Author: jdewyze

In the footsteps of our ancestors

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Last Tuesday as the afternoon sun lowered, Steve and I stood over the grave of Cecil Rhodes.

This guy, after whom the country of Zimbabwe once was named (Rhodesia), occupies one of the most dramatic final resting places I’ve ever seen.

I knew almost nothing about Rhodes before this trip, but now I can tell you: he was a ruthless, rapacious visionary. The son of an English minister, he was so sickly as a child, his family sent him as a teenager to Africa in the hope it would toughen him up. Once there, Rhodes heard about about the diamond action in Kimberly (in what’s now South Africa), moved there, and raised money (from the Rothchilds) to start buying up mine leases. He wound up essentially cornering the world diamond market and founded the De Beers Company (still a powerhouse in the diamond world.) He also resolved to build a rail line from Cape Town to Cairo through all the British possessions along the way. To do that, he needed to take the land ruled by the Ndebele king (basically today’s Zimbabwe and Zambia) and fill it with Englishmen, who would ride in comfort upon those Rhodesian rails.

Using lies, deception, and the muscle of the English crown, Rhodes succeeded so well that by the 1950s and 60s, white people held all the power in Rhodesia, and they transformed the place into something that warmed many Western hearts. At the same time, resentment among the natives built, and a vicious guerrilla war began in the 1970s. The insurgents triumphed in 1980, when the Brits relinquished their claim on the place, and the modern state of Zimbabwe was born. For most of the time since then, the black Zimbabwean elite, every bit as greedy as Rhodes, has done a pretty dreadful job of ruling. But personally, I can’t fault them any more than I blame Rhodes. He started the mess. I didn’t spit on his grave, but if anyone else had been there and done that, I wouldn’t have objected.

Nonetheless Monday through Wednesday nights, Steve and I stayed in an institution that symbolized the heart of white Rhodesian rule for 127 years, and if I’m honest I have to report: we enjoyed it.

The Club Bulawayo, both a private social club and a hotel, today is still a grand old structure paneled in expanses of dark, very shiny wood.

We were more than comfortable in our large room, spotless and equipped with comfy beds, a nice shower, and decent internet. Food served in the building’s central courtyard was good, and the handful of folks on the staff (all black) were uniformly warm and welcoming. In many ways, however, the Club is as broken as were Rhodes’ dreams of continental mastery. The 300-plus-year-old grandfather clock on the second floor still chimes, but the elevator doesn’t work (so we had to lug our bags up 62 grand steps to reach the second story). The parquet in the lobby gleams, but the corridor outside our door looked shabby.

We saw so few other guests that at times I felt like we had sneaked into and made ourself at home in a museum.

Steve and I devoted one of our two full days in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe’s second largest city) to urban amusements: visiting the national Museum of Natural History, the old railroad museum, the central public library, and more. Like our stay at the Club, these provided more tastes of lost imperial glory.

Rhodesia’s railroad system was once a marvel.

Rhodes had ordered that the streets of this city be built wide enough so a wagon pulled by 24 oxen could make a U-turn. When the ox teams disappeared, hordes of cars never replaced them, so today you can stroll around the central business district without fear of being mown down.

For our other full day, we had to choose between two excursions outside the city. We could have visited the Khami Ruins built about 600 years ago by people who had abandoned Great Zimbabwe after it collapsed. Steve and I had visited the Great Zimbabwe complex a few days earlier. Considered the greatest archeological site south of the Sahara, it met my (very high) expectations.

A young archeology student named Shylet was our excellent guide.
Part of the site, where a series of kings lived, crowns a high vantage point.
The king’s chief wife occupied this enormous lower complex.

But Great Zimbabwe is basically a medieval castle, and the Khami ruins would have been more of the same (only smaller and younger.)

The alternative offered an experience of antiquity orders of magnitude older. So on Tuesday we drove about 30 minutes south of Bulawayo to the Matobo Hills. You could visit Matabo National Park just for the geology (or to see Rhodes’ grave, which lies within it.) Fantastic rock formations dominate the landscape, including gigantic boulders that look like they could crash down at any moment.

For us, however, the big draw was the rock paintings that line the walls of thousands of caves.

We visited two of them. The first was relatively easy to reach, down a shady dirt byway off the rocky main road. A friendly young museum attendant greeted us. His name was Knowledge. (“Yeah, seriously,” he said, aware of the humor in his parents’ choice.) He gave us a thorough, adept tour of the small but excellent museum, which filled us in on the humans who once lived in these rough shelters as long as 40,000 years ago.

Some time around 13,000 years ago, they started decorating their caves with paintings of the world around them. (Actually, even older paintings may exist; the layers underlying the cave floors have not been conclusively excavated.) The little museum contains reproductions of some of the best — far more complex than any cave paintings I’ve ever seen before.

I can’t explain everything that’s in this reproduction of a painting in the Botwe cave, but the guy at the top left was trying to hunt the huge lion and got his arm bitten off. The person two rows below him, horrified by these happenings, has his arms on his head — a prehistoric Munchian Scream.

After our tour, Knowledge led us to the Pomongwe cave a bit further down the path. The space is lovely, big enough to have housed a clan of maybe 100 folks, but sadly, the paintings were damaged around 100 years ago, when inept curators tried brightening them up with linseed oil (in preparation for a visit from some British royalty). Still, we could see how extensive and impressive they once must have been.

Knowledge urged us to visit Nswatugi Cave, less accessible but in much better condition. To get to it, we had to drive quite a bit further along dirt roads that were all but deserted. Then we had to find and follow a series of green arrows painted along the path.

This sign refers to just the short final bit. The beginning part was much steeper.

