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Asia Bound

May 30th, 2008

Another long flight tomorrow to finally get me into the real Asia.  I think I am past the travel burnout and I am looking forward to seeing something new.  It will be hard to leave Pamela, but she has things to do in June, she is healthy and she now has a Thailand visa so we have July 6th-29th to look forward to when we will see Thailand together.  I need a break from Kenya so this is good timing.  I struggle with the Kenyan culture almost daily and this will give me a breather.  Kenya is very ethically-challenged that has tired me of late so a little distance will allow me to come back fresh and start again at getting use to the place.  I think when I get back I will start reporting the contents of the Kenyan news so we can have some good laughs.  You will see that it is no joke that almost everyday includes stories of crazy deaths, lynchings, witchcraft, police abuse and government corruption.  I stopped reading the papers for a couple of weeks because they were depressing me, but this past week I have been able to handle their news better (maybe because I am leaving?) by distancing myself from their craziness.

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Bricks and Charcoal

May 30th, 2008

I would never have guessed the two most common commodities in much of the world are bricks and charcoal.  Country after country has shown some aspect of the bricks and charcoal manufacture, market and use.  If you are thinking of a baked, red brick sold at Home Depot and a square of Kingsford… those are proper and a little too removed from the real things.  Charcoal in the world of Latin America, Africa and Middle East is wood sticks and chunks that have been cooked in a kiln.  I am really not sure what that stuff is sold in USA, but I only hope it is pure cooked wood compressed into convenient bite-size cubes.  I wish I had a chunk of it so I could show an African and get a good laugh.  Bricks are rarely red unless the clay is red and even then it isn’t the hue of USA bricks.  They also never come in the size that is so common in America.   Bricks and charcoal have a commonality in that charcoal is often used to bake the bricks and the bricks can be used to make the charcoal.  I can’t travel a hundred kilometers anywhere in the countries outside of America and Europe without running into a pile of fresh bricks and/or a large bag of charcoal for sale next to the road.

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Violent Nations

May 25th, 2008

I was listening to the TV in the background when they said “foreigners were being attacked in South Africa”.  I did a triple flip with the fear that went through me.  “Foreigners”, “attacked”, “Africa” was the message and that’s me!!!  Well, of course, once the real message about a faraway country and African foreigners I calmed down.  No surprise to me that South Africa is having problems.  A country with so much wealth and so much poverty going through economic difficulties and cultural and economic growing pains… is it really a wonder that people snap?  The situation there is not so unlike the situation here in Kenya and probably similar to Nigeria.  Kenya has enough wealth and resources and land except so much of it is concentrated in too few hands.  The country is definitely headed in the right direction, but there are too many being left behind.  Under-educated, under-employed, fatherless young men and the way they protest their predicament is explosive.  Isn’t this the basic ingredient in every riot?  All they need is someone to blame for their situation in life and the mob mentality takes over. 

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Posted in Africa, kenya | 2 Comments »

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No Longer Homeless!

May 22nd, 2008

Pamela and I moved out of the temporary furnished apartment this past week and into our new (literally) apartment.  My original idea was to get a small, cheap place that Pamela could use for moving permanently to Nairobi and give me a place to stay in between travels.  That snowballed into finding a really nice, large and comfortable apartment that I truly think of as my home.  I guess I officially live in Nairobi now and I am no longer a homeless person.  Best of all I am incredibly happy with this change, with Nairobi and, most importantly, with Pamela. 

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Posted in Africa, kenya | 4 Comments »

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Kenya Safari

May 21st, 2008

I think it is about time I write about safari destinations in Kenya since I just wrote about Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Pamela and I toured many other parks in November.  I’ll skip the Nairobi destinations and save them for an entry on Nairobi.  I have now seen a good part of Kenya although the more I see the more I want to see.  Given that I still have a long list of places in California that I want to see after 25 years of living there and touring around the state regularly, I would guess that it will take a lifetime to see all of Kenya.  I had alluded in the past that we had some trouble during our three-week trip and that was a main reason for not writing about it in the past.  Our guide basically ripped me off and abandoned us near the end of the trip in Mombasa area.  As time has gone on I feel less inclined to write about that bad apple and just move on.  Considering the number of people in Africa and Latin America that I have blindly put faith in and trusted with money and my well-being, I consider it a real statement about humanity that there has only been one thief and crazy person amongst all of them.  Kenya has bad apples like everywhere else, but they are a small minority and I do everything I can to not let them taint everything that is great about this country and people. 

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Posted in Africa, kenya | 4 Comments »

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Sleeping in Khashoggi’s Bed

May 11th, 2008

Pamela and I spent last weekend at Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy otherwise known as Sweetwaters on the northwest side of Mt Kenya near Nanyuki last weekend.  Kenya tourism has a lot of great specials this time of the year (rainy season) and I wanted to go on safari to see Kenya during the green season.  We were signed up to stay at the Sweetwater’s luxury tented camp (the only thing resembling “camping” is that you are in a tent… in a king size bed!).  Serena, owner of the camp, called to say that I was a good customer (we stayed at their hotel in Kampala – the place where The Queen stayed and a couple of their other properties in Kenya and Tanzania) and they were going to put us in the best tent – the one located right in front of the water hole where animals congregate.  Something must have happened with making this promise reality because I received another call saying that they wanted to put us in the Ol Pejeta House instead.  This is another place to stay in the same park whose price is well beyond most people.  The home has had a couple of owners before Serena acquired it most notable being Adnan Khashoggi.

