Why Are My Children Tiny?

The title of this is post makes sense to me and maybe one other person. It is the result of late evening, summer musings on a cramped balcony; the warm night accented by the harsh smoke of bad cigars and that eerie, haunting, flickering light that only a candle flame, distressed by the wind, can create.

The talks were of life, where we were and where we might end up.  In the thick of it, I was told that there would be no surprise to see me living in the suburbs, with the condo, a wife and some 'tiny children'. The accuracy of this prediction aside, I couldn't help but ask: why are my children tiny? In a wine induced fit of laughter, I then set out to find why I had been blessed with a bunch of abnormally small children, and if there was any specific factor influencing my Thumbelina-esque offspring.

Now, joking aside, I suppose that it is a pretty standard expectation for a lot of people to hit the 'burbs when they get to the 20 somethings; add the spouse and the two and a half kids, call it a life. To be perfectly honest, that is where I always kind of saw myself going. Of course not recently, and yet, not really too long ago either.

I was never a driven kid, and I will say sadly that I never had high expectations for myself. There are people that manage to muddle their way through life; that was me. Do everything adequately, do what you need to do to survive, but never really self-improve outside of the set boundaries. Having a family with children is an accomplishment. That ability to procreate and provide is in every way an impressive feat, the ultimate commitment and sacrifice of self to create and raise new life. As a result, it is in many ways very commendable to make it to the point where marriage and kids are your sphere of reality. Yet, I think that the reason it was always one of those inevitable results to me growing up was that due to the unmotivated way in which I lived, it would probably have been the best I could have done. The absolute maximum of my potential, the top expectations of what I could picture myself accomplishing was the very baseline of normal society.

It is funny to reflect on your life and remember how much time you wasted worrying about really silly things. I can clearly remember that as I met new women, right up to the end of University, there was always this nagging voice in my head asking if she was the one. There was this really sad, omnipresent feel that if I didn't meet 'her' in school, I would be alone forever. How pathetic is that? What a really stupid way to live your life. School provided this really structured way in which to learn new things and create opportunities and of course meet women, that it felt like without that stable safety net to lean on and push off from, graduation spelt the end of excitement, and the beginning of the long haul to retirement.

However, this is a happy story. Due to a few factors, including my own, self-proclaimed intellectual renaissance that can be followed throughout this blog and an absolutely comical lack of an ability to have or maintain any sort of relationship, I find myself with the opportunity to push myself beyond the minimum, and do something that I think I wouldn't even dreamed of doing five years ago. My thirteen-year-old self's prophetic vision of me in the suburbs has been indefinitely delayed, as in the near future I am moving to:

More specifically, to the city of:

Where I will live a block from the largest non-airport transit hub in the country, the Nagoya Train Station, in a tiny apartment that looks like this:

and get to sleep on one of these...

(Woo?)


The apartment was finalized last Thursday, and with its confirmation, I ran out of preparations. I can honestly say that I really haven't spent even a fraction of the time worrying for this trip, compared to when I left for Africa. Yet, the preparations for this trip were far more in-depth, and as I jumped through the hoops, I was able to kind of keep the realization of moving half a world away at arm's length.

So with the end of prep comes the start of the waiting; and waiting for the unknown can be positively correlated with my ability to be nervous, over think, and second guess. There is no regret, and admittedly the nervousness is in truth a nervous excitement. It took me several years, a lot of patience and a good amount of money to get to where I am now, and I think I can truly say I'm ready to go. However, it does not mean that I won't continue to get hit with profound moments of realization while driving, the ones that cause me to shout "I'm moving to fucking Japan!" really loudly, and then sort of laugh hysterically for awhile until I calm down and resume singing alone to the radio. I guess this is happening.

 Thanks for reading,

 Much Love,

Sean


Quickly, I would like to add my thanks to all those who have read my blogs to this point, as I recently reached 10,000 hits. I do take this with a grain of salt, as many of them were probably me swinging through. Moreover, thanks to the stats tracker on blogger, I am aware that a big amount of the traffic I get are people using google image search to look for Haida tattoos, and you will notice that 'Ink'd' leads the list of the popular posts on the bar to the right.

That aside, the feedback for this blog has been inspiringly positive, and I would like to thank everyone that has lent me a kind word after reading a post.   I have never needed to be very creative to write most of my posts, but it has required this ability to remove my filter and attempt to be truly honest. It is that filter that stops most people from saying what they really feel.


Not so coincidently, I wrote this whole post while listening to the album 'The Suburbs' by the Arcade Fire.


 

The Prime of My Life

The reality that this post, which I meant to write with all good intentions weeks ago, has now come to feature prominently on the first of the new year may belie the constitution with which I made the resolution to post more frequently. Broken resolutions aside, this post is meant to be a summation of the year past, a review of the body of time referred to shortly as twenty eleven.

As a consequence of my birthday, the revolution of the Earth around the sun from one January to the next has always paralleled fairly closely with the passing of my age, give or take 24 days. The result has been that every year gets a defined age value, a set denomination of my longevity for every wall calendar purchased. As it turns out, the age for 2011 was twenty-three, which was, as the old idiom goes, effectively the prime of my life.

Now I say this affectionately, as it is inherently based on a corny joke that I continued to make throughout the duration of the year. If you, like me, possess a rudimentary knowledge of baseline public school math, then the concept of prime numbers (those which can only be divided by themselves and one) is something that you know of, if not have forgotten as it lost its need to be retained in the real world.

Now by no means is twenty-three the first time in my life that I was prime, as 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 17 and 19 may take offense if I was so inclined to exclude them offhand. Yet, I will say that it is the first time I've been so outside the range of the milestone birthdays, which can be defined as any increase in age that earns you the right to a societal privilege. Compound onto my bad joke that 2011 was the first time I really felt like I was living my life how I wanted to, and the true reason for the goofy pun emerges: in a year that was hallmarked by economic crisis and the death of countless evil societal figures, I finally reached an operational baseline for my existence that I was content with; my prime.

The year began with Africa, which introduced me to the harsh reality of the world outside the west. A world that desperately wants to join the future, grasps at new technology, but implements and relies on it without the infrastructure or resources to make it dependable. A world easy to forget, where your dollar a day builds a water pump or school that goes derelict in a year when they run out of money to pay the upkeep. I was put in a place where consumerism couldn't be viable, lived in it, with it, adapted to it and then wrestled with my own conscience as I returned home to slip back into old habits. I realized how weak people are when faced with comfort, how weak I am when faced with what's easy, and hoped that acknowledgement of a problem is the first step to a solution. Twenty-eleven was a year of shifting comfort zones, from home to the extreme, and then back in a blink of an eye. I won't bore you here with stories out of Africa; there are many posts dedicated to that trip that are easy to access and give you a better idea of my attitude at the time.

The second half of the year was a stark contrast to the preceding months, and predominately featured me jumping through the hoops to lock down another piece of my hazy and steadily shifting future. It was a time of relative ease, relative fitness and emotional annoyance. The end result however proved to be fruitful, and those fruits have turned out to be a job in Japan, one of the things I listed as a thing to do on my very first blog entry.