Parts of the hike required scrambling up steep rocky inclines lined with brush where black mambas and puff adders lurk; other sections went up stairs and across flats. What we found at the top was worth it all.

The entrance to the cave.

A wonderful menagerie parades across this cave’s walls…

The images moved me in a way I find hard to articulate. Thousands of years before the Egyptians began playing in their sands, these simple hunter-gatherers stood in this space, re-creating the world that surrounded them. One thing we’ve learned on this trip is that traditionally, Africans have seen their ancestors as a link with the divine. I’ve never been able to empathize with that. I’m not particularly interested in my own great-great-grandparents and certainly can’t conceive of worshipping them.

But it strikes me now that the San people who lived in and decorated Matoba’s caves are also my ancestors. Now that I’ve seen their art, it’s not that big a stretch to imagine kneeling before them.

Wild and free

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Justice and Steve

Throughout the course of our travels, Steve and I have stayed in a handful of places that felt like the ends of the earth. Our time in the Save Valley Conservancy adds another to that short list. After turning off the Mutare-Masvingo highway, we had to jounce for almost two hours over fawn-colored dirt washboard. Steve had to drive the Cruiser through the Turgwe River. During the dry winter and spring, it shrinks to a fraction of its high-water levels, but enough water still flows through it to get my adrenaline pumping.

Steve locking the hubs to engage the 4WD, to help us get through the water ahead.

The guard at the gate off the main road had radioed that we were on the way, so a guy on a motorcycle was waiting to lead us to our lodging on the Humani Ranch: “Goma 2.” It’s very clean and comfortable, and after a delicious dinner, I felt cozy and relaxed. Around 7:30, a sound shattered the night. A growl verging on a roar exploded close enough to be on our porch. This lion sounded murderous. He (or she) emitted its blood-curdling threats 3 o 4 more times. Then another scream pierced the night. The shrieks went on and on, terrified and pleading (if an animal can plead). I don’t know what it was (maybe a bush pig someone suggested the next day) except that it was prey about to be eaten alive.

I felt astounded to be so close to such noisy exotic violence but not particularly scared. Goma 2 was built from stout concrete blocks. It has big windows, but a lion would only crash through one of them in a Hollywood movie. And soon this would not be a hungry lion. I did feel a bit nervous the next morning, as Steve and I set out on a walk led by a 32-year-old guide named Justice. He wore a green uniform and had a handheld radio but brandished no weapon.

It soon became clear his English was minimal. He knew the word “lions” but didn’t understand my question: “Are they dangerous?” I tried “Will they hurt us?” He still looked uncomprehending. I went for something simpler: “Will they eat us?” He said they wouldn’t.

We walked for awhile alone a broad dirt road, and at one point passed a gaggle of kids of various ages heading to the ranch’s school complex. If little kids could be out by themselves, I figured, we three grownups would probably be okay ambling through Lion Country.

After a half hour or so, we left the main road and struck off through a lightly wooded area toward the Turgwe. Descending into the riverbed, the terrain was so open, it seemed clear no killer animals were close enough to menace us. Soon, however, Justice pointed out a buffalo far in the distance.

We advanced toward it, and I realized it was part of a group.

Closer still, we could see them watching us, wary.

We’ve read, recently, that African buffalo aren’t as dangerous as their reputation. Only the cranky old solitary males are life-threatening, Justice told us. But he didn’t imply the rest were petting-zoo animals, and we soon left the riverbed. The buffalo herd thundered off, surprisingly fast. Over the course of the next few hours, Justice pointed out bushbuck, eland, kudu, and the always charming impala.

Shocking fast, they also leap higher than you can imagine.

He spotted some kind of monkey high in a tree (I only saw the branches swaying.) We noted a pair of warthogs trotting across a field, and we laughed at baboons stealing oranges from the farm’s huge grove.

Toward the end of our walk, our guide directed our attention to a solitary zebra, camouflaged by the thicket of branches.

We saw no lions or black rhino or elephants, all of which live here. What flabbergasted me about the game walk, though, was how present all those big animals felt too. There! A fresh black rhino track.

Enough elephant poop to fertilize a substantial organic garden.

Trees smashed up in the unmistakable manner of elephants. (SUCH messy eaters.)

Our guide explained that a hungry elephant had stripped the bark off this tree (which would die as a result.)

Justice said the mysterious holes in the ground were the work of “antbears” (later clarified for us by Google as aardvarks.)

When we found this single elephant bone…

…Steve asked, “Where’s the rest of him?” Justice replied, “Hyenas.”

On foot we drank in the sight of things we would have missed entirely in a vehicle: spring blossoms…

Wine-colored sap bleeding from a tree…

The beauty of thorn-tree needles up close…

By the end of our walk, I felt completely at ease. My epiphany was: of course! Humans evolved living with these animals for tens of thousands of years. Long ago we got established as the top predator along with a couple of others. (That lion!) But in a game reserve, we don’t compete with lions or leopards or buffalo for resources. That doesn’t mean we can blunder into their spaces or threaten them. But if we’re careful and respectful we can walk among them without fear.

After a break for lunch and a rest, Justice came back around 2:30 to accompany us on another outing, this one in our Land Cruiser, with Steve at the wheel. Crashing through the bush, we filled in some gaps in what we’d seen. We passed giraffe that reminded me how much I love those guys.

We watched a solitary elephant bull happily chowing down on dinner.

And at the wheel, Steve had a wildly macho experience that he loved.

