17 January 2017: Liberia- Swamp fishing / Going to school in Duoplay

I tried fishing! Did I catch anything? Read on!

My blog is getting even more famous with the local rags. Detour to Duoplay proudly proclaims,

               The next day after I arrived in Liberia was a Monday, so Milea took me to her school where she teaches math and chemistry. We got to school at 7:30am, when the other students and teachers were also supposed to show up. Most of the teachers weren’t coming to school because the government stopped paying them, among other complications, and a lot of kids were absent too because their teachers weren’t there to teach them. Milea wouldn’t be deterred, though, and came to a relatively empty school to teach. I sat in as she taught 10^th, 11^th, and 12^th grade math and chemistry classes. Props to her for teaching things that, to my knowledge, she had little to no interest in before. She was pretty good at teaching, too! Her classes were very small, the smallest being 6 people in 12^th grade and the largest at 24 in 10^th grade. Teaching in Liberia is more akin to teaching in the US, with no going around and marking of classwork that sucks up most of the class time, as is standard practice in Lesotho.

Chairman of the (chalk)board

The awesome 10th graders

A 12th grader answering problems up at the front

                After school, we decided to go fishing. Milea had seen people walking around with nets and had been invited to go fishing before, but today would be the day we actually tried it. We followed some kids with nets to this swampy area. We kicked off our shoes and stepped in, the mud squishing through our toes. We watched the others and tried to copy the fishing technique of reaching down to swirl up mud to get the fish out and moving. With the water up to our waists, we tried a few times to use the nets to scoop up fish from the water, with no luck. It was really fun nonetheless.

Lots of people fishing down there

Jamama showing Milea the ropes

Nope, no fish in there

Milea tries with the net

Thumbs up for fishing

                Milea had some other experience with planting rice in a swampy farm a few months earlier. People plant and eat a lot of rice here. They grow it in the swamp, harvest it, dry it, beat it to get the grains out, and swirl and toss it in a circular woven tray to get the chaff out. It’s a lot of work! It really made me realize how easy I had it with easy access to grocery stores in the US.

                After we got back from the swamp and our muddy pants had dried out, we were gifted some little catfish-looking fish by Milea’s neighbor. Then we both realized that neither of us actually knew how to gut/prep fish, so when one of her child stalkers, Jamama, came to eat rice and soup with us, we just gave her the fish. We were telepathically telling her, “Shh, don’t tell the neighbor lady who gave them to us…” Yeah, we’re both not really fish-loving people.

Side note: A big staple in Liberian cuisine is rice and “soup,” which is more like a sauce/stew/gravy that goes over the rice. It can be made out of lots of things, including peanuts, fish, bitterball (a nasty, bitter squash), fish, beans, fresh or dried meat, mashed up cassava greens, and almost always has copious amounts of hot pepe and diarrhea-inducing red oil derived from palm nuts.

After that, my out-of-shape butt followed a much-more-in-shape Milea on a run down the dirt road. Milea was like whoosh down the road and I was like yup…I haven’t run since I had access to a beach in South Africa. Except for when I broke down and got some cheap shoes in Zambia, the only shoes I had to my name for the past four months were my Chacos sandals, so running wasn’t exactly on my daily schedule. It was pretty fun to get out on the road, though, seeing the red dirt road in front of me contrasting with the green jungley trees to either side. We were in the midst of the dry season, and boy was there dust everywhere. The reddish orange dust had settled on every leaf on the plants lining the road, and you couldn’t help but squinch your eyes to avoid all the flying dust when a motorbike buzzed by.

The next day at school, Milea was happy to let me teach her classes for the day. There were no chemistry classes that day, only math, so I felt in my element. Unlike in Lesotho where they very ineffectively mix up all the math topics in each year, here they actually do one math topic/subject per year (geometry, trigonometry, etc.). Her students ranged in ages from the normal young-teenage age to fully grown adults, many with kids, and a few who actually brought their kids to school out of necessity sometimes. I did miss teaching, but after I was done, I didn’t miss how much it tires you out by the time the school day is over. I went home and ate some lunch while Milea stayed to have her reading club after school. She has a few motivated students who are really pumped about getting their reading levels up, which is awesome, and it’s great that she gives them a chance to practice by joining this club.

The outside of the school, complete with newly-built fences to keep children in and goats out

Coming soon: I get out of Duoplay and visit the big weekly market, with many market discoveries to be made!

17 January 2017: Liberia- Intro to Duoplay

Your trusty author has garnered official praise from the world famous and possibly fictitious Duoplay Times:

But don't just take their word for it. Read on and see for yourself!