In past posts I'd been relatively shady as far as details, and as my last real post was on the eleventh of November, it was mainly because I had no real details on which to speak. With December came a job offer, and in this coming February I will be flying to Nagoya, and beginning my contract as a teacher of English for ECC second language institutes. Although I had made it clear that I was flexible in my placement, Nagoya was my subconscious number one in terms of cities to go to, and I can honestly say that I was thrilled to be so lucky. As a transit hub to the country, Nagoya exists as the industrious, laid-back, financial capital to Japan.

To be honest, I should probably be more scared. I've cast around for ideas as to why I'm so calm in the face of such a drastically life changing experience, and the closest I can figure is that I am all worried out. Between the time I spent freaking out over Africa, and the time I spent asking myself countless 'what-ifs' during my first round of interviews with ECC in the spring of 2010, I have effectively exhausted the amount of time I can spend worrying over traveling and Japan in general. My immediate future is locked, and I'm along for the ride. There is no malicious intent in this universe, just a way of things, and if you worry or don't worry about something, things will happen the same regardless. It is a lot easier to cope with existence when you assume that nothing is out to get you.

My goal for this blog in 2012 is to become a lot more active. Writing has become this great release for me, and I always kick myself for taking too long between posts. For letting good ideas come and leave without even giving them a chance to be written down. Maybe not over the next two months, but hopefully after I arrive in Japan, this blog will become a bit more of a daily activity. More of a play by play than a monthly memoir of an event or a feeling.

So with a freshly written post, a form that gives me a clean bill of health, and a list of so many other things I need to get done in the next two months, I'll leave you with a song that I've been singing today and wrote this post to,

Thanks so much for reading and for your patience with me,

Much Love and Happy New Year!

Sean




As a note, here is the list from my first post 'A Gratuitous Introduction':

- Teach English in a foreign country. I may have been turned down for Japan, but Korea may be in my future - and experience breeds opportunities later.

- Tree plant in Western Canada. Despite all the people telling me why I shouldn't do this, the few that had the guts to tell me why I should had much more convincing arguments.

- Somehow traverse a country by WWOOFing at different locations as I go along. Meet the people, save the planet.

- Go to Japan. I WILL be in Japan soon. Man I want to go there so bad. And as a tack on I want to backpack Asia as well.

- Volunteer in Africa. I am currently waiting to hear back on a position I applied for. Things looks good. And perhaps climb Mt. Kilamanjaro while there.

- Work Visa in Australia. The visa costs $200, the experience lasts me forever.


Looks like I'll go three for six shortly, not bad!

I'll Make Reading My Blogs Into A Sport; You Will Win

If I am ever caught thinking back on a subtitled movie, depending on how compelling a film, I am often hit with a tinge of confusion. It isn't that I'm too simple to follow an ordinary plot line, or so slow at reading to follow the lazily scrolling text, but instead that I am continually faced with the question of whether I had even watched it in subtitles at all. If a foreign film strikes me, and I mean really strikes me, then sometimes my brain starts plugging in the written text into spoken English dialogue among my memories, so that I can never discern what I heard and what I read.

Now as common or uncommon as this might be, I couldn't help but subconsciously extrapolate it as the summary of my whole existence; possibly everyone's existence. How much of what you were told in your life did you hear? How much of it did you just read into? Does our brain just continually make vaguely translated subtitles to everything we encounter day-to-day? Do we know as much as we think we do... Our lives are foreign films that we translate and follow the best we can.

I know this isn't deep, I didn't even have much reason to share it other than to get it off my chest. That, and to make it clear that I like to make obscure metaphors to my existence.

A month and three days is all I have been back in the country, but I can honestly say that I only have felt like I've truly been home for less than half of that. It wasn't because of anything stereotypical. I wasn't depressed, I wasn't even all that sad to be done traveling. I had made it clear in the last of my African blogs that I was ready to leave that continent, at least for a time, and that wasn't reckless words in the heat of the moment or a joke. No, I simply just never felt like I came back. I was transitory, and always seemed to be expecting to push off soon, never really settling back. Funny enough then, the day when I finally came back, and really felt like my trip was over, was the day that Barcelona FC won the Champions League.

I wouldn't call myself a sports fan, that would be insulting to sports fans. I like some sports, I'm too particular. I am hockey nuts, this isn't news. I don't mind baseball, but I won't go crazy. A true "sports fan" loves the spirit of athletics, and will pretty much tune into any of the local teams to follow some action. That said, I do always need at least a sport to pay attention to, any team to follow along with, and nod my head, and talk shop around the water cooler about.

No surprise then, that in Africa, the sport that you only really could follow was football. That is soccer to you. Football was everywhere, the one and only of all sports talk in east Africa. Any awkward encounter with a local could be broken with a mention of Man United or Barcelona, and the donning of a jersey made you the object of praise and ridicule interchangeably for the day. In this way football quickly became a major thread in the story of our travels. So much so, that in the slower weeks and the waning days, our trip could be summarized as the trials and tribulations between games, as if everything was a build up to the next Champions league showdown, or inter league grudge match.

I told you that I like to make obscure metaphors to my existence, and here is what I was trying to get at. Let me make it less obscure: To me, my trip through Africa parallels strikingly to the rise and eventual winning of Barcelona in the UEFA Champions league, and the other countless pitch showdowns of our arbitrarily selected-to-win teams that littered the evenings throughout the trip.

The selection of Barcelona as our go to team was pretty easy. When I was in Argentina, knowing nothing of football, I picked up a national squad Messi jersey. At the time it didn't mean to much, but post world cup when I had had the chance to watch the little dynamo put on an especially convincing performance amidst a mismanaged and poor showing Argentine squad, I was sufficiently convinced of his excellence. How could you make Lionel Messi better? Simple, take him and add him to a squad that is almost half composed of the reigning world cup champion Spanish team and then let the magic happen.



Barcelona is the epitome of European football. Control, skill, speed and showmanship. We would watch games where Barcelona would have over 500 completed passes to the other sides 100, with a ball control percentage topping seventy. Don't you dare call me a bandwagon jumper either, I joined the ship when they were still playing Arsenal, and after game one that series was far from in the bag for the Catalonians. The guns took it 2-1 with a late game rally in the last ten.

The point is that we would ride the ups and downs of Barcelona's season in our own lives. It was partly pure coincidence and partly that energy you feed off from a team you grow to love. The success or failure of Barcelona in any game would shadow our attitudes or situation and vice versa. The good thing on my part is that Barcelona really was the juggernaut, that powerhouse team that seemed to glide through most of their season. Things were always more positive than not, and rarely did a gloomy spell last longer then it needed to.

It was with mixed feelings then that the winning of Barcelona over Man U snapped me back to reality, back to Canada. Don't get me wrong, I was ecstatic. The fact that it was Manchester United was the icing on the cake. The fact that it was none other than Messi, who got the game winner, and sealed the cup, was sublime.



Man United as a team is one that you will grow to hate if you ever cheer for any one else. Rival or not, they have a cast that is in my opinion regrettable and front manned by a fat-faced goon named Wayne Rooney. The worst part is that they are good. Maybe not to the man, but as a unit they are an extremely solid club. Nothing is worse than a hateable club that is actually good, because then you can't justify all your rage by calling the club crud.