Throughout our time together, Justice never grew more talkative. At first, his lack of English disappointed me. I would have asked so many questions, if he could just understand them! By the end of the day, however, I was happy about his linguistic limitations. If he’d been more fluent, we would have spent a lot more time yakking. Being quiet forced me to see more,

My one big regret was that we never met the owners of the Humani Ranch. Everything I know about the ranch and Conservancy comes from my guide book and the Conservancy’s website. The Whittal family sounds larger than life: former cattle ranchers and legendary big-game hunters who were leaders in getting their neighbors to tear down their fences, fencing only the perimeter and creating what the guidebook says is the largest private game reserve in the world. I had hoped to write more about all this but it’s too complicated. I give up. I can just say I’m happy to have glimpsed the life there.

The scary highways of Zimbabwe

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I was nervous about the driving part of our “self-drive” Zimbabwean safari. Steve also was worried. We’d heard the roads haven’t been maintained for 30 years. That drivers were almost suicidal in their obliviousness while speeding through intersections. That potholes and other obstructions turned traveling on rural roads into a potentially deadly game of Chicken.

As we approached the start of our trip here, I awoke on a couple of nights thinking about how easy it would be to die. But we’d heard from several sources that we’d be fine if we just took it easy. Were they right?

Now that we’re two long drives into the adventure, I’m think they were. A little before 9 Monday morning (9/25) we climbed into our loaded Land Cruiser and drove east from Ant’s guesthouse, heading away from the heart of Harare. The few stoplights we encountered seemed to be working, a rarity, according to what Ant had said. Traffic was light and no one did anything crazy. Soon we paid our two dollars at a toll booth and were passing fields and wooded areas. The further east we went, the lighter the traffic got, and I can tell you I this: When you’re almost alone on the road in a bruiser of a vehicle that can blow over potholes and other rough patches with ease, you begin to relax.

That’s not to say driving in Zim is just like driving in La Jolla. Paved roads are narrow but shrinking, the edges nibbled away by rain and wear. Those ragged fringes often are an inch or two above the adjoining dirt, and if one went over such a mini-escarpment at high speed (say, to avoid a head-on collision with a bus trying to pass someone), one could flip one’s vehicle and come to a messy end.

But Steve never drove at high speed, and the sights and landscapes entertained us: folks unloading huge truckloads of oranges…

,,,or making bricks or selling wooden sheds (or were they tiny homes?)

When we got hungry, we lumbered off the tarmac and parked on a dirt stretch near an informal bus stop. We opened up the Cruiser’s back, unfolded two chairs, let down our cooking shelf, made ourselves cheese and tomato and avocado sandwiches, and gobbled them down with chips.

To reach our destination in the northern highlands we had to pull off the main road and bounce over dirt and boulders for more than an hour. That wasn’t pleasant, but I don’t think we saw any other vehicle along the entire punishing stretch. We had that night and another full day to relax and enjoy the glorious countryside.

This self-catering “cottage” where we stayed was actually a four-bedroom house.
Although we had only candlepower our first night there, we still enjoyed a delicious dinner of chicken lasagna (pre-cooked and frozen and packed into our Cruiser’s freezer by Ant’s team), a nice salad, and brownies.
Tuesday morning we hiked for five miles around the lovely lakes down the hill from our cottage.
It was one of the most peaceful walks I’ve taken in memory. I think we saw one other person the whole time.
Pines like this scented the air.
That pink house in the distance is our cottage, with the Cruiser parked next to it.

Wednesday we drove eight and a half hours, stopping midway to refuel at a Total Station. For 13 gallons of diesel, we paid $88 (plus a dollar tipto the friendly guy who cleaned our windshield) — more than the price at home. But it was still a relief to see confirmation we wouldn’t be dealing with fuel shortages (another Zimbabwean thing, at least occasionally).

Descending out of the mountains, we dodged more animal traffic…

And I thrilled to this sight of our first baobab trees on this trip.

I bought that large colorful rug from the lady on the right, who made it.

Human automotive competition for the road remained light, and it disappeared entirely once we turned onto the washboard lane leading to our destination in the amazing Save (pronounced Sah-vay) Valley Conservancy.

The other scary byway in Zimbabwe is the Internet highway. If good paved roads are scarce, access to the global information stream is rarer. Here our beloved T-Mobile phone service, which gives us instant connectivity in more than 100 countries, provides only text and phone coverage, No data. Ant’s guest house was equipped with good WiFi but we haven’t been anywhere else that has had it.

As part of his services, Ant did provide us with an aging Galaxy Android phone, and we bought $20 of air time from a roadside vendor near Ant’s Sunbird Guest House. It took some work, but Steve finally figured out how to use the Android as a hotspot for all our devices. That’s how I was able to publish my Zimborientation post from our remote mountain shelter Monday night. It felt miraculous.

Since we left there, however, we haven’t had any phone signal most of the time (and if the Galaxy can’t get a signal, we get nothing.) If you’re reading these words, that means I finally found a spot of service. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with focusing on the actual world around us. That’s not a bad thing.

Zimborientation

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I’m starting this post around 7:30 pm in a farmhouse in the Zimbabwean northern highlands, very close to the Mozambique border. Thanks to Apple battery power, my iPad screen is lighted, so I can see what I’m writing. But when my touch-typing fails me, it’s tough to make out the keyboard. Steve and I are alone in the house, and a single candle provides all the illumination except for the dim glow from the big stone fireplace. We need that fireplace, as the temperature outside has plummeted. This doesn’t feel much like Africa.

We’ve now been in Zimbabwe for a bit more than two days, and Zim’s eccentricity is starting to feel routine. Our Rwandair flight Saturday morning from Kigali could not have been smoother or more pleasant, and we touched down at Harare Airport a few minutes early. We were sitting at the very rear of the plane, so when we got to the Passport Control booths (just outside the luggage-collection area), long queues had formed at the two booths designated for foreigners. We chose the shorter one, and it still took almost a half hour to get to the official. “We want a KAZA visa,” I told him.