Milea had graciously met me at the border and we immediately exchanged my remaining Francs for Liberian Dollars. LDs x100 are more or less on par with the USD, meaning that one LD is equivalent to one penny. Their largest bill is 100LD, and they don’t have coins, so I then had a small brick of bills. Milea said that this was normal, and yes, it always makes you feel super rich even when you’re just carrying around like $10. Since she was so close to the border, Milea had gotten cleared by her PC staff to go to this border town on their weekly market day. The market in the town on the other side of her village was during a school day when she would be teaching. She led me into Liberia to where I washed my hands at a bucket hand washing station and got my temperature taken. Why? Ebola. Even though it’s been eradicated, I’m sure you remember the absolute crisis that parts of West Africa experienced a few years ago, so they still take these precautions. I also had to register my yellow fever card with some guy who tried to make me pay 50LD for this “service.” I asked him why, as he wasn’t doing anything for me but writing down my name and the fact that I had a yellow fever vaccine. Milea confirmed that this was BS, and that he was just trying to get some money out of me. With no protest from him, we just walked out, and stepped up next door into another office where I got a 15 day stamp in my passport. The guy couldn’t give me a month stamp because I guess only certain borders can do that. Even though I had a whole month-long visa from the embassy, he wouldn’t give it to me. Whatever. I’d just have to go through another immigration checkpoint later and get it extended.

                After going through another seemingly pointless office where the guy, again, just wrote down my info, Milea and I found a motorbike (the only form of transportation around here) and we zipped off to Duoplay, her village. The guy turned right off the road into the “center of town,” a small open space where the market ladies sold their various food items. We continued straight to her house, where I dropped my stuff and she showed me around. Her house was freshly painted, my arrival being an excuse to get it done, and it looked great and so colorful. Her house was huge, 5 rooms including an indoor bathroom (with a toilet requiring a bucket flush since there was no running water). The PCV who lived in her house before her had been evacuated, with the rest of the PC program, during Ebola, and Milea’s group was the first group back after Ebola had been eradicated. This guy had all the furniture taken out by neighbors, teachers, etc., so Milea moved in to an absolutely empty house. She had since had a bunch of furniture made, like a big table, some shelves, and a futon made by a local carpenter. She was very excited to tell me that she had 24 hour current, or electricity that runs around the clock, which is pretty rare among PCVs in Liberia. She was still waiting for another few pieces of furniture for her kitchen, so her electric stove was sitting on the floor next to the outlet. I thought that I had a limited selection of food in my village, but she had way less, having to go to one of two bigger towns on either side to get anything much in the way of food. Her market ladies sold things like little bags of peanut butter, tiny onions, little piles of pepe (the ubiquitous hot pepper), and small bags of rice, but anything more substantial required a trip to a larger town. People here seem to use more locally-produced foods like rice that grows in the nearby paddies, fish from the swampy ponds, cassava (cassava for days), and sometimes various fruits like tiny bananas, papayas, or pineapples.

The famous market ladies

Milea relaxing with other market ladies selling fish from the coolers

                That afternoon, we walked around the village. Everyone was so excited to meet me and figure out who I was and why I was there. I soon learned how to do the handshake-snap. Why are African handshakes so much cooler than the boring old American handshake? Basically, you do the typical down-up-down handshake like in Southern Africa, but they add a snap where you brace thumbs, hook fingers, pull back, and let your fingers snap against your palm. I had yet to master it, but I was still having fun doing it. I also quickly learned the greeting phrases in Gio, the local language. People do also speak English, but it’s Liberian English and sounds vastly different. But more on that in a later post. Everyone was super welcoming to me. My face even started to hurt from smiling at everyone greeting me as I enjoyed their genuine words of welcome.

                We then got some peanut butter snaps (little plastic bags the size of maybe large gold balls whose corner you bite off and squeeze the peanut butter out of) and walked to her school. She has no signal inside her house, and the field by her school was the best place for her to get a data signal on her phone. We kept wandering around and finished the small tour by ending back at her house. In her house, we talked and talked. When you’ve been cooped up in a village for a long time without the ability to have a fluent (American) English conversation with someone, it’s great to just have the ability to talk fluidly. We compared our respective PC experiences, complaining about universal problems of males professing their love for us, and about us literally having dreams about chocolate and Clif bars. I told her about my travels thus far, and watched stars form in her eyes especially when I talked about South Africa and Cape Town.

The data field (soccer field) by the school, with some houses across the road

                Our next task would be to haul water from the pump. It was on a circular concrete base with a round wall surrounding it. The pump was insanely easy to move up and down, unlike other pumps I’ve encountered in Lesotho. Milea said that the pump was her favorite spot in the village. It was almost religious, with people removing their shoes before they entered the small circular enclosure, and somehow a peaceful energy reverberating through it as the sun started to set. Everyone used a piece of lappa to cushion the bucket on their head (which was weird to me because people in Lesotho normally put the bucket straight on their head). Lappa is a big piece of patterned cloth that is used for everything from carrying a baby to wearing as clothes to using as a sheet to using as general fabric for doing things like making curtains. Each of us took a bucket the short walk to her house, spilling only a little along the way even though her buckets didn’t have lids. The night ended with us sitting on her front porch area surrounded by lots of neighbor kids, messing around with them as we enjoyed the cooler evening air.