The sadness was because it was an end. I had been there as they went through Arsenal, Shaktar, Real Madrid and finally Manchester United. I was unwavering in my fandom through everything, to a level that I can honestly say that I have never felt in the Stanley Cup finals with any of my teams. There was no fear of failure, just a confidence in the end result. That is an addicting feeling. As a result, after the victory over Manchester I felt like I had both somehow "won" at my trip to Africa vicariously through Barcelona, while simultaneously losing my biggest connection to the whole experience. The chord was severed, and instead of living in an unsettled limbo I was firmly back in Canada and reality. Mixed with the aimlessness of unemployment I was experiencing at that time, that was when I got into the real funk.

I like Canada, I like a lot of things about Canada, and yet already as I get back into the groove of life here I find myself unsettled. I get irritated by the small community mentalities, the lifestyle and the tripe that passes for news worthy material, while all the while falling right back into it. I had managed to push out of my mind for a time the work until death lifestyle that runs the Western world, the very same mindset that was the very reason I started this blog in the first place! No wonder I'm irritated by it! All the same the itch returns, the urge to go back out and see something different.

Fear not though, loyal blog readers, for I am on the rise now. I think I needed the decompression time that being an unemployed sack allowed me, and taking it wasn't the biggest mistake of my life. I also needed to take a break from this blog. Finishing the writing on Egypt felt like work. It was that hard. The frustration and emotions that I channeled into that post were a little too much, and it really killed my want to write for quite a while. Things are on the up and up starting now. For the summer I have moved back to Guelph and the streets of my University days, accompanied by all the nostalgia that that brings.

Guelph is a bit of an oddball in terms of weather. For the majority of the year, namely fall through spring, Guelph can be one of the cloudiest most depressing places to exist. Summer though, summer in Guelph is a whole other tune altogether. That overcast gloom is promptly swapped for an omnipresent green scape and sunshine. I'm a child of the sun. Guelph in the summer is like the ultimate bromance of me and nature.

My job for the summer is nothing to stimulating. I won't win a Nobel for any great achievements putting in my time, much like I won't get a Pulitzer for what I write here. It is, however, exactly what I needed this summer. It is active, I am on my feet. I've worked behind a desk for long enough in my life to know that it won't be where I end up. They are flexible, and I have the summer to interview and search for something more up my alley, while making money and staying busy. Fair deal.

Perhaps the best thing about Guelph is the spiderweb of sidewalks that starts outside my door. I have a history of trying to be a consistent runner in Guelph. Unfortunately it usually went to the tune of either I would start in the fall and run into snow, or start in the spring and find myself returning home for the summer, where motivation to run the small selection of routes was minimal at best. In the past weeks I have been consistent, and consequently feel better than I have in years.

My best ideas for writing come to me while I'm active. Just like the first part of this post came to me on one run, the rest of it came to me today while I was out running in my Messi jersey. A bunch of goons heckled out the window to the note of Barcelona sucks.

You can't bring me down. Forget Vancouver, forget hockey altogether for a minute. My team for this year, my real favourite team of this year won the whole thing. Straight up. Thanks Barca!

Enjoy your summer everybody! I should be writing a lot more frequently now!

Egypt: The Good, Bad and I Got Ugly

I have never had a need to add a disclaimer, but I think this blog warrants a bit of a note. It isn't because of foul language or graphic content, but rather due to a poor attitude. I actually wrote the majority of this post while sitting in a hostel in Cairo, and the frustrated attitude that I had carried out of Tanzania was only compounded upon in Egypt. I was planning to sit on this and perhaps let my temper cool off - but I don't really enjoy writing retroactively or censoring my opinions, and to change the content now would require both. So the vast majority of this post stands as it was originally written, and the rest is filled in today. Enjoy.


(Identify this bird for me?)


I don't feel like writing a linear account of what my time in Egypt has consisted of so far. Instead, and in a rather cynical tone, I will voice some thoughts and insights into the people and sights of Egypt as I've come to understand them. I say cynical because that is my current mood, however, don't let it detract from your opinion of Egypt on my account - I'm just going to present my opinions! This is my blog, I can do that.

The thought that a whole country could be founded on one river seems slightly absurd. Yet, here in the north easterly part of Africa exists Egypt as a strip of green on blue in the middle of a vast expanse of yellow. Egypt without the Nile is a wasteland; its history and architecture an ancient king's wildest fancy, and nothing more. The vast flowing Nile is the lifeblood of the Egyptian economy and identity. Just as it was the spine and support of the BC era empire, it still stands as the foundation for all the major cities not located on the sea.

Egypt is a country facing many problems, and as a result many changes. In the wake of the January 25th revolution, and the consequential lull in tourism, the attitude of the people has changed; a nationality of pushy people trying to sell their wares to tourists has since become a very desperate pushy people trying to hawk their goods to a dwindling clientele. Add on top of this the fact that Egypt is the second most populated country in Africa, growing at over a million people a year, and without the means to expand their agricultural area which is tethered to a river beside the omnipresent desert - the need for foreign aid and the input of tourist dollars into this economy has never been higher at any other time. It is in this climate that I entered Egypt.

Egypt to me is a love-hate story, and I feel that I really need to present it that way in order for my thoughts to make sense. So like I said before, I don't want to lay out this particular post as a linear recollection of events, but instead categorize it into what I what I will simply refer to as the Good and Bad of Egypt. Since complaining always give rise to a much more interesting story, I will start with the Evil:


The Bad:

It is with sadness that I simply say that desperation doesn't sell. As much as telling me "it's low season, so you buy" didn't sell me bracelets in Tanzania, the endless mobbing of my time and space has failed to make me be any more accommodating. If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. Every small act of kindness in Egypt inherently requires you to tip. Travelers are a pit of wealth to be drained. The result is that everyone feels the need to interrupt and pry into every aspect of your existence.

If you try to take a photo, Mohammad Somebody recommends that two steps to your left would be a much more suitable location. This would be advice costs two pounds. If you ask where the exit is in a museum, the helpful informant will walk you the ten steps around the corner and then bluntly ask "tip for me". If you use an adviser to book a day trip to the pyramids, he will ask you how many days you have in Egypt and take the liberties of trying to book the remainder of your days too, and at a very disingenuous price. Prices for simple amenities are always stated with about a 300% markup until they realize that you're not about to be fleeced and this isn't your first rodeo.



Sadly, this achieves the opposite to their ambitions. I don't enjoy being swindled and conned. If you start at a price that is outrageous I'm more likely to walk away and avoid all future negotiations then to come back when you tell me "OK, we talk, cheap price". No one likes to be insulted, and it is exactly that: insulting. These people gate crash the admissions to the real wonders of Egypt, and so while you're trying to wrap your head around the true splendor of something as mind blowing as the pyramids, six people are a foot behind trying to get you on a camel, and the other four have cheap souvenir pyramids and sphinxes and try to put them in your hand.



If you go to the Great Pyramids, wear a hat. Wear anything at all on your head. The main ploy at Giza goes like this: So and so will walk up to you with dime a dozen postcards in his hands and a cheap version of a traditional Arab head wrap too boot. His first attempt at conversation will be straight forward, he will simply try and sell you both items at a ridiculously overpriced fair to which you will instantly say no. This will go on fruitlessly for about a half minute until they will attempt a change in stratagem.

