Archive for January, 2009
Cape Town Kite Surfers
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Oh, the boys… the men! It’s our own fault for staying in a surfer’s hostel and for the past month I’ve watched nothing but perfectly tanned chiseled bodies walking up and down the halls. It’s a good thing my husband is not a jealous man, and it does help that one of these bronzed hunky bods belongs to him. And I… well I have no problem mentioning once or twice a week that I also am his.
Cape Town is a kite surfing heaven. Nobody here goes to the beach to take a swim – never mind where you’ll be entering the water, if the waves don’t crush you down a surfboard will. Wind surfers hate kite surfers and vice-versa, so when our kite surfing bunk buddies asked me to take some action shots of them on the beach, I tried to keep winders out of the frame, but with little luck.
Cape Town Kite Surfing Gallery
Posted in Places»Africa»South Africa | No Comments »
an End to the Columbus Era
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
The story of our 4×4 named Columbus finally came to an end. When the company that was supposed to buy it back from us had disappeared, we left it in Cape Town with our new police woman friend, Carla, to deal with the situation upon our return from Madagascar. Since the company that owed us money had evaporated, we wanted to have a little polite talk with their business partners that run their website full of promises and guarantees. As life has it, talking politely to people who owe you money never works. Sure they were polite back, but claimed they have nothing to do with the people they directed us to for the buy-back deal, and whatever agreement we had with the fugitives – has evaporated just as they have.
Unfortunately for our impartial friends, we were not planning to give up that easily. Lucky for us, we had what other victims of the same scheme didn’t – time. We set up camp in Carla’s backpacker (hostels are called “backpackers” in southern Africa) and for a month played tag with the directors of the company, emailing back and forth, but to no avail. It was always the same old “terribly sympathetic, but nothing we can do” until… It looked like there was nothing left but to count our losses and do our best to warn the rest – so is our duty. In less than a day Shurik whipped up a very polite and strategically named website describing our experience and listing everyone involved. He even went the extra step and listed their interconnections, other internet properties, business relationships, personal and business ID numbers – just in case anybody needed a helping hand if they found themselves in a similar situation. I, in my turn, wrote it all up in travel forums.
It didn’t take long for the impartial to take notice. They are not internet dummies and found the website just two days after its launch. They called us for a meeting in their offices, but we were so frustrated with the whole ordeal by that time, that I didn’t feel like being too polite any longer. I told them to be so kind and come instead to our office – the backpacker’s bar.
We talked. I chain smoked. They fidgeted, but actually turned out to be rather nice guys and even kinda cute. They promised to buy back Columbus on the same terms we had with their good-for-nothing partners, and a few days later they put a notice on their website saying they will be honoring all the buy-back-deals-gone-wrong and are out of the buy-back biz all together.
Today we checked our bank statement and the money is in. We are free now to pack up the tent and continue our African expedition. Next stop is probably Nairobi. We’ll have just enough time to zoom through Kenya and meet Vova in Ethiopia in mid Feb.
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Africa and AIDS
Friday, January 16th, 2009
I’ve said before how AIDS is one of the first things that pops to mind when you think about the black continent. Truth is, not nearly enough people, in first world or third, know the right facts about HIV and AIDS. We’ve been cautioned by our Harvard educated friends to watch out for mosquitoes as they too transmit the virus, and an ocean away, the current leader of the most developed country in Africa, South Africa, publicly admitted that he wasn’t at all worried about having unprotected sex with an HIV positive woman because he simply took a shower afterwards.
We are asked if we see AIDS on the streets of Africa. We haven’t. I’ve been to places where AIDS literally walks the streets in its skin-and-bone devastating triumph over the human body, and we don’t see it here. We see poverty, we see disease, but we don’t see HIV and AIDS. It’s not even spoken of. The visibly sick don’t leave home and their family and friends are ashamed to speak of it. Asking and talking about it is rude.
Ridiculous myths like intercourse with a virgin being the ultimate cure, and simple lack of education, are the strongest allies of the virus. Its biggest enemies are condoms and knowing the facts. African television is plastered with ads calling for frequent testing (only $2.5) and fidelity (like the hip little ad below), but the peculiar mix of African tribal culture and strong religious influence from the colonizers have created a world where having multiple sex partners is a thing of the ordinary, but sex itself is shameful.
Posted in Places»Africa»South Africa | No Comments »
Local Girls
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
the wise and otherwise…
Posted in Places»Africa»Madagascar | No Comments »
Lemur-a-Day Keeps the Boredom Away
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
black lemur
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Nosy Bee
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
Making our departure from Madagascar as gradual and as painless as possible, we fist went from the big island to a smaller one – Nosy Bee. It really wasn’t the sort of paradise we were hoping for. We knew since Ifaty that the coast, be it on the big island or a small one, belongs to the French men and the gorgeous Malagasy girls draped on them. The local bars belong to them as well, the restaurants too. It was pretty much impossible to dance in a club without gagging over a senior citizen groping a young girl inches away, or have a pool game without girls, some very visibly pregnant, strut their stuff in a tight package. We even had to almost fight over a table once, trying to defend our right to play and not just bend over and purposefully roll balls around.
The coast of Madagascar becomes lighter and lighter with interracial children. Men have their wives back home and their girlfriends here to vacation with. Some actually care about the girls and some pass them around like they were a carousel ride. I, for one, was very interested how exactly all these relationships worked and shamelessly asked every local English speaking vazah about it. “…Yeah, Marco! You know, the guy with the short hands…” a blabbermouth dive shop owner eagerly told me. “His girl is that skinny chick – you’ve seen her. For a while there, she looked so sick! He was so worried… Heh, worried… He was shitting his pants! Hell! We were all shitting our pants!” He swallowed that last bit of the sentence and choked on it too realizing he was spilling a bit too much. “She ended up having… Eh… What do you call that? Um… Tuberculosis! Yeah… That’s what it was.” He said eventually and changed the subject.
Like everywhere – money is power. Local women have money in a place like Nosy Bee, and local men are left on the sidelines to drive cabs and watch their women give birth to blonde babies. I’d be surprised if there was no resentment. And I wasn’t surprised when a woman tourist ran up to me on the beach crying about a man robbing her of her purse with all of her money and documents.
Posted in Places»Africa»Madagascar | No Comments »
Lemur-a-Day Keeps the Boredom Away
Sunday, January 11th, 2009
crowned lemur
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Dream Dream Dream
Saturday, January 10th, 2009
I dream of bringing our future children to Madagascar. Who knows, maybe they’ll go against the grain and actually think their parents are cool if the family trip will make them feel like they are on some hallucinogenic drug. Hell, maybe that’ll even keep them away from real drugs!
Madagascar is perfect for kids. No deadly poisonous reptiles or insects and whole forests of stuffed toys for the girls and colorful creepy crawlies for the boys. You truly need a child’s energy to see all there is to see in Madagascar. I wander how seeing Madagascar would affect a child’s imagination and creativity. As for my own imagination, it stands humbled, if not defeated, by Madagascan nature.
Posted in Places»Africa»Madagascar | No Comments »