"Burry your pupu," declares a sign outside of town

15 January 2017: Côte d’Ivoire- Bussing across the country, Man, Danane

               My last morning in Abidjan, I packed up and got a F2500 taxi (For reference: F600 is about $1)  to the busy and crowded bus rank. As we pulled into the series of small streets, lined with vendors, the taxi almost pushing through waves of people, the driver was asking people the way to the bus to Man. Man is a town in the northwest of Côte d’Ivoire within shooting distance of Liberia. My plan was to find a cheap hotel on arrival, then the next day continue to Danane, an even closer town to Liberia, then cross into Liberia.  The only thing that stood in between me and my friend Milea was two travel days.

Our trusty bus

                The taxi took me to the bus going to Man, and we were led to said bus by a guy running alongside our taxi who never let go of the open passenger window as he ran with us. I bought my F8000 ticket, and while I was loading my backpack under the bus, a guy approached me and asked me to keep an eye on this girl for him. Turns out he worked at the Liberian embassy, and after I said that I was just there a few days ago to get a visa, he said that it was his signature that was on my visa sticker. Pretty cool! He was with a 19 year old Liberian girl who had been robbed of everything in Abidjan, so the embassy was helping her out and sending her back to Liberia. I was tasked with keeping an eye on her and helping her continue to the terminus of the bus, even though I’d be getting off early in Man. So we both got on the bus, in different sections of it due to our seat assignments, but every once in a while I’d glance back and make sure she was still ok.

How high can you pile stuff on your head? The limit does not exist.

                The bus finally started snailing out of town. There were ladies selling food and snake oil salesmen selling little bottles of miracle pills and serums for all kinds of aches and pains that one may encounter on a long bus ride. I was assigned to a middle seat, wedged next to a lady with a butt that took up 1.5 seats. So this other guy and I were sharing the other 1.5 seats. The bus did have air conditioning, though, which was lovely. After being in Lesotho, I was definitely not used to this heat and humidity yet. Pretty soon into the trip, a guy started (from what I understood) half preaching, half selling some of the same old snake oil pills. He even tried to win over the bus by handing out little candies with shrimps on the wrapper. Were they shrimp flavored? I declined to eat mine in any case. Then he went on and on about how he only got one “merci” from the whole bus, and used that to continue his sermon. I just popped in my headphones, leaned my forehead forward against the seat in front of me, and tried to sleep. It ended up taking 11 hours to get to Man, including a long stop in a line of cars where a truck had somehow gotten sideways across the road and spilled its load of giant tree trunks.

People selling all kinds of food as we stopped for a break

                At dusk, we arrived in Man, and it took a good while for the bus guys to dig through all the stuff and find my backpack. I bought two baguettes from a lady selling them next to the bus and walked to the CAA hotel. Once again, maps.me saved my butt for both finding a hotel and providing a map to it. I walked in and got a room for F5000. The F10,000 room included air conditioning, but I thought I’d be fine with just a fan. The hotel was totally falling apart, but it was somewhere to sleep (without any pillows and one thin sheet) and take a shower (before the water ran out).

                I got up early the next day and walked to the Man rank, where I was the first person on a sprinter taxi going to Danane. Milea and I had coordinated to meet at the border that day. She only lived a short motorbike ride on the other side of the border, so it was easy for her to come and meet me. I told her that I hoped to make it to the border by around 10am, but the taxi didn’t leave until almost 11. Hopefully she’d been in Liberia long enough to get used to African time. While I waited, I had an awesome and cheap street meat and avocado sandwich and, my new favorite thing, some bagged water from the kids chanting “de l’eau, de l’eau, bien glacée” “water, water, well chilled” as they carried piles of them in coolers on their heads. These water bags cost mere pennies and each one is half a liter of water in a clear plastic bag. You just bite off the corner and squeeze. So convenient!

The street meat lady making her sweet, sweet sandwiches. Also, please notice the white jelly sandals this guy is wearing. What was an elementary school fashion statement for me is now choice footwear for West African men. I saw so many guys wearing these!

