 24. There's something about small town America which inspires one to try and be a little holier. Perhaps because all my aspirations for perfect holiness revolve around a peaceful, tranquil world of justice and that's what small town American is designed to look like on every surface. Scratching underneath that doesn't take too long; but when you're on vacation for just a few days you can stay happily oblivious.

Look at those happy, smiling faces. But are there enough vomit bags in the world?

From a social experiment point of view, though, the aim of the week wasn't analysis of the American Midwest, but answering the perennial question "can a couple who do most of their business long distance actually bear to spend any time together?" To which I say the answer is yes. And if Mel then says that the answer is no; then you'll have your answer. Neither of us killed the other. Which, from two people with a wide assortment of sociological disfunctions between them; coupled with an overdeveloped knowledge of sarcasm, is no mean feet. The next task, then, is to repeat this experiment in the mountains, hills and snows of West Vancouver. Where hummus is plentiful, but church on a Saturday night? Please! That's talk we just don't hear north of the Peace Arch...