Dream, Plan, Travel, Repeat.

I was browsing through some old files and realized that I wrote quite a few notes from various parts of the world for my O & E section that were never posted. So, consider this an O & E “international edition.” (Notes from Italy are coming soon.)

•    In Hyderabad, India, there appears to be a trend of photographing your baby/toddler in a variety of costumes, such as a doctor, a god(dess), a policeman, or even (my favorite) Gandhi. Some people put all of the images together to create giant posters to hang in their homes. Very, very funny.

•    I passed by a kindergarten in Kenya that had painted the alphabet, and images that corresponded with each letter, on its exterior walls. What image do you think they used for the letter “G”? A giraffe? Nope. They used a gun.

•    While a friend and I lounged on a beach in Lamu, a Kenyan man told us a nice story about the baobab trees that can be found around the country. One legend says when a god gave each animal a tree or bush to plant into the ground, the hyena planted the baobab tree upside down (which is why its branches appear to be roots). When the hyena realized his mistake, he began laughing and continues to laugh to this day.

•    A friend I traveled with in Tanzania had a Swahili phrasebook that provided sentences for interactions with market vendors, waiters, taxi drivers, and so on. One of the sections was for sexual interactions. Phrases that you could murmur to your Swahili lover whilst in the throes of passion included “Easy lion!” and “It helps if you have a sense of humor about it.”

•    In Kigali, Rwanda, you can make a “cell phone call” by stopping one of the young men and women wandering the streets with full-sized desk phones that are somehow wired to the mobile network.

•    Pigeon is a popular dish in Egypt. I consider myself an adventurous eater, but I couldn’t bring myself to try pigeon, a bird that I believe is popularly known in the US as a “sewer rat with wings.” I am also amused (and a little disgusted) by the similarity between the Arabic words for “pigeon” (hamam) and “toilet” (hammam). Coincidence? Probably not.

•    Cairenes have an awesome(ly scary) way of asking for directions: rather than safely pulling over and directing their question to one of the thousand pedestrians on the street, they will drive alongside another car and, as the two vehicles weave unsteadily down the road, converse with the other driver for a minute or two.

My life has been full of so many noteworthy experiences over the last few days that I don’t even know where to begin.

…

Let’s start with this: I’m writing from an internet café in downtown Nairobi.

I’m been in Nairobi since yesterday afternoon. I was supposed to arrive a day earlier, but my flight from Mumbai was delayed for many, many hours.

But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Earlier on June 4, I went to Ethiopian Airlines’ website to re-confirm my seat and discovered that the airline had cancelled my ticket for no apparent reason. Great.

Having solved that problem after a series of expensive phone calls to the US, Ethiopia, and northern India, Matteo and I decided to stay awake and go to a late-night movie near the airport before our 5:50AM flight instead of spending money on a hotel room. Once we arrived at the airport around 3AM, we found that we would be departing at 10:50AM instead.

After reaching the runway around 11AM, the pilot announced that a mechanical problem had been discovered. That’s definitely something you want to hear before take-off. So we spent another 3 hours waiting for the problem to be fixed.

Then, just as it appeared that we were finally ready to leave—we were moving toward the runway, the flight attendants were buckling into their seats—there was a bigger problem. The man that I had sat next to on the plane had left his seat and was nowhere to be found. Despite all of my travels over the years, I’m not a particularly calm flyer and – filled with fears about the mysterious mechanical error and (rational or irrational?) terrorism— his absence was really upsetting. So Matteo and I told a flight attendant who, along with others, searched the plane. We finally found that he had moved to another seat in another section of the plane to be with a friend. Sigh. Just one more delay in a night (and day) of delays.

So, leaving India was a little difficult.

One more point about the flight: For the first time in my flying career, I was on a plane where passengers had no concern for standard airplane rules. The poor flight attendants—who, like the rest of us, were already exhausted from the long delays—spent most of the trip re-directing people back to their seats who refused to sit down whenever the pilot put the seatbelt light on, including during take-off and landing. After the third person or so, it became quite amusing to watch.

Things got much better once we landed in Ethiopia. Because of the delay, most passengers missed their connecting flights. So, in an exciting twist to my round-the-world travels, I was provided a great hotel room in Addis Ababa for one night. Besides being thrilled about having a new set of visa stamps in my passport (it’s my quirk), I was happy to see a bit of a city that I had heard so much about from Ethiopians in LA and DC. I also became friends with the hotel clerks after declaring my long-time love for Ethiopian food, so the staff served Matteo and I some special dishes and injera in addition to the standard Euro-Indian buffet that they provided to the other passengers. I guess that when you have nowhere to be, delays can be a good thing.

Then, yesterday, I finally landed in Nairobi. I’ll write about the city when I have more time, but I’ll leave you with this tidbits: Within 12 hours of my arrival, I sampled both ostrich (good) and crocodile (god-awful). With such a great beginning, I’m sure many more African adventures await.

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Here's the story that I promised in my May 23rd post. Enjoy.

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I went to the Taj Mahal yesterday. They gouge foreigners at the ticket counter-- 750 rupees! To put that in perspective, consider that my hotel room, complete with luxury items like hot water, air conditioning, and TV, was 300 rupees ... [Continue reading this entry]