                I was smushed up in the front seat with like three other people as we bumped along a super potholey road to Danane. When we arrived, I got out and asked around for how to get to the border. Some market ladies called their motorbike driver friend, I hopped on, and off we went. I probably should have taken off my big backpack and strapped it on the back, because wearing a huge, heavy backpack while riding a motorbike is really hard, especially uphill when the backpack is trying to pull you off the bike. We were stopped several times on the road at checkpoints where my passport was scrutinized (probably just out of curiosity), and we finally arrived in Gbenta, the border town. I saw a white girl walking toward me, with a small backpack on and a motorbike helmet under her arm. Was this a dream? No, I had finally made contact with the famed Milea! I was totally covered in red dust by this point thanks to the motorbike ride. Milea pointed out that I even had dust in my eyelashes. This dry-season dust doesn’t kid around! I was so happy to finally see her, though! Almost a year earlier, when I found out that she was doing PC in Liberia, I committed to coming to see her, and it was finally happening. It was the start of a month of great adventuring with her and her PC friends in Liberia!

Up next: I cross into Liberia and, as per usual, quickly get into some crazy antics. Stay posted!

14 January 2017: Côte d’Ivoire- Abidjan

                Welcome back, readers. Let’s recap. I had flown from Southern Africa to West Africa, from Zambia to Côte d’Ivoire. My ultimate destination was to Liberia to visit my world traveling partner in crime, Milea, in Liberia while she worked as a PCV there. Liberia requires a visa ahead of time, and as you may recall, I had failed to find the Liberian embassy in South Africa. There was also an embassy in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, so I planned to stop there to get the visa. On top of that, flying into Abidjan and then bussing across the country to neighboring Liberia would be about one fourth the cost of flying into Liberia. So here we stand.

                After three flights, from Lusaka, Zambia to Johannesburg, SA to Accra, Ghana to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, I finally arrived. In the airport, I went to the room labeled  “Snedai” to get my e-visa that I had applied for online. Trying to remember how to speak French and not get it mixed up with Sesotho, I talked with a guy working there who asked for my passport and the approval for my visa that had been emailed to me. I gave him my passport and what I thought was the approval sheet. He said that that was not the approval for my visa, but only the proof of payment. Apparently, I should have also been emailed another document approving me for my visa a few days after I submitted the application, but I did not remember getting another email. I dug through the emails on my phone. Not a one. I was shown to another guy at a desk who told me (from what I understood from his West African accented French) that he couldn’t give me a visa with only the receipt of payment, that I needed the other paper, printed out. I did not have the visa approval paper in my possession, and there was no way for me to find it electronically or otherwise, so I asked what I could do. He said that I did have one option. For $20, he would give it to me right now, and he would just ignore the fact that I didn’t have the correct document. “But I already paid 70 euros online!” I retorted. “$20 and you get it now and can leave, otherwise there’s nothing I can do…ça depend de vous…it depends on you…” OH, I realized. I finally knew what was going on here, wink wink nudge nudge. I dug through my bag for some of my treasured USD. I probably could have bargained him down, but I was really tired and just wanted to get to my hotel, so I slipped him a $20 and he very unofficially tossed it nonchalantly in his desk drawer. Then we got started with the electronic fingerprint scanner and he gave my passport to the first guy to print out my visa and stick it in.

So I had my visa, costing me 70 Euros + 20 USD, for just a few days in this country so that I could get a visa to Liberia. But that cost plus the cost of the hotel (no “s” there this time. Hostels and backpacking tourism hasn’t quite hit West Africa yet) was less expensive than trying to fly into Liberia and then trying to figure out how to sweet talk my way into getting a visa on arrival and/or risk being turned away. Although I’m sure from this experience that I could have paid my way through that one and been just fine if I really needed to. The weird thing was that in several airports on my way to Abidjan, I was checked to make sure I had the paperwork for the Côte d’Ivoire visa. No one caught that I just had the payment receipt and not the visa approval. They did look pretty similar, I found out. Good thing they didn’t catch it, though, or I’d still be stuck in Lusaka.

So with visa finally in hand, I exited through customs and got my bag. I found my name on a sign for the free shuttle to my hotel, Residence Touristhotel. Great name, right? I got some cash from an ATM, then we were on our way. The doors to the airport slid open and I was overwhelmed with this massive cloud of humidity. Wow, what a change from Southern Africa. Even along the coast it wasn’t this crazy humid. The hotel turned out to be pretty far out of town- way off from where Google Maps told me it would be when I booked it. But it was cheap (~$24/night) and that’s mostly all that matters. On the ride to the hotel, I asked the driver if everyone here spoke French. He said yes, that it mostly acts as a lingua franca, and that there are over 70 native African languages in the country as well. And unlike in other places where French is the official language only in name, and only used for government and business, people do actually speak it, at least in urban centers like Abidjan. I haven’t heard anyone speak anything but French, actually, even kids.