“Over there,” the man in the booth barked, gesturing to the other line, which was at least as long as it had been 30 minutes earlier. It seemed to consist mostly of young Chinese men and a few women. But our tour outfitter had told us to insist on a KAZA visa. Such a stamp allows you to enter Zimbabwe and Zambia multiple times and cross back and forth between the two countries, something that will be important when we wind up at Victoria Falls 10 days from now. Surely anything would be better than having to get a second Zimbabwean visa AND a Zambian one (and paying $50 a pop for each one). So we gritted our teeth and moved to the back of the long line.

A solid hour passed as we inched forward, watching the sole bureaucrat in the booth doing lots of stamping and writing on each passport that finally made its way before him. By the time we reached the booth, literally every other passenger on our plane was gone. The luggage carousel had stopped running. “We want a KAZA visa,” I said, considerably less perkily.

I sneaked this photo of Steve at the window. (Taking pictures of immigration officials anywhere is a risky business.)

The official knew what that was. But it soon became obvious he couldn’t find his pad of KAZA stickers. He left the booth. Came back frustrated but full of reassurances he and his colleagues WOULD find the pad eventually. More folks joined in the hunt. More time passed. I began losing hope. But damned if they didn’t eventually locate the missing book. The official collected our $50 per, releasing us to pounce upon our bags (which were still, miraculously, on the deserted carousel.)

The visas are VERY fancy, with lots of writing on them and our receipts.

Outside, I was thrilled to finally meet Ant Bown.

Outside the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport and about to meet our outfitter.

Ant, 47, started Mana Pools Tourism Services Ltd., a “self-drive safari” company, about 6 years ago. His grandfather moved to Zimbabwe back in 1935, when the country was known as Rhodesia, and his mother for years had run the country’s safari company operators’ association. Ant got a degree as an agricultural economist and for 15 years lived in South Africa. But he missed Zim and returned to Harare in 2010. Today he’s passionate about his birth country’s attractions and optimistic about its future.

When I started planning this trip, almost a year ago, I had no desire to tour it with Steve at the wheel. I say that with no disrespect for Steve’s driving skills, which are competent even in places where traffic flows on the left. Just 20 years ago, Zimbabwe appeared hellish. Between 2000 and 2004, all but about 300 of the country’s 4000 or so white farmers had been forced off their land; many were beaten or hacked with machetes, and about a dozen were killed. The farmers’ black workers also lost their jobs, and the UN later estimated that a million people were displaced. In the years that followed, the Zimbabwean dollar became worthless, as annual inflation exceeded 900%.

Today the official economy is still dismal, although the “informal” sector — businesses and side hustles so small they can escape government notice — is booming, according to Ant, who thinks Zimbabweans rank among the most entrepreneurial folks on earth. There’s effectively no banking system. Most people use dollars — the paper ones — for almost all their transactions. But political violence has all but disappeared, crime is low, and racial animosities have evaporated. Steve and I were curious to see how today’s Zimbabweans were faring, after their torturous experience in the 20th century. But still, I didn’t want to DIY it.

So I got the latest copy of Lonely Planet’s Zimbabwe and emailed probably a half-dozen of what sounded like the best tour operators, seeking one that would drive Steve and me around. No one responded, even through I tried a couple of approaches with some. I finally contacted Ant’s 4×4 rental company, thinking maybe he could recommend a driver. Ant and I wound up chatting extensively in email and then via WhatsApp, and in the end, he convinced me we could handle self-driving.

Since we wouldn’t be able to get any money from banks or ATM machines, we had to bring all the cash we envisioned spending in Zimbabwe, including paying Ant for our two-day stay in his guesthouse, the 11-day Land Cruiser rental, and a bunch of food provisions.

I came to trust him partly because of how quickly he responded to my every query and how well-organized he was. But he also charmed me with his directness and good humor. He’s very emphatic and often funny and he didn’t seem to be whitewashing the realities of life here. Zimbabweans were atrocious drivers, he told me early on, but we would be okay if we drove slowly and defensively. The electrical grid was a joke. But his Harare guesthouse never lacked power or hot water because he’d installed solar systems years ago.

At the Oktoberfest gathering.

Steve and I got more exposure to Ant’s quick wit and open-mindedness the night we arrived, when he invited us to join him at a local Oktoberfest. It was being held in a private “sports club” that had been brought back to life in the last year or so. We had a blast taking in the high spirits and diversity — tipsy old white guys, black families with kids, a younger black and white cohort, all partying together. Some seemed to be there for the live music; others for the pizza…

…which was delicious.

Still others had come for the rugby game that started at 9 (Ireland versus South Africa.) Since neither Ant nor Steve nor I are big rugby fans, we only stayed a few moments to take in the chaotic action on the field. (Steve marveled, “They look like American football players who are all drunk.”)

We were looking at the outdoor screen backwards, but it didn’t matter.

We also wanted to get to bed because we had such a busy schedule lined up for Sunday. First we piled into one of Ant’s small SUVs and got a tour of Harare from Friday Mugwisi, one of Ant’s oldest employees. He took us first to Mbare, the huge, densely dizzying street market near the center of the city. We parked (for $5) then Friday led us throughout the maze of vendors, pointing out one item after another that he insisted was stronger than what you’d find in the big chains and half the price (and often fashioned from recycled materials.) Sadly, we couldn’t take many shots of the wildly photogenic scene. Friday had warned us we’d be pestered for payment if we were obvious about capturing anyone’s image. Still, we caught a few.

Later Friday drove us through the central business district and past many of the most important government buildings. We made a quick visit to the vast botanical gardens, then Steve and I ate lunch amidst the city’s ruling elite at The Three Monkeys, a chic oasis in an upscale little commercial center not far from Ant’s guest house.