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Posted in Africa, kenya | 3 Comments »

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Big Change!

April 4th, 2008

I am writing from my apartment in Nairobi, Kenya.  Yes, you read this correctly!  I suppose anyone who does not know me may think I just made a rash change going to Oman from Dubai and in one day aborting Oman and my whole trip to relocate to Nairobi, Kenya (aren’t they murdering each other there?!).  But if you know me then you know that whatever I decided to do was based on a long time of thinking.  Things started to go awry with the trip after separating from Pamela in November after seeing Kenya and Uganda with her.  All of a sudden I had something else going on in life which became increasingly more important to me than travel.  The violence in Kenya around the beginning of the New Year really pissed me off because that made any thoughts I had about settling in Kenya seem pretty stupid.  I was busy enough in CAR in January to just shelve it all.  Then I had seven great weeks with Pamela including a return to Kenya where I found things back to normal.  The more I read about Kenya’s problems the more I realized I had allowed myself to be douped by the media (even when I know better!) to believe there was some widespread catastrophy in the culture of Kenya.  The real problem was just a small minority of very horrible people that did some horrible things which enthralled the world and its media outlets.  So by time I left Kenya about three weeks ago, I had fallen more in love with Pamela, felt good about being in Kenya and its future, started to really like Nairobi as a great city and I was wondering if I should be leaving.

I enjoyed my time in Yemen (I still have stories to post soon), but I was sick there from the pollution which made me doubly question my trip.  Then Iran fell through.  Then I was back in Dubai where I certainly did not want to be.  And then there was Oman where I was excited to see some sites, but when they started quoting me about $500 a day for a driver and vehicle I totally balked.  In the meantime, I was thinking about getting back to Kenya and starting a new life.  I was also becoming VERY sick of hotel and restaurant life and staying in crappy places or spending way too much money for a nice place (and of course the worst is too much money for a crappy place!!!!).  It all came to a head and I woke up with a pretty clear answer to the whole mess – leave Oman, fly back to Kenya and try living there.  So I have done just that getting a short-term furnished apartment in Nairobi with Pamela and we are working on a business venture involving development of land that she owns near Mt Kenya. 

In June, I plan to be in Borneo and Vietnam with my friend Rod and some other folks.  I also have a kayak trip in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in October.  In between, I will be in Kenya and maybe America plus I will get back to America for my niece, Jillian’s, wedding in November and probably be there through NYE.  I was suppose to be in Chile in January and I think I will just let that one float as a possibility for now.  I’ll deal with things like a more permanent home in Kenya as things go well.  And if they don’t go well then I come up with another plan.  So the trip goes on, but I am no longer homeless!  Kenya is a very good place to see a lot of the world from.  Kenya has a very bright future and we’ll test the waters to see if that future includes me and whether or not Pamela and I make a great couple.  I figure that no matter what happens, this is a good way to go about it – a commitment, but not too much of a commitment until I am ready.  I guess the blog can now carry on for the travel as well as what it is like for mzungu to start living in Kenya.  Stay tuned for Yemen stuff and I still have a lot to say about the Kenya trip from last November…

Posted in kenya | 8 Comments »

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Burned Out?

April 1st, 2008

I may have over-cooked.  I don’t want to be in Oman.  I don’t want to be anywhere near where I am.  I am working on getting back to Nairobi.  I’m not sure if the trip is over.  I reserve the right to think about it 🙂  Will keep you posted.  I think the 3.5 months in Africa, three weeks zipping through America and 2-3 more months in Africa and Yemen caught up with me.  Being with Pamela for seven weeks and then not is compounding all of it. 

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Henna Hair

March 31st, 2008

One of my first days in the Middle East and I saw a guy with bright orange hair.  He was a middle aged Arab and his hair looked so strange.  I first thought that it was impossible, but then I decided that there could be a small population of red heads in the Middle East with some genetic material from northern Europe.  In Yemen, I saw a couple more of these guys (of course, I saw no women’s hair so I could only go by the observations of men) and they looked so weird that I was really confused.  Let’s just say that none of them looked chic enough to have gone as far as dying their hair.  Finally, I saw an old man with just the little beard on his chin colored orange.  I asked my guide and he broke out laughing telling me that they use henna to dye it.  That’s when I realized why the color was so odd… henna!  One night while watching local TV there was an old imam preaching who also had the orange hair thing going.  They may think this is a great makeover technique here, but I believe we won’t see it spreading around the globe.

Posted in Mideast | 2 Comments »

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Movement of “Dah” People

March 31st, 2008

I have to say that other than the way-over-the-top consumer section of the Dubai International Airport, this is a great airport.  I am allowed to arrive without a visa and I enter without having to pay a penny.  This may be the only country I have entered that is free.  All of the passport control personnel are actual Emirate men and they are exceptionally friendly.  And they are intelligent because they put their little stamp on already used pages in my passport rather than the normal stupidity of using a new page (a particularly frustrating activity for us world travelers keeping count of our unused pages knowing they will run out in a bad place).  This airport is so well organized allowing many people to move through the facility as if it is a small airport.  Like many of the airports I travel through except in America and Europe, high speed wireless internet service is free.  If I had to get stuck in an airport, this would be the one I would choose.  Since I will be stuck here for a few hours on June 8th, I look forward to it!  Every airport I have visited could learn something about providing a good experience to the traveler from this airport.  Three cheers to Dubai’s airport authority and my exodus from UAE…

Posted in Mideast, United Arab Emirates | 1 Comment »

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