The next day was Liberian visa day. I was advised to get up early and get on a taxi to the Liberian embassy at 7am since I didn’t have an appointment. This turned out to be totally unnecessary. Maybe they were thinking of a different embassy that made appointments. So at 7, one of the hotel staff walked with me to the main road and helped me get an orange taxi. There are yellow taxis that seem to be shared 4+1-esque taxis that go on certain routes, and reddish orange taxis that take people to a specific place. I got in with a driver who had no idea where the Liberian embassy was, and was clueless when I showed him a map on my phone of exactly where I had found its location online. It was as if he had literally never seen a map in his life. When I described what I was seeing on the map to him, roughly where it looked like the embassy was, he told me that he couldn’t go to that place. I thought that maybe certain taxis had certain territories where he could and couldn’t drive, but it just turns out that he was just a skeezey dude and didn’t want to drive into the main business district where there was a traffic jam at rush hour. He stopped and asked some guy on the street where the embassy was, and it was at this point he said he couldn’t take me there. He was about to just drop me right there on the street, but the guy he asked for help was like, no, you have to help her. Yeah, dude, help me find a different, competent, taxi that will actually take me to the place I’m paying you to take me. It being essentially my first day in this city and in this country, I was clueless and could use all the help I could get. He grudgingly drove off again and flagged down another taxi.

Taxis that are...orangey red? Reddish orange? No one can say.

This second taxi driver was much nicer and so helpful, calling the first guy a “mauvais type.” He drove me through said bottleneck to the “Plateau” area of town, past the giant pink and shining glass tower that was the French embassy, to the spot on my map where the Liberian embassy was supposed to be. Let me take a second to describe the chaos and stress of driving in Abidjan at rush hour. Lanes, and to a lesser extent traffic lights, are merely suggestions, there’s lots of swerving around stopped or slower cars and pedestrians, and a chorus of horns fills the air. We arrived at the spot and he asked a lady on the sidewalk where the embassy was. She yelled over to another guy, who, for some unknown reason, magically happened to have the phone number of the embassy in his phone. The taxi driver paid the first woman to use her phone to call the number. It’s at this point the driver learned that the embassy was in an entirely different part of town. Gahh. It used to be where I thought it was, but it had moved. Why does this seem to be such a common theme among Liberian embassies? So our journey continued.

The lush green plants and thick smoggy air of Abidjan

We left the Plateau and headed to the Cocody neighborhood, asking people all along the way where this darn place was. We finally got close and spotted the Liberian flag flying over a building. Success! It only took an hour and a half and F6500 (around $10), but we had arrived. I thanked the driver profusely for all his help and only tried to bargain a tiny bit because I felt like he deserved the money.

Outside the embassy, I found two guys sitting outside the embassy. One was the security guard and the other was a pastor from Cameroon also trying to get a Liberian visa. The security guard told me that the embassy opened at 9am, which was in about half an hour, so I said I’d just wait outside with them. But then a few minutes late the big door opened, and the pastor and I walked in and signed in with a guy in the front yard. He directed us around to the side of the building, and the fresh blast of air conditioning hit my skin as we walked inside. Aahh. I got a visa form and filled it out. When I had emailed the embassy a few weeks earlier asking about the visa requirements, they said that I needed a photo, a letter of invitation or hotel reservation, and a copy of my passport. Turns out I only needed the photo, as they copied my passport themselves, and they didn’t ask for any letter. I paid the F25,000 fee ($40), and it was a good thing I had gone to the ATM, because they didn’t take USD, only West African Francs. I asked how long it would take, and the guy behind the counter pulled out this paper and pointed to the section saying that it takes 2 to 5 business days. I was thinking that I sure as hell did not want to go through that whole ordeal of getting back to the embassy after the stressful task of getting there that morning. I asked if there was any way they could get it done today. He said he might be able to work something out for F10,000 more. Yow! Too much. I played the “I’m a poor backpacker” card and got him down to half that. So I slipped him the bill, completing my second bribe in two days. Honestly, it probably saved me money in the end since I wouldn’t have to spend taxi money trying to get back there. It was so empowering being able to get exactly what I wanted with just a little extra cash. Don’t get me wrong; corruption is, in theory, very wrong, I know. But it’s just oh so convenient.

The guy told me that I’d have to come back in about two hours, so I wandered around the neighborhood, which was filled with many other embassies and some kind of army barracks thing. Then I followed the sound of some drumming and music to a church where I saw everyone dressed up in awesome African-print fabrics for what a guy told me was some kind of mass. Then I wandered down other streets with little shops and people selling stuff, and soon enough I headed back to the embassy to pick up my passport.