The man with junk will approach you a second time. This time they will be prepared with the head scarf out of the package and will approach you saying things like "No Money", "Free", and "Gift". Nothing is free in Egypt. They will then try and accost you with the head scarf and unless you are quite slippery, manage in shoving it over your head. While you're busy with that, his other arm will be slipping postcards into the crook of your arms, lodging them securely. The hawkers hands then become permanently glued to his side, and due to some acute onset medical abnormality he will seem to be unable to lift them to receive the postcards that you adamantly want to return. The condition lifts only briefly to occasionally befuddle your attempts to remove the damn scarf that has been crammed on your head. He will continually say it is a gift and free through the whole process, but as soon as you try and walk off with his supposed gift, the mantra instead changes to "tip for the gifts?"

Now he has you in a pickle. You can't physically return it to him because he appears to have lost the basic motor control needed to grasp objects. Yet, you can't simply walk off with them without the man hunting you relentlessly around the lot, either with claims that you didn't pay or that you should tip for his hospitality. The solution, fortunately, was not too hard in the end. I told the man I was going to set his things on the ground, in the sand and camel shit littering the area. By some miracle he made a full recovery and was able to hold things again, but for some unknown reason his face contorted into a not to flattering, unexplainable snarl.

It's not that I don't want to help you. It's that you're selling crap, and the same crap that I can buy in a million stores in Cairo, and you're doing it for a ludicrous markup. One man even had the audacity to request a trade of his three novelty pyramids and a headscarf for my deceased grandfather's ring. I told him no as swiftly as the the other and then I had to laugh as he clarified and repeated: "No, no, no, trade, we trade!" as if that made the deal a little less sour.



Despite all this bitching, I think I should make it clear that I only lost my cool once (other than the time I had to tell the annoying man trying to domineer our picture taking to sod off). It was our first full day in Luxor, and we had spent our morning out at the Valley of the Kings on the west bank, and proceeded to take time in the afternoon to explore the city and watch a football match between Man U and Chelsea.

Every night in Luxor, at the temple of Karnak, there is a light show that takes place in several languages throught the evening. Conincidently as we were leaving the bar after the game, we had just enough time to make the English showing, but not if we walked. We had been harrased by carriages all day while walking around, and finally decided to indulge the cheapest one that was willing to take us out to the temple.

Reaching the temple was the exact moment we made our first mistake of the night. The carriage drivers declined our offerings of money, and told us to hold on to it and pay them after, as they said we could go back into town for the same price after the show. They had only charged us a total of ten pounds for all five of us to go the twenty minutes to Karnak, so we were willing to give them repeat buisness. The downside is that we were now morally obligated to pay them, and our night was inevitably tied to their services.

Things started to take a turn for the frustrating. The light and sound show turned out to be a little pricey for our blood, and as a result we didn't end up seeing it. To compound on that, we now had almost an hour to kill as our would be ride had returned into the city to try and find some fare while we were indisposed. We made a vain effort to try and hear the sound of the show from outside the temple, and failed to get more than some cheesey voice acting, so reluctantly we went back to the entrance to wait impatiently for our ride.

As with all the other attractions in Egypt, it was not long out the gate that the vultures began to descend on us, and this time in the form of two new carriage drivers that pulled up in anticipation of the post show crowd. At first we reacted the same as we had been with all other taxi or carriage drivers we had encountered, and told them simply no thank you. The problem, though, was that we couldn't really leave, and after a short reprieve we were once again set upon as we sat on a curb. Reluctantly we informed them that we were waiting for a carriage that would most likely be coming at nine. We were still adamant that we would not in fact be riding with them, and that they should leave us alone.

This man took it in a different direction, and decided that every minute we waited was another minute that his relentless nagging would wear us into getting onto his carriage. With striking audacity he would grab my hand and look at my watch every minute and say the words "ok, at nine, they not here, we go" over and over again. His offer to take us into town was at double price in two carriages. Finally at nine, noting that our transport had yet to arrive, he said with finality that it was time to go, and that we were to now get into his ride.

I don't get mad a lot. Even when I am mad, it is very rarely that I will give you the full depth of what I am thinking. This man however, he got the whole extent of my anger. I went on a thirty second diatribe about his buisness ethics and techniques. I stripped him down about how annoying he was, and how never in a life time would we get into his ride, regardless of how low the price is. For twenty minutes of annoyance he recieved a half minute of fury, and the finality of me saying very loudly "No." Even then, however, he tried to laugh it off and turn to the others in our group for support. They weren't making eye contact, and I met his attempted joke of "what is no?" with an even more forceful no. It finally sinking in, he slunk back across the parking lot and glowered at us for the remaining two minutes until our carriage showed.



Enough of the bad, let me get to the good about Egypt.

The Good:

People are generally friendly. Those that really have nothing to sell you will often be the first to say something as simple as "Welcome to Egypt", or be genuinely curious about where you are from. These are the good faces of Egypt, and if you manage to discern them from the rest, are actually worth talking to.

There were times walking in Cairo that I would have people fall in stride with me and they would, like everyone, ask me where I am from. Instead of saying something stupid like "Canada dry, never die" in respone, they would often follow up with something about themselves; I'm going to school, I'm fron Cairo, how do you like Egypt? Although I'd be wary, these were often the same people that were simply hospitable and on the way to somewhere much like me and would soon depart. Good conversations are possible in Egypt, they are just a lot more rare.

A good example of this was a man named Jimmy from Luxor. Jimmy was the proprietor of the Princess hotel, and also in charge of setting up our tour through the Valley of the Kings on our first day in the city. He told us upfront that he would be making money, but then outlined costs of admittance, fuel, and driver and presented in a way that made us aware of what was a fair price. This was a refreshing change, considering the agent at the New Palace hotel in Cairo intially tried to hook us up with a ten day tour for over $300 that didn't include admission prices, and was solely for transportation and sleeping arrangments. When we found out you could have a nice bed for roughly $4 a night and that the trains were only $20 to cross the country, we were hard pressed to figure out his price logistics. Lucky we dodged that bullet.

Another solid point about Egypt is the ease in which we were able to place our hands on the quite valuable ISIC cards. For those of you out of the loop, or before their time, ISIC stands for International Student Identity Cards. These little plastic dynamos come with a bunch of perks, including and not limited to discounts off attractions all over the world if you're student traveler. I know that the distance they go varies by country, but in Egypt the cards basically get you half off at every attraction, with the only exception we found being the Karnak light show in Luxor. Now the catch of these cards is that you need to be a fulltime student and have proof of enrollment. Anywhere else this may have been a snag, but in Egypt we pleaded unpreparedness and after a little convincing the lady at ISIC Cairo was more then happy to equip us with our cards. The cards cost us about 120 Egyptian Pounds (roughly $20), but I would wager they saved us more than triple that, none of us students.




Something really good about Egypt is the train system. Egypt was the fifth country in Africa that I had visited, and the fourth one I had seen with train tracks laid down. However, aside from Tanzania, it was only the second I saw with actually servicable machines moving on the rails. The trains in Egypt stretch the whole country, and are the main mode of travel, since the roads have not always been the safest. For the price of approximately $25 you can take a 13 hour train from Cairo all the way to Aswan. I dare you to try and get a similar fair on via rail. There are obviously some minor annoyances associated with the Egyptian rail, such as an irritating conductor that does ticket checks every three minutes, and saucy ticket booth operators who will tell you clearly vacant trains are sold out - but considering some of the more constent hassles of Egypt, this is minor news.