We spent a chunk of that afternoon getting oriented to our Land Cruiser and its ingenious contents. But I’ll save those details for later posts. I know first-hand that too much information and sensory input can leave your head spinning.

Uganda, take four

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Rwandan roads are at least as good as those in the US, so I’m starting this post from the third row of seats in our 10-passenger van as we drive the two final hours to Kigali, the Rwandan capital. We crossed the border with Uganda a few minutes ago. Writing on the Ugandan byways, which range from good (occasionally) to abysmal (far too common), is pretty much impossible, given the jouncing. Off the road, our three and a half days in Uganda were so packed I couldn’t find a spare minute to get on my iPad when the sun was up. By the time it set, I’d run out of gas.

This is what the Rwandan highway looks like.

But I can summarize what we did.

We slogged out of Kampala through mind-bending traffic…

The street in front of our hotel, as seen from the rooftop terrace, was pretty quiet at 6:50 am.
But by 8:30, the streets were crazy.

…then moved westward across the country to finally struggle up the broken dirt roads that lead to the village of Nyakagyesi. The trip ate up ten and a half hours — pretty much all of Monday.

Wednesday we devoted to meeting with the grandmother groups and their members who are receiving micro loans funded by Women’s Empowerment, the San Diego organization for which Steve and I serve as liaisons.

This was the first time Steve and I got to see loan money actually being distributed to a group.

Thursday we toured the first primary school built by the Nyaka Foundation, its beautiful secondary school, and its health center, then we met with yet another set of grandmothers, these specializing in making jewelry, baskets, and other handicrafts.

After that we drove a couple of hours to Buhoma, where you can catch glimpses of the mountains on the other side of the border in Congo. Buhoma is a base for gorilla trekking, but everyone in our group had already done that (Jose and Mari two weeks ago; Steve and I in 2013.) Instead we paid a quick but fun visit to the office of a non-profit organization founded and run (by a woman I know in San Diego) to help the desperately poor local Batwa community.

The setting for all these activities has been a landscape that’s among the most beautiful on earth. A dozen shades of vibrant green, the land is all rugged mountains intermixed with verdant valleys and reddish soil so rich it produces almost every crop you can think of.

This morning an unexpected treat was when our drive to the Rwandan border took us over an 8000-foot pass in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (today in fact penetrated by a fairly smooth dirt road.) This forest, home not just to mountain gorillas but also forest elephants, is 100 million years old. Because it didn’t freeze during the last Ice Age, it harbors fantastic biological diversity. We didn’t see any forest elephants on our passage but Deus, our driver, pointed out fresh deposits of their droppings on the road.

This was our fourth visit to Uganda, and another landscape, an invisible one, has also been coming into focus over the past ten years. It’s the network of relationships we’ve acquired. Some are with people we’ve come to love, like Jennifer Nantale, head of the whole Nyaka organization in Uganda and one of the smartest, toughest women I’ve ever met.

Or Sam Mugisha, the remarkable guy who in his youth jumped at a chance to travel to Japan, became fluent in Japanese, and returned home to start a travel business catering to visitors speaking that language. (He’s also been the outfitter for all our WE trips.)

Dozens upon dozens of encounters with various individuals have been more fleeting but still vivid. Some fade quickly, but they’re still part of the tapestry composed of all the warm, kind, hard-working people we’ve gotten to know here. The impression made by others remains sharp for longer, like Norah, whom we met her early Thursday afternoon.

Mari and Norah

Norah is a 72 widow who’s currently raising four grandchildren ranging in age from 12 to 4. She greeted us with a warm smile and explained that she joined the Kyepatiko granny group four years ago. Now she’s the chairperson. Over the years she’s gotten two loans from the group, the most recent one for 500,000 shillings (about $133). She combined that money with the 3 million shillings she had saved from her coffee crop and used the money to buy a cow and calf. When the calf was a baby, Norah was getting 5 liters of milk a day that she could sell for about 37 cents a liter. But now that the calf has grown, it consumes all its mother’s milk. Still, she had bred the cow about a month before our visit, and she was hoping to have a birth in about 8 months. She would then sell one of the calves.

Norah has a warm and confident presence, and she led us to the back of her substantial house to the clean and well-organized enclosure she has built for her cow and calf.

Besides her fledgling dairy business, Norah has also built up an apiary; today it houses 50 beehives. We couldn’t visit it because the bees would sting us during the day. (Norah and her family collect their honey at night when the insects are sleeping.) It’s a good business. The grandmother can charge about $68 for 5 liters of honey. It adds up to more than $500 over the course of a year. Still Norah said she wants to develop the market further.

This is what the honey looks like, freshly collected from the hives.

The path to the apiary passed through healthy coffee trees laden with berries. And Norah also seemed proud of her field of emerald spears of elephant grass. She harvests it to feed to the dairy animals (which can’t just wander around, munching other people’s crops.)

Later, we watched Norah direct the grandmother group meeting. She commands attention with ease. Reflecting on our meeting with her at dinner a few nights later, Jose and Mari and Steve and I agreed she was hard to forget. “If she were in the US, she’s be the CEO at some big corporation,” someone said.

But I have to confess: my attention is drifting away from all that. It’s now Saturday morning and in a few minutes Steve and I will board our flight to Harare. Compared to the cozy familiarity of Uganda, Zimbabwe is terra incognito.

Sunday night at the nicest mall in Uganda

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The start of this trip has been pretty flawless. Our flight from Chicago to Addis Ababa (capital of Ethiopia) landed behind schedule on Sunday morning, leaving us only 20 minutes to get from one side to the other of the chaotic terminal. Yet somehow we caught our flight to Entebbe, and then were thrilled to find our duffel on the luggage carousel of Uganda’s international airport. Later that afternoon we met up with the other couple from San Diego accompanying us on our mission to visit Women Empowerment’s Uganda partner.