Cocody village tells you "welcome"

Little stands on the road

I got up my passport with the newly-completed visa sticker in it and my official receipt, sans bribe of course. Woo hoo! Finally I had that darn visa. I decided that I’d had enough of taxis for the day and walk back to my hotel. I mapped it: 2 hours. Fine by me. I had nothing else to do and it wasn’t even 11am. So I walked in the humidity and awful pollution, stopping to get some popsicles at a supermarket for some sweet relief from the heat. Wasn’t it technically winter? I guess at the equator, it doesn’t really matter. Surprisingly, on the walk, I wasn’t harassed at all, and just twice some kids said “femme blanche!” or “une française!” as I passed.

The next few days, I didn’t really have much to do. I had booked several nights at this hotel in case it would actually take the stated 2-5 business days for my visa, but I had everything taken care of, so it was just a few days of relaxing. I did a lot of wandering around in town. The street food was delicious. Among my selected snacks were a grilled plantain and a street meat/mayo sandwich. I also got lots more milky popsicles, and generally lazed around in the hotel. I got really sick of watching the senate confirmation hearings and commentary on CNN, the only English station out of the 5 channels on TV. But I did enjoy watching Biden get his bff necklace Presidential Medal of Freedom from his bromance buddy Obama, and barely being able to hold it together. I also entertained myself watching a show, dubbed in French, on the National Geographic channel, about the El Dorado airport in Colombia and about the cops there who deal with people who were trying to smuggle drugs in various body orifices or travel on fake passports. Good thing you don't get deported around here if you don't have your correct paperwork...

I guess Monsieur Chat took a break from Europe to make some street art here in Abidjan

Up next: I escape Abidjan and cross the Ivory Coast in the hopes of reaching Liberia.

Small thoughts 26: Bots/Zim/Zam

Taxis: The Big Boss, Pit Bull, Mr. Nice Guy, The A Team, Divine Vision (as an acrostic at the V), Mr. Witness, Big Mummy (a huge bus), 7Hundred, Mr. Amen, Redemption, Excellence, Born Thugs, Shalom, Scotch, Bouncer, Red Sea,  Life Goes On, Kangaroo, Smart Life, Holy Ghost Fire Fire, Uncle Fresh, Lion, Confess, Peace, Dollaz, Justice, Destiny, Try Again, Be Soft

Botswana: 

Setswana (the language they speak in Botswana) is almost identical to Sesotho. I can communicate! And for the D sound, they actually use the letter D instead of L. Logic!

I got on a bus to the north of Botswana that I was told would leave at 5:30am. Right, I thought, 5:30, psh. But 5:30 comes and the bus leaves smack on time. And it's not even full! I am SHOCKED! 

3 long-distance bus rides (between 8 and 20 hours each) in 6 days is doing great things for my back, I'm telling ya...

If it were up to me, in addition to the free tea and coffee that hostels often offer, they would also have free cooking basics that are annoying to buy because you have to get so much at a time, like oil and salt. Oh and free hot sauce. All the hot sauce. 

If I didn't have a tent, I'm sure that in my sleep, all the ginormous ants around here would just eat me away in my sleep, bit by bit, and I'd wake up as nothing more than a skeleton.

Camping for 5 days in constant rain is super fun (not). Myself and all my things are always damp, plus I literally have ants in my pants. Livin the dream.

I'm pretty sure at the December Bug Convention, all the bugs in Africa decided to come to Botswana. 

So many people are decked out in sky blue, white, and black (the flag colors) shirts to celebrate Botswana's 50th anniversary. Plus there are murals and rock designs everywhere for it. Lesotho also had its 50th anniversary, but no one seemed to care nearly this much about it. 

Zimbabwe:

I paid for my visa in Rand, paid for my taxi to the city with Pula, paid for groceries in USD, and got my change in new "bond notes." Welcome to Zimbabwe. 

"I'm coming back now." = I'm leaving now, and will come back after an undetermined amount of time, if at all. 

I'm just trying to fix my phone case which is falling apart bit by bit, and the leaky super glue tube leaves me with super glue all over my fingers. Good job, Sush. At least none of those fingers were stuck to each other...for very long. 

Almost without fail, every single instructional sign I see around hostels has grammatical errors. Or if not, the instruction is followed by five exclamation points!!!!!

"I'd rather sh*t in my hand and clap than live there." -Overheard on the train at the New Years carnival. What a way with words, this one.

Fun fact: Zimbabwe driver's licenses are made of metal. 

"I've been high in the bush, but I've never heard an elephant go 'toot.'" - Overheard at the hostel after "What Does the Fox Say" song plays. 

I'm in possession of a 50 billion dollar note! Too bad it's worthless due to insane hyperinflation. 

Zambia:

Sign at my hostel: "No naked swimming." Party poopers. 

Overheard at the hostel: "New is the new new." Yep, indeed it is.

It's raining mangoes! Hopefully I won't get beaned on the head or have my tent ambushed by these very ripe and very threatening mango trees that I'm camping under. 

