Challenge Completed: Italia Mura!

"Visit the Italia Mura and explain to me why its called "italia"...is it italian themed...its near the port so is it safe to consider it the "jersey shore" of Nagoya?"

I chose this challenge as my first one because I thought it would be a fairly easy task in which to get my feet wet.  As with any time that I set out to be an intrepid adventurer, I decided to start my trek to the Italia Mura with a little bit of research.  I was interested mostly in where I could find the place, but also was curious as to whether it was a shopping center, or a market or perhaps something else entirely.

With these questions in mind I swiftly opened my browser to google, and  hastily typed 'nagoya itali-' before the autofill function relieved me of the need to say anything further.  A click later and I was on a Wikipedia page, having to come to terms with some rather harsh news.  It read:

"Italia Mura (イタリア村) was a mall located near the port of Nagoya, Japan. Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals and the San Marco Square along with its cafés and orchestra."


The first thing you notice is the use of the word was.  Italia Mura was a mall.  Next you notice the word were.  Its main attractions were a reproduction of one of Venice's canals.  The article summarized with this:

"On May 7, 2008, Italian Mura was closed due to financial difficulties, as the management claimed."   

I was no longer dealing with the concept of a bustling, fast paced Italian market.  What I had signed on to explore was instead, an extinct Italian homage, four years to the wind.  With this new found knowledge I decided to break my challenge into the important questions.

• Does it even exist, and if so, in what capacity?
• Why is it called 'Italia', is it Italian themed? 
• Is it the Jersey Shore of Nagoya?

Does it even exist?

With this question first and foremost, I set out this morning by bicycle, and managed to get to the port within a reasonable amount of time.  I would have been quicker, but I had to make a necessary detour to one of the many Mr.Donuts found in Japan.  I used my rest stop as an opportunity to feed my coffee addiction and do some people watching.  

Nagoya Port is really nice, and especially so today because the weather was exceptional.  The Aquarium sat stalwartly to the far right of the large paved shorefront, and to its open doors streamed countless children.  However, this time around I wasn't interested in that inverted Ocean, and instead turned my bike to the left side of the large jetty, where there were very few people to be found.  

Nagoya Port is actually quite incredible and diverse.  Besides the aquarium, there is a maritime museum, a docked Arctic exploration vessel and a park, which is beautifully maintained.  The park was what lay between me and my destination and on this particular Friday, contained exactly two people:  a man on a bike, presumably without a home, who had a penchant for collecting cans, and another man, who was very far from home, and looked an awful lot like me.

     

   

After a brisk ride, and a brief stop on a bench to snap a couple photos and enjoy the salt air of the Ocean, I managed to get to the other side of the park, and found myself face to face with a rarely bland facade of what turned out to be the Italia Mura.  I was rather fond of the palm trees that were planted in rows, and they made me feel like I was back in San Diego again.

My next question was whether or not it was abandoned.  The parking lot outside the building seemed rather empty, save for a few cars, and it certainly didn't have the bustling feel of a place in use.  However, it was by no means in great disrepair, as it looked like the vegetation had been regularly groomed, and the main building kept pristine.  So it still existed, but in what capacity?  I'm not sure I ever found this out.  The main area of the Italia Mura had about five people in it, and they all had the air of maintenance me, carrying tools and ladders.  When I tried to park my bike close to the center, the man with the ladder actually said to me quite loudly 'Not!"

As for why it is called Italia Mura, and whether or not it is the Jersey shore of Nagoya, to those questions I can provide more definitive answers.  As for it being the Jersey Shore, that is a solid and definitive no.  This place had about as many Italians as it did French people, and about five times the number of Japanese to Canadians at that.  

As to why it's named Italia Mura, I guess it translates to something along the lines of 'The walls of Italy" and as said earlier in this post, the mall is supposed to be recreation of some of Italy's finer sights.    However, because of the whole abandoned feel of the place, and the absence of any people, the whole Italia Mura embodied this feeling of post-war 1940's sadness.  Besides a small field close to the area where some retired locals laughed and played weird golf, the whole Mura took on an atmosphere of forgotten tragedy and abandonment.  

So ends my adventure to the Italia Mura, and with it I call this challenge a success.  I do really wonder what will become of this place, as it has this latent beauty that sits untapped next to one of the nicest areas of Nagoya.  The port is a beautifully designed area of the city, and this part of its history and development is wasted and forgotten.  I take heart in the presence of the maintenance people, and hope they are working towards something great.

Thanks for reading, and as a bonus I will give an extra picture of a restaurant I saw while biking home from the coast.    

Much love,

Sean

I Deserve This

When did it become unacceptable to brag about things?  I'm trying to remember the age when making an exposé of your life's few victories became tactless and shallow.

I'm as bad about it as the next, I admit it, and often shut down socially in the face of someone else's boasting.  I call them a braggart, and revel in their bad taste. Yet it seems that people are systematically shamed by society to be almost embarrassed of their accomplishments when it comes to receiving the praise of people outside their family.  To accept recognition with anything less than meekness, makes you self absorbed and overconfident.

I'm may only be saying this because I'm in Japan, where the standard comment from most parents is that their kids are 'not smart' regardless of the kid's actual mental acuity, but I won't pin it on Japan alone.

What I'm really trying to say is, I wonder what it's like to receive an award and say "I deserve this".  I don't think I've ever done it.

Things That Make Me Feel Awesome #1

When you're walking with headphones on, and that song you love kicks in with its steady beat, bum tik bum tik,  and you just strut like you own the sidewalk.

This effect is greatly heightened when you are wearing a collared shirt with the top button liberated.  Loose your tie like it's casual Friday and turn on the swagger.

I know you know it.

Let's Have Some Fun

This isn't working like I had wanted it to.  I wanted to post a lot, and I didn't want it to be simple, mindless recounts of events, though I probably haven't even done enough of that.  Let's change things up a little bit.  On this, my 50th post, I will make a decree for change!

Let's make post size smaller, but periodicity much more frequent.  Let's have more input from the people reading this, tell me what you would like me to do - send me on a task to get a certain photo, visit a certain place or meet with certain people.  I am inviting any and all suggestions, serious or otherwise.  Make a request.

Either post a comment or send me an email to my full name @gmail.com.  I will create a page of challenges, and then I will go about trying to make them happen.  Give me a little bit of purpose in my free time.  I feel like I have a lot of the latter, and too little of the former.

On my part, I'm going to try and post something every day, or as close to that as I possibly can.  Probably not full posts, although from time to time those will still occur.  Sometimes it will be really simple thoughts or maybe pieces of fiction and often just ideas.  I would like to expand the utility of my writing, and in that way perhaps make it something I can use with more versatility in the future.  Help me out and feed my addiction.  Ridiculous requests are ok, IF the goal is attainable without me breaking any major laws, or find me in a situation in which I morally will be unable to recover for many years.  No murder or prostitutes.    

Starting this Monday, the 7th of May, I will start posting frequently.  Please help me out.

Recap:

1. Give me ideas, requests and challenges for things to do.

2. I will use my blog more frequently, and if there is a single dedicated reader out there (Hello Mom and Dad!), you will find yourself with a content overload!

Peace in the East,

Much Love,

Sean



Examples:

Dear Sean, Whom I adore,  I think you should ________________.

- go here

- do this

- learn this

- meet someone like

- etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

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!

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

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