I suppose the thing I should be spending the most time on is what will get the least: the attractions themselves. The treasures of Egypt are simply amazing, but the sheer amount of them can be a little overwhelming. We spent almost two full weeks in Egypt moving non-stop around the country and saw only a part of the cultural wealth Egypt has to offer.



This is a double edged sword though, as with every consecutive thing we saw, my taste for being a camera toting tourist was a little more sated, until finally I stopped getting worked up for temples. The attractions themselves remained incredible, but my enthusiasm to tour them dwindled.

I will say that the big name things are worth seeing: the pyramids, abu simbal, the valley of the kings and so on are all worth it. If you go to Egypt you do need to see them. The sheer size of the pyramids blew my mind. It is hard to stand at the base of something so large and wonder how it was made by human hands only. No machines, nothing of the modern technology. It doesn't matter how many heiroglyphics, statues and obelisks you see, they never get less incredible.

I won't give you the run down on everything we saw, as this blog is already long enough. I'm just going to give you some of my top pictures and tell you where they are from. If you want to look up the details on everything I went to, I have included this picture of all my tickets, which have the name of the site printed on them. Feel free to wikipedia the history! I love how ticket scamming is big enough in Egypt that they need to include the very official looking hologram onto all their official things. Even the visa to enter the country has this hologram!



- The Egyptian Museum (very underwhelming, basically an unmarked storage room)


- Giza Pyramids & Sphinx
> The Great Pyramid (This is the big one that you can go inside. Not terribly worth it thought, as it is really a long climb to an empty, cramped, and hot room. They could at least paint a mural.)





- Abu Simbil Tow Temples
> Kings Tomb


> Queens Tomb


- Valley of the Kings (You can see three tombs with regular admission, the following two cost extra)
> Tomb of Tut Ankh Amun
> Ramesses VI

- Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple (A large embalming temple that had original paint intact!)


- Karnak (The valley of the Queens Ticket was for Karnak, we never saw the VoQ.)


- R'Mose Temple


- Luxor Temple
Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean

Farewell East Africa

I saw a seal on the bus the other day. He was a peculiar seal, dark of skin and sitting upright, a fine fuzz of white fur covering his rotund head; dual cellphones were clutched constantly in his flippers. Beep. Beep. Beep. For hours. I didn't know that seals rode the bus, or that they had African wives that fed them cashews. They do, I saw it. I wonder what that seal would have said if he had made a slight turn left, and saw me staring at him. I was transfixed, his whole face seemed to jostle and shake as he chewed. The temple pulsed, moving up and down rhytmically; his ears moved in time with his jaw, quivering as if under the duress of a gentle breeze.

OK, I'll admit that he may not of actually been a seal. However he certainly did have a likeness to the seafaring mammal. And, perhaps the man in front of me didn't look like the closest thing to an Afro-asian since Tiger Woods, but he did have a striking likeness to a certain Chinese friend of mine. The lady next to me was touched though, I'm sure of it. Every time the the bus driver touched the brakes, she was up and around; peering nervously through the mid-seat crack and encrouching on my space like a fleet footed doom was approaching.

The point is that I enjoy people watching, and unfortunately for others I excel at being callously detrimental in my assessments of people I've never met. I used to hate long road trips. I've come to the conclusion that it was probably because I had nothing worth thinking about when I was younger. Now I enjoy a more enlightened way to move. Don't try to sign me up for Mensa or anything, but I've come to a stage in life where I have the ability to sit back on a bus ride, look out at the passing landscape, and spend copious amounts of time just thinking. It is always pretty unimportant thoughts: future plans, the rare insight, and often a handful of ideas that I think might fit into my blog; as I was looking at the seal, I was imagining how I could write about him.

On this particular bus trip, that returned me from Moshi back to Dar Es Salaam, the one particular thought that was in my head went like this: I am ready to leave East Africa. It's not that I don't like the region, I do. It's not that I havn't had the time of my life, I have. I suppose it boils down to the Mzungu status that haunts one through this continent. I'm tired of the totes and artists and safari drivers. I'm tired of haggling for everything because the white man has the money. No one ever wants to talk to you just for talking, and if they do they're the one out of ten and you still treat them like a jerk because you just can't take the risk that they're not trying to sell you things.

I'm slowly becoming reclusive; a recluse. Perhaps if my tan was darker you'd be checking under the piles of clothes in your kid's room looking for me, my bite poisonous. I'm folding in on my self like a precisely crafted oragami crane. I havn't the patienece for the grifters and sellers, the 'hello rafiki's and the 'karibu brother's. I just long for the places where you meld in to the background, taking for granted the diversity of home that collages you indecernible from the next. Perhaps, I'm not a friendly person, not inherently. My attitude to new people is a multi-factor variable, and situation plays a big part.

The only place I didn't feel this way was Uganda. When I was in Uganda, the "buy my art Rafiki" was a more sincere "Hello Mzungu, how are you?". Yet, I have no plans to circle back there now, and the guns seem to be blaring in the Kampala streets even if I wanted to. The pearl of Africa still has its problems to sort.

It is thus with a mix of sadness, yes, sadness, and the feeling that now is the right time that I fly out of Tanzania. Tonight in the early hours of the morning, I head to Egypt. Although I know the pestering in Egypt will be as bad as anywhere (probably worse), the change of scenery, the shorter duration and the rendevouz with my younger-older-sister makes me excited to go.

My time in East Africa has been nothing short of amazing. I will write something of more proper tribute when I reach home, but for now I will simply say good bye. It hurts to leave, but I think I need a change.

Thanks for Reading,

Much Love,

Sean

Zanzibar

I don't, unfortunately, have the time right now to write another full post right this second. But, as my last post was so long and lacking any visual stimulis, I figure I owe you some pictures.

Zanzibar town (stone town) has a sea wall running around the coast. When tide is high in the evenings, all the local kids flock to the Ocean to jump off the sides!

Traditional dhow that the locals use to move about. This one is similar to the one we went on in Lamu. Note the outboard engine on the back - pretty standard fair in this day and age.

Maybe my favourite picture of one of the locals jumping in. We had the luxury of joining them one evening - very, very cool experience.

This is a group shot of Jess and I with the two German ladies we met in Kenya, as well as a street child we somehow adopted that day. From left to right: Lena, Judie, Me, Jess and friend. Hope these pictures tide you over until I have the time to be a little more thorough. I really do apologize for the pure size of the last one, and if I can I will try and be more frequent and less wordy. Pictures are a bonus if the computer can handle it. Thanks for reading... er, looking? Much Love,

Sean

The Mysterious Disappearing Hostel

The remainder of our time in Nairobi was rather anticlimactic and dull. As the reputation of Nairobi told us *beware! danger!* much time was spent waiting inside a walled hostel compound for Brandon to arrive. Therefore, shortly after his landing in Kenya, Jess and I were eager to depart East towards the coast. Coinciding with our growing impatience, I had befriended two lovely German ladies (sisters, Lena and Judie) at the Nairobi hostel that were also headed in the same direction, and they provided added incentive to get a move on.