9 January 2017: Zambia- Lusaka

                I found my way to the Livingstone bus station where I got on a “Shalom” bus to Lusaka, the capital. Oh man, it was a long day, as are all travel days. The bus actually left a couple of minutes ahead of schedule, which was surprising. The bus ride was supposed to be 7 hours, but we had to stop a few times because the engine was overheating and they had to pour water down in there, so it turned out to be longer. So it goes. My kindle and podcasts saved the day once again. I also pondered what to do with my tent and how to fix the snapped pole. I’d made so many repairs on that thing: sewing, gluing, taping, etc. For a R200 tent (about $15), it’s done a really god job for me and other PCVs on camping trips in Lesotho and for my past two months traveling.

                The bus finally touched down in Lusaka and I grabbed my bags from underneath. I had planned to stay at Wanderers, a backpackers with camping, but since my tent was currently unusable, I instead went to Flinstones Backpackers, the closest one to the bus station. I got a dorm bed for K70/night, and quickly regretted my decision to stay there, as the hostel is pretty crappy. No hot water in most bathrooms, no water at all in others, everything is super run down, they have a sketchy kitchen, and their wifi was not free and was only sporadically working. It’s accurately named, though, because this place is fit for the Stone Age. The next day after I checked in, I decided to scout out other hostels in the neighborhood, thinking that I probably should have spent more nights in Livingstone instead of here in Lusaka. My wander around the block revealed two or three other backpackers, all much more expensive, but they looked marginally nicer. Oh well, I would settle for Flinstones for the sake of cash money. And I convinced myself that it wasn’t too horrible…

                Other exciting adventures in Lusaka included the mall, where I acquired some super cheap tennis shoes. The only shoes I owned at the time were my Chacos, and I felt like going running. I also exchanged some of my extra Rand stash for Zambian Kwacha at an exchange place, then bought some wifi from the Vodaphone kiosk. I was able to finally communicate to my mom who, after only three days of no contact, had emailed the hostel looking for me. No less than three staff members/the owners came to talk to me about her concern. Apparently she thought that I had left Lusaka a few days earlier for Abidjan, and on that day, flights to Abidjan were diverted all over the continent because of an enormous sand storm. She thought I was trapped at some random airport. But nope, I was still safe in Zambia, just without the ability to communicate.

                Also staying at the hostel were a nice couple looking for a house to buy in Lusaka. As I finished a workout in the courtyard area, the husband came up to me and asked why I don’t talk much. I just replied that I keep to myself normally, and that I had a lot of writing and planning to do- I didn’t come to Lusaka to socialize and explore; it was just a temporary stop before I got a flight. He said something silly along the lines of, “But you came to Africa to make friends, to talk to indigenous people like me.” Yes, he actually used the word indigenous. Hah nope, dude, you don’t even know me. That’s not actually why I came to Africa. I explained that I had been in the Peace Corps and now was traveling around. In my current destination, I just hadn’t met any worthy vacation friends to be sociable with in this boring non-destination.

                My last day, I walked to a different mall to print some things I would need for my Côte d’Ivoire visa. I strategically spent the rest of my Kwacha on some street food, including a pre-sliced mango, and some more wifi. Then the morning I left, I got on a 5am taxi (K250/$25…yowza) to the airport. At the check-in desk, apparently I needed a printed copy of my Côte d’Ivoire visa application receipt (you apply for the Côte d’Ivoire visa online), so the agent was really nice and had me email it to her and she printed it out for me.

                I would be taking three flights: backtracking from Lusaka, Zambia to Johannesburg, Joburg to Accra, Ghana, then Accra to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. My ultimate goal was to get to Liberia, but the flight into Liberia was at least four times more expensive than a flight into Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, which is the country just to the east of Liberia. I figured that I’d save a bunch of money by flying in there, then just taking a bus across the country into Liberia. Also, given that I hadn’t been able to get a Liberia visa in South Africa, I would have to do it in Abidjan, which is the only other relatively close place that had an embassy. Somehow I was afraid that they wouldn’t give me my visa when I arrived. I had no reason to believe this, but there’s always something that seems to go wrong. My nervousness about visas was mostly fueled by the Malawi fiasco (see Panic! At the Border post), but I convinced myself that everything would be fine. Things always work out. Not necessarily the way you thought, or in the time frame you expected, but they always do.

In my next post, follow your intrepid hero as she finds that her fears were real, and she does, in fact, have another Panic! at the border moment. It never ends, does it?

Sorry I have no photos of Lusaka, because, well, it was nothing special. There are lots more photos to come, though!

5 January 2017: Zambia- Livingstone

               

               I had crossed the border into my final Southern African country: Zambia. I wouldn’t be there for any big adventuring in particular; I had just booked a flight out of the capital, and in between coming in from Zim and my flight, I had about a week. I decided to split it between Livingstone, the town on the Zambian side of Victoria Falls, and Lusaka, the capital.