Monday morning, our foursome enjoyed an excellent meeting with our partners at the Nyaka Foundation in Kampala, then we checked into our hotel and ate delicious Indian food in its second-story restaurant. In the afternoon the four of us spent more than an hour at the Ugandan national museum (not dazzling, but worth the visit.)

Then… how to pass the several remaining hours until we could reasonably go to bed? Jose and Mari opted to hang out on the hotel’s rooftop terrace, but Steve and I strolled the few blocks to the Acacia Mall, considered by locals to be the fanciest in the capital. A slew of ATM machines line its perimeter, and its facade indeed promised a classy experience within.

We passed the scrutiny of gun-touting guards and metal detectors, then made a thorough tour of the interior. We found a decent complement of clean, bright shops that could have been plucked from any run-of-the-mill American mall, as well as a busy Carrefour supermarket.

The movie theater was pulling in some customers.

But the last screening of Barbie had started hours earlier.

The mall’s bookstore looked impressive, but it was closing as we arrived.

And the dearth of offerings in the food court depressed me.

We could have patronized the Colonel’s big eatery next to the front entrance.

The Indian food back at the hotel seemed a lot more enticing, however. So we made our way back in the dark over the broken, intermittent sidewalks, dodging puddles from the steady rain earlier in the day. Steve and I shared a butter chicken, vegetable pulao, and some garlic nan, washed down with a couple of Lion Special. Once again, it all tasted yummy.

Buckle up

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That’s what Steve and I will be doing Friday morning (9/15): buckling up as we take off on perhaps our most ambitious adventure.

We’re flying off to Africa (via Chicago and Addis Ababa), disembarking in Uganda, which has become one of the few countries to which we’re happy to return. Once again we’ll be visiting the remote village of Nyaka (near where Uganda meets up with the borders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo), to take the pulse of the microfinance project there supported by the Women’s Empowerment organization in San Diego. (For almost 10 years we’ve volunteered to be the liaisons between the villagers and their American patrons.)

We will then make our way to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe (once known to the Western world as Rhodesia.) We’ll be renting a Land Rover and driving it into the country’s beautiful eastern mountains (said to be reminiscent of Scotland), then down into a big-game hunting preserve where, trust me, we will not be shooting any animals ourselves. We will move on to the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, the biggest and most impressive stone-walled city in sub-Saharan Africa. After sleeping in a tent on the Land Rover’s roof in Hwange National Park, we’ll wind up at the awesome Victoria Falls, spend a couple of nights at an upscale lodge on the Zambezi River in Zambia, then catch a South African Airlines flight to Johannesburg.

Joburg will be our launch pad for exploring a few more of the world’s microstates. This won’t match our tour of the smallest countries in Europe two years ago. But we should end up knowing more than most folks about the mountain kingdom of Lesotho and mellow little eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland.) If all goes well, we’ll be home again Oct. 19, five weeks after taking off.

The arrows are my crude effort to show our route. The red encircles the rough area served by the microfinance program. The blue lines are flights and the green ones hint at some of the ground we’ll cover in vehicles.

Preparing for this trip has been a challenge. We’ll have to check a duffel bag to carry sleeping bags and towels and other gear for the Land Rover. A motley zoo of electrical adaptors will be necessary to plug into power in this part of the world.

Here’s what we’re packing.

Of course the power is not always on. We know the grid often fails in Southern Africa. I’ll be writing as much as possible, but it may take me a while to post some of my reports. I’m trusting my readers will understand any such delays.

The creepiest souvenir I will ever bring back

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Yeah, yeah. This is a travel blog, not a medical one. But how can I not report on the traumatic twist to the end of my Indonesia adventure?

I confess to feeling a bit smug about how well I had dodged any health problems on the trip. I caught no colds, let alone Covid (despite carrying two doses of Paxlovid along with us). I suffered no tummy trouble, despite breaking various rules for eating in the developing world.

My comeuppance came Wednesday evening, when Steve and I were Zooming with our kids in Reno, and the back of my right heel began itching. Idly scratching it, I slowly became aware something was there that did not feel like an insect bite. By the time we signed off, I had identified some distinct and creepy contours.

“Quick!” I ordered Steve. “You have to check my heel. I think there’s something awful going on.”

Steve is normally quick to dismiss overheated fears, but once he saw what I was feeling, he declared that it did indeed look a lot like the killer funguses on “The Last of Us.” This is what he captured with my iPhone.

By this point it was after 8 at night, and I was fairly sure I was not harboring a fungus that would turn me into a homicidal zombie before morning. Still, to avoid waking up with Ripley-esque nightmares (and to calm the itching), I drugged myself with a Benadryl. Thursday morning as soon as my dermatologist’s office opened, I called and begged to be shoehorned into my doctor’s busy schedule. The scheduler regretfully turned me down, so I instead made an appointment at the USCD urgent care center nearest me. At 10 am I checked in, and within 45 minutes a jaunty young doctor strode in my exam room.

“I hope it’s cutaneous larva migrans,” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen one of those in years!”

I learned he had grown up in Sri Lanka, where parasitic infections are commonplace. He immediately recongized that my squiggly red line signaled the presence of a… worm.

“EEEEEWWWWW!!!!” I wailed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It won’t kill you. There’s a medicine for it.” He couldn’t resist adding, “It’s really creepy when you can feel them moving.”

I took the deworming medicine Thursday and Friday, so I can hope that my worm is now in the process of dying, if not already dead. Google has also informed me that this particular type of hookworm is pretty benign. Apparently they lack the ability to get below the skin and invade your internal organs. They just kind of get stuck (and slough off? I promise NOT to write any posts about that.)