The night we grabbed the bus to Mombasa was cold and dreary. I'm generally opposed to night buses, especially after I got my fill of them in South America and double especially since the pace for this trip is fairly relaxed, and I'm not always saving my daylight for seeing things. Unfortunately for us, the cheapest tickets to Mombasa came with a night bus that left at 9 pm sharp (Ha! As if.) from the city center. Solemnly we rolled out of the city lights into the lightning splashed twilight of the rainy Kenyan countryside.

Now for most, I assume, night buses are probably a winning venture. Assuming you can sleep on a bus, you can get a night's rest, save a night's rent while traveling all at the same time. For me, however, I only manage to reap the last two of the benefits. Night buses bring me no sleep; time spent thinking instead, is how I fill the hours. Something about the pitch of a completely barren Kenyan wilderness can provoke deep thought in a person; compounded easily by a dreamlike waking state that results from the sleepless early morning hours.

Sitting there, watching dark shapes roll by the windows, wondering if it was a bush or elephant, I was lost in my head. Between futile attempts to sleep, I caught myself wondering on the purpose of travel. The back of a guide book I read in a hostel said: "We search, therefore we travel", but I'm left questioning the accuracy. What do travelers search for? It certainly can't be the short useless encounters with other travelers, or for photos of random landmarks, which are fleeting and meaningless - merely bragging rights against those left at home. Even worse, do we search for the longer friendships that travel can bring, which in the grand scheme hurt that much worse but last little longer? One theory is that we travel to see the difference. Traveling allows appreciation and understanding. One doesn't know what they have until they explore the alternatives. I'm still not sure, I'll keep looking into this one.

The bus arrived to Mombasa early the following morning. In total, I managed roughly thirty minutes of sleep during the whole ten hour ride, and even that near the end of the trip. In complete frustration I finally decided to lay myself down on the floor of the bus, which actually sort of worked, until shortly after the bus stopped to pick up a bunch of people looking to get a lift into the city. There went my extra seat and clean air. They were a particularly smelly group of individuals.

Once in Mombasa we immediately got hounded by a bunch of taxi drivers; after a little half-hearted and half-asleep haggling we agreed to pay way too much to be taken to a hostel called Mombasa backpackers. This place wasn't in the guide books, and we only knew of it because of the German girls we met were already there. The reason, we found out, was apparently because they had just switched to a location. Yet, this place didn't look or feel like a backpackers. The taxi after several minutes rolled out of town proper and out into the land of giant mansions with large fenced-in compounds.

At the gate, a masaii warrior in traditional garb let us in and we rolled up to the least hostel like hostel ever imagined. It honestly look like a million dollar mansion somewhere in the Hollywood hills. Also out of place were the proprietors of the place, a pair of (I think) gay lovers, one Peruvian and the other South African, who were nonchalantly smoking weed as we walked into reception (the living room?). For all intents and purposes it looked like two guys waited until the family of this house had left and then jumped the walls and started a hostel. Yet, rent was fair, the beds clean and the grounds had a pool - so we stayed.

Mombasa as a city is in my opinion, nothing special. We walked around the market district and found it to be much the same as all Africa - people will try and be your friend for your money. Along the coast, however, Mombasa is a pretty city. We walked by the old colonial fort (very expensive to enter) and through the old stone buildings of the coast. At one spot by the shoreline there was a rather picturesque scene of middle-eastern decent children jumping from a ten foot rock ledge into turquoise waters, while nearby the older men spent a lazy Sunday fishing the coast with a piece of line tied to their fingers. The breeze blew strong and fragrant off the Indian Ocean there, and for a long time I was content to just sit and exist.



From Mombasa, the five of us, as we had met with Judie and Lena, caught an early morning bus north along the coast to the island of Lamu. The bus ride was another seven hours, and the ferry out to the island thirty minutes on top of that - but the trip was definitely worth it. I'm not sure how widely known Lamu is outside of Kenya, but the word on the streets is that it is like Zanzibar, yet better as it doesn't get the traffic. I'm not sure how true this is, as there was a lot of tourists and have never been to Zanzibar (yet), but I deeply enjoyed my time there.



First of all, I'll start explaining Lamu by saying it is an island where many things are the same. Every man is the captain of a dhow boat, and for a 'fair' price, willing to take you snorkeling or diving or dolphin watching, or simply run you over to the next beach - it's the least they could do. Furthermore, everyone has a sister that does amazing works with henna tattoos, or a wife, but we were fairly certain that everyone's wife is another man's sister. Lastly, every man that doesn't own a dhow boat (which is very few), is instead a struggling artist that just wants to get by. They will have a backpack of their work on them and explain how they toil endlessly in their small houses to make their art, and again for a 'fair' price, are more than willing to offer me their services in creativity and shirt design.

In a less cynical tone, Lamu is indeed breathtaking. The old Islamic settlement hugs the coast closely, and features tall stone buildings and narrow street corridors. Indeed, the streets are so narrow that no motorized vehicles are allowed on the island (not exactly true) and instead the brunt of all transportation and labour falls to donkeys. In fact there are over four thousand of the beasts on the island, and one can hardly turn a corner without seeing two or three of them just standing and being.



The joke of Lamu is that you come for a day and stay for a month. Like most travelers, we laughed this off, and then fell right into the trap. I honestly think that part of the reason is that it is a pain in the ass to get there, and no one wants to hurry back to the dusty bus ride south. Moreover though, I think it is really just the intoxicating feeling of waking every morning with a view of the coast, and the taste of the salty air on your tongue. It truly is a beautiful island, and the real beauty in it is that it is small enough to be known to the hawkers after a short period - and they will leave you alone almost completely in a few days time.