                So after arriving into Zambia, I wandered down the road to where I hoped some taxis would be waiting. I had one taxi guy following me around telling me I could pay him $10 for the 10km from the border to the hostel. Nope. I just laughed at him. That price is crazy talk around here. Instead, I got in a small shared taxi, waited only a little while for the 3 other seats to fill up, and made my way to the hostel for only $2. That’s more like it. I later realized that I could have gotten a combi (minibus taxi) for $1. Oh well. Even when I was sitting in the shared taxi, waiting for it to fill, the original taxi guy was still hanging around asking me to take his taxi. I told him it would only be $2 for this shared taxi, and he replied that the shared taxi driver was lying. Nope, dude, get over it. I’m not paying $10, end of story.

Mosi Oa Tunya and Zambezi streets

Chicken street art. I love it.

Also, while I was wandering around or waiting to go, I again had several guys on the street trying to sell me stuff. And again, more than money, they wanted to trade for a carabiner or a bandana or whatever, because they can’t get anything like those things where they live. Maybe if I even remotely wanted any of those crafty things they were selling, it might be a good way to go.

I arrived at Lusaka Backpackers and set up my tent in the yard ($7/night camping) among some huge mango trees. I spent the rest of the day just chilling, relaxing after the tiresome activity that is crossing a border and getting to a new location. They had a great pool, and even a climbing wall right next to it. There were plenty of cushioney places to sit, including an enormous pile of pillows and extra chair cushions, which was great to sit in.

Livingstone Backpackers

Cool climbing wall

The next day, I decided to take the hostel’s free shuttle to the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. Since Victoria Falls and the Zambezi river lie in between Zim and Zam, both sides have their own national park. In Zambia, the park is called Mosi Oa Tunya, meaning smoke that thunders (referring to the mist and the crashing sound of the falls). The hostel van dropped a small group of us off at the entrance of the park. As I am used to doing, I asked for the SADC price as I saw online, only to be told that they don’t do SADC prices, only Zambian and international. Okay then. I shelled out $20 and gained entry to the park. As I walked in, I passed by some stalls of craft vendors and was immediately asked by one of the souvenir guys to trade my hair bands (ever present on my wrist) or pens for his stuff. This charade again. I used my favorite lie, “I’ll come back later…maybe…” and escaped into the main part of the park.

Once I got in, the officials warned me about guys that will try to take tourists on unofficial jaunts across the top of the falls and to Angel’s Pool, another edge-side pool similar to Devil’s Pool. Sure enough, I was soon approached by guys offering such a service. I declined, as I didn’t feel like dying that day. I had friends do it, though, and they said it seemed a little sketchy, but it turned out fine.

View from the top, before the water goes crashing down

View from one of the bridges

Yay Vic Falls!

The Zambia side of the park was different because you got above-the-falls views in addition to across-the-falls views, lots of mist, and you could even hike down to the river to one of the first rapids that the rafts go through. As I walked down to that rapid, called the Boiling Pot, I saw tons of monkeys all over the place, sitting in the path, swinging in the vines, and running around the rocks and the trees. I got super close to some of them a few times and they just sat there as I walked by, indifferent to the passing human. At the bottom of the path, I got a good view of the bridge and the bungee jumpers jumping off of it.

Just filling up...

Tiny bungee jumpers below the bridge

Indifferent monkey

Once I was tired of wandering around the park, I walked through the two fancy hotels nearby. There were marimba players by the pool and zebras grazing in the grass. Wow. Then I walked to the road and got a hitch back to the backpackers as it started to rain.

Zebras casually walking around the hotel grounds

I spent the afternoon reading, napping, and eating ripe and sweet mangoes that had fallen all over the hostel property. These mango trees were ridiculous. When I was trying to fall asleep in my tent the first night, I heard a loud BANG! I thought I’d been shot or something. Then I heard a soft plop in the grass next to me. Turns out that a mango had fallen on the metal roof of one covered area and rolled off the edge and into the grass. I got up and scooted my tent over in the hopes of not getting mango-bombed. Even having done that, I still woke up with mango goop dripped all over my tent. I have no idea how it got there, but it was pretty funny shaking my fist up at the mango trees warning them not to drip mango goo on my tent again. I arrived back at the hostel on the last day, getting ready to pack up my tent, only to find that one of the split poles I had duct taped back in Botswana had finally snapped, probably done in by one of these falling mangoes. Oh well. Good thing I wouldn’t be needing my tent anymore.

My tent in the back, mangoes littering the ground

Up next: I bus to Lusaka and get ready to fly to Côte d’Ivoire!