I’m less clear on how my wormy fellow traveler got into my heel, though I have a strong suspicion. I failed to pack a pair of sturdy, long stockings for the trip. (Hey, it’s summer in the tropics!) So when we trekked with the orangutans in that rainforest in Sumatra, I was wearing only flimsy low-cut socks. That’s how the leech (leeches?) got to me. And I’m guessing the hookworm larva seized its opportunity there too.

I wouldn’t bet that I will never again hike in a tropical rainforest. But consider this is a public vow: I will NEVER again fail to pack at least one pair of long socks.

Adios, Jakarta

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Our hotel in Jakarta was full of Formula E racing technicians. We learned what that is when Steve chatted up one of them at the breakfast buffet. Turns out they work on Formula One-style race cars that are powered by electric batteries; one of their big global competitions was taking place in the Indonesian capital June 3 and 4. When I tuned the TV in our room to one of the local stations, the meet seemed to be getting non-stop coverage.It looked like the race would take place at some course near the sea.

I knew nothing about this, of course, when I booked the hotel for the last two nights of our Indonesian stay. I picked it because of its location in Jakarta’s historic center, the decrepit neighborhood from which Dutch overseers long extracted riches from these spice-rich islands. It takes some effort to imagine how cool and trendy the area might be if someone poured vast amounts of money and effort into fixing it up.

The old town even has canals a la Hollandaise.

For now, however, the area’s main attraction is the stone-paved Fatahillah square, lined with imposing buildings from which Dutch bosses once wielded their power.The town hall was built in 1627.That building with the red tile roof now houses the Cafe Batavia, where we ate dinner.

We spent some time Friday morning prowling around the old square, then walked to the grand old train station nearby, now serving only commuter trains.In a different latitude we might have hiked the 2-3 miles from there to central Jakarta, but the heat and humidity made that unthinkable.Instead we enjoyed a tuk-tuk ride that gave us insight into Jakarta’s infamous traffic.

Overall I felt we amply fulfilled our touristic duty. The tuk-tuk took us to the enormous park surrounding Merdeka (Independence) Square and its dramatic national monument.We abandoned our plans to climb to top when we learned it would probably take three hours to get up there, the line of locals already was that long.

The nearby national museum was less crowded. We could have spent hours, had we more time and energy but instead mostly marveled at the galleries focusing on Indonesia’s paleoanthropology. Somehow homonids who walked upright made their way from Africa to these islands a million and a half years ago. How did that happen?

After a delicious lunch in an atmospheric restaurant, we returned to the hotel, where I got my second (and final!) Indonesian massage, and Steve sought insight into the Formula E event from Google. Among other things, he found a video clip starring an ultra-perky Formula E hostess who obviously had been assigned the task of doing a piece that would make her TV viewers think Jakarta was the coolest imaginable site for the event. She and we had gone to almost all the same places! But I was flabbergasted to see how clean and colorful and exciting it all looked onscreen. Somehow Miss Booster’s footage omitted any view of all the squalor I couldn’t help but notice.

Steve and I ate our final dinner at Cafe Batavia, housed in a 200-year-old building built of teak, and I confessed to souring on the capital. Sure, we’d had a good day cutting touristic notches in our belts, but if I had to live here, I’d consider blowing my brains out, I declared. This corrupt, ugly home to 28 million is sinking rapidly into the sea, and although Indonesian President Joko Widodo has a grand plan to move the capital to Kalimantan (on Borneo) and make it a green paragon, I can’t imagine this will work out as planned.

Steve had a slightly different take. He gestured to the scene visible through the second-story window adjoining our table.It was a bit before 7 pm, and people were wandering into the square and plopping down on the stones. You could feel all the energy pulsing through the place, Steve insisted. And it emanated from some of the sweetest people we’ve met anywhere.

As if to underscore his point, our waiter came up to the table and started chatting with us about our trip. What did we think of Indonesia? Where had we gone? What about the weather — was it hotter than California? This went on for at least 10 minutes. I felt bad for the other diners who were being ignored but deeply charmed to be in a place where waiters could be so curious; could feel so free to learn something from some outsiders.

We left the restaurant to explore the scene further. I don’t want to be another Miss Booster and try to make you think you’ll be missing out if you don’t hop on a plane to join in. It was still hot and humid, though no longer unbearably so. We found infectious live music on all four corners of the square and along other nearby walkways, but none of the performers were good enough to make me want to plunk myself down on the hard rough ground in the dark.Still it all looked extraordinarily convivial. Little kids tossed lighted twirling things into the air or blew bubbles. Their parents snacked on chips and drank soda. I saw a few folks getting their pictures taken with the living statues.

I also saw a bunch of the wannabe photo props bored by the lack of business.

It made me feel more sanguine too. I still don’t want to live in Jakarta. I can’t imagine I’ll return for another visit. But I did amble back to the hotel feeling what I’ve felt over and over on this trip —profound gratitude that I had this chance to glimpse what it’s like to live on the Ring of Fire.

PS: I shot this from my window seat on the plane going into Jakarta as we were flying somewhere over Borneo. But it’s the closest we got to any big geological events. We didn’t feel so much as a small jolt. That was fine with me too.

Chasing dragons

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The news was discouraging when we landed on Rinca Island Tuesday afternoon. No one had spotted any Komodo dragons that entire day — nor the day before. I tried to resign myself to the same fate. When you seek rare animals in the wild, it’s not like buying a movie ticket. You’re not guaranteed a show. But we lucked out.