We were obliged to do some of the touristy stuff, and over the week we were there we went on a dhow trip, snorkeled among the corals of the Indian Ocean, ate fresh fish on a boat near a long sandy beach and even ventured to hop on a donkey and go for a ride. I will say this in parting, the Ocean to some holds a magic of the soul, but almost subconsciously I always find myself wishing for freshwater when I swim in one.

~~~Interlude~~~

Sorry for the length of this blog, I am almost done. Let us finish:

After a drawn out and heartfelt goodbye, we finally summoned the courage and strength of will to leave Lamu. If you look at my last blog, you can take that as an indication of how little time I was really willing to waste while on that beautiful chunk of rock. From Lamu we set out to Malindi and there caught a matatu thirty minutes further south to Watamu, and ran into something we never expected: Italians.



It feels weird even to write this, but that specific section of the Kenyan coast exists in the orange hue of bronzer that exudes from the skin of Italians. Excessive hand gesturing and copious man thongs were indeed included. It was mind boggling to say the least. Little African children used to yell hello at me, and now enthusiastically sang Ciao in chorus. Stop it! Indeed, the presence of the Italians didn't just make the Muzungus annoying, but in turn the locals as well. As it was explained to me, Italians expect a a little banter, and as a result the salesmen got that much more aggressive and annoying. No dhows in Watamu, instead everyone has a glass bottom boat.

One neat thing we did do in Watamu was visit the turtle watch. The turtle watch is an organization that rescues injured turtles from the coast of Kenya and rehabilitates them back to health. On top of that, they monitor the local beaches for nesting sites and deter tourist vandalism as well as relocate nests that are in prone positions. By some stroke of fate and Brandon's mumbling of "we want to do things...", we ended up being put to work; cleaning the turtle tanks and doing a beach survey. We did however get to see two of the sick turtles, a green sea turtle and a hawksbill, which were both amazing. It is funny to say that the beach survey involved transects and other fun scientific methods, such that it felt like in a day in Watamu, I did more actual science than months in Uganda.



As we said goodbye to Watamu we also had to say goodbye to our German co-travelers, who by this point had been with us almost two weeks. This was a really hard parting, as I had spent a lot of time with them and became pretty close. Much like when Chris and Richard left us, we had to part with good friends unknowing of when we'd see them next. Bye Judie and Lena, I hope to see you soon.

From Watamu we went back to Mombasa, and immediately booked tickets south to Dar Es Salaam and Tanzania. From the bus station we hopped into a tuk tuk and headed back to Mombasa backpackers, which had proved a worthy enough hostel the time before. The tuk tuk brought us back to the gate of the compound and we paid him and sent him along before pushing open the heavy gate.

Immediately we noticed that the ever present door guard in masaii dress was missing from the little hut next to the gate - along with his craft table. Odd. As we moved further in we noticed more absences - such as furniture. Where was the patio furniture, the outside bar fridge and bar stools? Lastly, where were the people? The ever presents: the owners and the slow to leave travelers? Then the people came, out walked a Kenyan family: husband, wife and baby, and proceeded to stare at us with surprise and disdain. Who were these three uncouth travelers with large backpacks and the nerve to simply walk into their gated haven.

Where the hell did the hostel go? We sat outside the gate for the next thirty minutes trying to decide whether we had dreamed the whole place up in the first place. Then we started going over every fishy thing that had ever occurred there, like how when I asked if they were going to build a sign for their hostel, the owners immediate response was "probably not". Were they even real?

After much running around we finally managed to get rooms at dive called the Tana guest house. Although the staff was a little strange and the digs a bit shabby, when I woke up at 6am I could see my bus parked across the street, and that is pretty awesome.

I now write to you from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and I don't know how to feel about it. Kampala was ugly, but endearing thanks to its energy and people. Nairobi was ominous and threatening, yet beautiful and metropolitan. Dar seems to have neither of these, it lacks the hustle and bustle to compete with Kampala, and is void of the pretty green space that begrudgingly made me kind of like Nairobi. I will remain for the time being, undecided.

Thanks for reading,

Much Love,

Sean

Lamu! Lamu! Lamu!

The sun is shining, the ocean breeze blowing, and the Sean smiling. Yet, why shouldn't I be smiling? It is hard not to when you are sitting on the edge of the Indian Ocean, soaking in the hot equatorial sun of the Kenyan coast. Maybe I'm a little burnt. Who's to say? Perhaps the salt from the bath like waters makes me itch a bit; minor problems.

The point is, this is not a new blog. This is a tease.

Brandon, the recently arrived, and Jess along with myself are in good company here on this little island of paradise, and as a result have chosen to live it up.

My proper blog will be soon. Maybe when I'm off this rock? I'll tell you about night buses, Mombasa and this little slice of paradise called Lamu.

Be good.

Sean

Kenya Dig it? Nairobi vs Kampala, and other news.

As you may have guessed, the time for Kenya has arrived. However, unlike the way we did Uganda, we're starting in the city first. Sunday morning, awoken at 5:30 by the call to prayer of Kampala's ever-too-close-to-our-hostel mosque, we packed and set out to catch the bus for our first long overland bus trip of Africa.

Setting out for Nairobi at just after seven in the morning, we rolled in roughly thirteen hours later just as the dark was settling. This may just be a pet peeve of mine while traveling, but I really detest entering into a new city after dark. But unfortunately, like Kasese, Jinja and Kampala before it, Nairobi became another city of twilight. There are many reasons for this dislike, but the main one is that I have a very hard time getting a proper feel for a city when the sun goes down. Everything in what could be an otherwise friendly place seems to gain a sinister quality that is just off putting.

Thoughts on Nairobi: It becomes apparently very quickly that Kenya is a country of considerably more wealth than its East African neighbors. The city center is clean and beautiful, with many green filled parks and looming skyscrapers. Prices for things are also a lot more expensive. At times walking through the downtown I felt as if I could have been in a part of Toronto on a summer's day.

The bad thing about Nairobi, sadly, is that reputation proceeds it. Outside the core of the city exists slums and poverty. The sinister quality of Nairobi after dark is more than just a trick of the mind in a lightless world. Crime is common, muggings frequent and vigilance required. It is unfortunate that a city with so much potential beauty is at the mercy of the economic divide that exists all over Africa. The ultimate result though, is that Nairobi gets the reputation of being boring. Taxis are expensive and the night life is dangerous; tourists can't be bothered or hesitate to really take in the city, and end up sitting in a hostel waiting for bed. Shame.

In stark contrast to Nairobi, is the vibrant nightlife of Uganda's capital: Kampala. Kampala is bonkers. My first look at Kampala was on a pass through on our way to Jinja from Fort Portal. Catching a late morning link bus from Fort Portal, we arrived in Kampala just around early evening, and set out on foot from the bus terminal to the taxi park to grab a matatu to Jinja.

Picture Kampala and its taxi park like this: You're walking in the woods and you hear the distinctive sound of a hornet's nest. Grabbing the hornets nest, you lay it on the ground and look around for a big stick. Upon finding that stick, you smash the hive repeatedly and watch the wasps swarm about you. Now instead of wasps, picture yourself on a dusty city block and people are swirling about you in like fashion. Most are in a hurry, some are trying to sell you crap and others just look lost and mill about. It is bonkers! There are literally hundreds of taxis, honking and strewn about the lot. Vehicles move by continually, opening and closing gaps in all directions; as you try to walk the world around you is turned into a shifting labyrinth of noise, metal and exhaust. The only thing more intense then walking through it is attempting to boda the streets during rush hour. Holy crap!



Link to a photo of the Taxi Park


Kampala proper is no less amazing. Take all the aspects of rural Uganda and drop them on a more built up metropolitan background and then magnify it 100 fold and you'll find yourself in Kampala. Markets spring up on all side streets, vendors spread cloths with their wears on the side of busy avenues and noisy children ask for your money. Yet, simultaneously behind it, fast food restaurants and fancy hotels exist, patronized by portly city dwellers; showing the first signs of people living in excess that I've seen in all my time in Africa.