Almost immediately after we paid for our admission to Komodo National Park, the friendly park ranger to whom we were assigned urged us to run — toward a dragon that had just ambled into the entry complex from the nearby forest. She was a female maybe 7 years old, he estimated, and thus maybe only half the size of a full-grown male. Still, no one who saw her could doubt she and her kind are the biggest lizards in the world. If they were any bigger, you’d be looking at a dinosaur.

As lethal as her claws appeared to be, they’re not her main weapon. Each Komodo dragon’s jaw holds 60 teeth, and sandwiched among them are glands loaded with toxic venom. A single bite won’t instantly kill a deer or buffalo (or human), but the venom promotes bleeding and dreadful infection to which victims succumb after a few days or even hours. Adding to their charm, the dragons are cannibals, eating each other and even their unwary young. Smarter youngsters hide in trees for several years to avoid being munched.

I’d rank them as the least lovable of the world’s big flashy animals. Nonetheless Steve and I had a blast on our two brief forays into their world. That first afternoon, our ranger, Masakao, led us on a hike into a tangled forest that’s also home to spitting cobras and other venomous snakes. The plant life looked different from what we’d seen in the forests in Bali and Sumatra. That’s because when we had flown east from Bali, we crossed the Wallace Line. Eons ago, the continents of Asia and Australia had broken apart along that conceptual demarcation, and so today the plant and animals on either side of it have different evolutionary origins.

We moved down the dirt path and soon approached a small abandoned building that once housed a power generator. Masakao motioned for us to stop while, armed with a long forked stick, he crept up to the doorway and peered in.Another score! The ranger asked for Steve’s phone and recorded the temporary occupant: a male whose big belly testified to recent consumption of a meaty feast. Now he was digesting in the cool comfort of the man-made shelter.

In the course of our ramble, we came across another big male. That one even gave us a look at his fearsome choppers…

…before crossing the trail and moving into the underbrush, long tongue flicking.

I felt jubilant as we returned to our quarters for the night, a wooden ship of eccentric design that’s common in these waters. To see Komodo dragons you need some kind of a boat. The famous reptiles live almost exclusively on five islands off Flores (a bigger island originally colonized by Portuguese and thus home today to one of Indonesia’s only significant Catholic populations.) You can take a speedboat from Flores out for a frantic, grueling day of dragon-hunting, but most visitors opt for a one- to three-night cruise. Steve’s and mine was a private one, and included the services of a conscientious guide named Robert and four young men who ran the ship and cooked.

It was far from fancy. Here was the single toilet/shower stall shared by the 7 of us:

…and the galley where the cook whipped up meals like these:

This lunch included rice (in the covered dish), tofu sautéed in a soy sauce, stewed cabbage and carrots, and squid prepared two ways.

This was breakfast the second morning.

If basic, the food was edible, and it didn’t make us sick. Our cramped cabin also had an AC unit that cut the muggy heat. I kept reminding myself that the sojourn was less grubby than tent-camping in the tropics. Slightly.

The second morning, Robert, Steve, and I left the ship before dawn to join the stream of visitors climbing the 815 steps up tiny Padar Island.The view from near the top, taking in three different-colored beaches (black, white, and pink) is so famous it’s on Indonesia’s 50,000-rupiah bank note. Indonesian tour groups pressed for time will often choose to visit it and skip the Komodo dragons, according to Robert.

But who would choose a landscape selfie over what we saw later that morning? I can’t imagine.

Once again, luck was with us. We motored to Komodo Island, and on the beach we immediately found a young dragon, risking its life to come down from its tree and hunt for breakfast.

Not far from the juvenile, an alert-looking adult female was identifiable by her head and tail, shorter than than what males are equipped with.This time our park ranger, Dula, took my iPhone and shot the wonderful video footage I will try to incorporate here. I hope it’s viewable on the blog; part terrifying, part comic, it’s documentary evidence of one of the most unforgettable strolls of my life.

We encountered several more of the dragons during our visit. Then it was time to board the boat again and motor on; reptiles weren’t the only animals on our itinerary. The turquoise waters that surround the dragons’ islands conceal choral reefs and a wondrous community of aquatic life. We didn’t succeed at seeing all of it. The wind blew hard for a few hours on our final morning, whipping up white caps that drove the local manta rays and sea turtles to deeper water. But we did manage to snorkel three times in calm water, and each outing delighted me. The sea was clear and warm, and I felt as close as I will ever get to flight, gliding effortlessly over the landscape of coral and anemones and rocks, in the company of neon-colored fish, many dressed up in astonishing patterns. At times we sailed by rivers of fish; into clouds of them. Once I started to laugh out loud at the concentrated beauty but was quickly reminded that’s not a great idea when you’re breathing through a snorkel.

Our first night on the boat we made one other wildlife stop that caused me exclaim with awe. It was close to sunset when we anchored on the eastern side of a long flat island composed almost exclusively of mangroves.We watched the molten tangerine sliver of sun shrink to a dot and disappear and the color begins to drain from the sky. Several long moments passed, but enough of a glow still remained that I could make out the strange thing that began to occur — a stream of tiny black objects rising out of the mangroves like cinders flowing up from a campfire and dispersing.The stream thickened and grew; that’s when I cried out. These were fruit bats, a vast horde of them, ranging out by the millions to hunt insects in the night.

People sometimes call them flying foxes, but as they passed overhead their iconic shape was unmistakable, flapping, gliding, graceful.

More and still more bats continued to pulse out of the mangroves; they reminded me of the grand finale of a fireworks display, not as bright or colorful as the tropical fish or fireworks, but as magnificent in their ability to dominate the space with their movement. I know some folks find bats terrifying. In that they’re like the Komodo dragons, who certainly got my adrenaline flowing. Both are creatures almost mythic in their ability to inspire fear. But in the right circumstances, the sight of them can fill me with awe and happiness.