At night the bars and clubs of Kampala light up, and keep going until late the following morning. In our escapades, Richard, Jess and I found ourselves at a small bar on a side street of Old Kampala that was actually featuring the rarity of live music. Already fairly intoxicated, we stormed the dance floor to find it deserted among a sea of seated watchers. Unhindered by the inhibitions of our sober audience, we tore it up, many times challenging the people in chairs to join us. Within a short time, obviously jealous of our fun, we managed to get the whole bar on the floor. Such was our enthusiasm that about an hour later as the band winded down its set, a round lady who had been working the bar came about the floor and pressed into our hands a coin. You heard me, I got paid to dance. A whole 100 shillings. I figure that to be about 4¢. Kampala is pretty awesome.



Aside from that, the only other big thing we've done in the past couple weeks has been our white water rafting of the Blue Nile in Jinja. Unfortunately the cafes in Nairobi don't seem to let me put up pictures, but anyone with Facebook access to Jessica or myself will see that there are a couple pictures up (mom and dad, ask Kase to show you!). The day that we went was beautiful, and the stretch of river was between 30 and 40 km. And, even though over that stretch there was only about ten rapids, the water was so warm and nice that during the calm periods we'd lay about in the river and take turns flipping into the water off the raft.

Not much is new besides that. We spent a little bit of time at the crater lakes near Fort Portal that were crawling with monkeys. That was pretty neat, as when you were eating or walking back to your room, colobus monkeys would be within arms reach, playing, fighting and making noise.




Currently we must sit in Nairobi for a couple days yet. Our English friends that we've been with for the past two and a bit months are flying out tomorrow for the north of Africa, and Brandon comes into Nairobi on Thursday. From here all signs point to Mombasa or Lamu which both lie out towards the coast of the Indian Ocean. Our time in Kenya will probably be only a few weeks, and then we'll head south to Tanzania!

Thanks for reading,

Sean

that's the boy... that's the kid...

I'll start this post with a long overdue acknowledgment. Hello, good day and how are you to every single person that works behind the front doors of Jones Feed Mills. Yes Lori, I do check comments!

I apologize for not sending any individually addressed emails - but it's not my fault! You see, I realized soon after I started this trip that I had relied a little too heavily on the address book Dave has compitently compiled into Outlook - and thus never really took the time to learn all of them. I'm pretty confident that they are all as basic as name@jfm, but I didn't feel like taking the time to guess a hundred combinations and play the odds that most people were hit. I know you guys talk, and I know feelings would be hurt if names were missed. No tears shall be spilt on my account.

This said, I would like to reiterate again how much I enjoyed working with all of you - and for the life of me can not comprehend how that place operates in my absence. It was because of the wonderful time spent with all of you that I am able to fund my time abroad. For those of you who read this, please take a page out of Lori's book and drop a comment, along with your email and I will send you something more personal. Anyone can comment - even you.




Shout out aside, I had a epiphany last week - want to hear it? To set the scene, I should explain that I have developed a new haunt in Kisoro. A couple weeks back a new cafe opened just around the corner from the Golden Monkey hostel, right next to the craft shop run by the German lady, Val (I think I've mentioned her in a previous post). Unsuprisingly, the cafe is run by the same woman, and operates in an organized and exact way that is alien to these parts. Furthermore, the lady who operates as the waitress is an expat of Canada and pretty much awesome to talk with - amazingly friendly and cheery.

For all these reasons, and the fact that you can get food in less than two hours, this restaurant provides a little bubble of normalcy in the otherwise foreign and chaotic atmosphere of East Africa. It was while I was there last Thursday morning, drinking filtered coffee (instead of tinned!) and being stared at like a fish in a bowl by passerbys (really driving home the bubble feel) that I realized that I like it here. I like Africa.

This may not seem like much of an epiphany, so I will explain. Over my first month here, there has always been this itch in the back of my mind that something wasn't quite right - something I couldn't put my finger on. Although it didn't really impede my ability to function, it did provide me with some reservation and even hestiation that I would define as uncharacteristic. It left me feeling at odds with the continent.

Yet, for some reason, having this place that was almost a teleporter to a different world, allowed perspective. I realized that I like the organized chaos, the loosely based time schedule and the muzungu status that dogs a traveler like me through Africa. The only thing that I am unable to place is whether the creation of an escape gave me the chance to truly value what I had, or the allowance of a respite emboldened me to truly embrace the culture knowing that I had a temporary out close at hand to use.

Regardless of the answer, the shift in attitude could not have come at a better time. With the start of some true backpacking about to begin, a slightly cocky swagger to the ways of Africa is a blessing. It does, however, mean that I am about to throw away all the stability and routine that I have managed to build. I will honestly say that I am quite excited to become a little more transitory. Classic backpacking holds such a romantic notion with me, that I am elated to truly hit the dusty, broken roads of Africa for the first time.

Who is Pudge you ask? Pudge is my sister
She tends to be annoying, much like a blister
But I wouldn´t trade her for the world

Pudge is a bit chunky, thick at the thighs
¨Don´t call me Pudge!¨ she idly cries
But I wouldn´t trade her for the world

When she moves she jiggles
And if you poke her she giggles
But I wouldn´t trade her for the world

However, maybe for a robot.

Jessica looks excited too!

It conincides with these sentiments that I had recently just started - and finished - reading the book, The Beach. I'm not sure why I had never read it before, but I can reckon that it was probably because I remember seeing the movie back when and finding myself less than inspired. That, however, was a different time, and the nuances and romance of the life of the traveler was lost on me. This go through though, it struck chords. The narration is first person, and done in a simple yet elegant way that niether demands nor insults. Reading The Beach is more like thinking through your own thoughts than taking the words off the paper. It touches and bounces on so many thoughts and sentiments that I can relate to - allowing it to add itself neatly to the list of my favourite books. The only bad thing about it is that it has me mumbling the words "that's the boy, that's the kid..." quietly to myself. Although I don't feel like writing any more of a book review, it has got me thinking, and I can appreciate anything that does that.

Lastly in the news department is the wildlife. I had made a joke to Jess about half a month ago that the forest, and its animals, operated much like a video game. The premise of the game is that seeing animals beats levels; every animal is a boss. This joke was timed after a stint in the woods where we had seen so little fauna for it to be laughable. The driving comment I made was that as soon as we saw Gorillas, the last boss, we'd unlock all content.

Not suprisingly then, in the last week and a bit since we trekked the jungle of Bwindi, some fun stuff has happened! Last week, first thing in the morning, Jess and I were making a usual walk to the monkeys, and were not at all suprised to see the regular signs of buffalo and elephants in the mud. We made our often ignored half joke / half pleas to follow the tracks, and again were not at all suprised to hear them rejected. Therefore, the suprise came not ten minutes later when we discovered that something had decided to stick around! We were close to entering the forest proper when we were stopped, and directed with pointing fingers to look to the other side of a dried up stream bed. Standing, large as life, just thirty feet away, was a full grown male forest elephant. It didn't stay too long, but I did manage a nice photo of it's butt. Joking aside, hell yes elephant!



Add on to that the fact I saw a bush buck today on the way to see the habituated golden monkey group, and you might think that the forest did in fact have some organized viewing sequence to it. I can just imagine the UWA walking ahead of me and kidnapping all the animals until I shelled out money for a Gorilla permit. What a sneaky and devious ploy.

The habituated group of golden monkeys was neat, but rather anti-climactic. It is hard to get really, really worked up to see something that I have been viewing for the past month and a half. It was neat to see them so close though, and more importantly frustrating that in the first ten minutes I had collected many more, and better photos than a month plus of efforts had produced.



Tonight is a goodbye party night, and will most likely be one big wreck. We all went to the marketed on Thursday and managed to assemble the ugliest ensembles we could find. The tour de force of my paticular number is a stunning black cardigan featuring Winnie the Pooh and Tigger holding hands. Best friends is neatly embroidered across the chest. I worry for the person who actually bought this from disney, but reckon it was perhaps that gift you might recieve from a strange and distant relative.

No other news to report, must go be ridiculous.

Thanks for reading,

Sean