Not only Americans are bad at geography

I went to the gift shop of the zoo and saw these beautiful wooden carved maps of Africa. I was tempted to buy one for my family so they would have a better sense of where I'm always bopping around to but then I took a closer look. Malawi was abbreviated as "Mali" which is just a little bit confusing. Then I noticed that it said "Ethiopia" where Egypt is!

Monkey Time

There were vervet monkeys just everywhere.  They didn't seem to mind people and just did their own thing.  Some of their own things include:

Taking a nap

Carrying their babies

Playing with sticks

Reading about Bush Pigs

Hug the Mzungu!

I was also an exhibit at the zoo.  There were a set of moms who had each of their small children stand next to me for a photo.

Not your average zoo

I wasn't going to check out the zoo in Entebbe for a variety of reasons, the top of which is that I find zoos exploitative and depressing. However, the zoo was right near the Botanical Garden, I had time to kill, and a colleague of mine mentioned three times during a phone call that he really hoped I'd see the zoo.

Importantly, this "zoo" isn't called a "zoo" and rightly so.  It's called a "Wildlife Refuge" and seems to be somewhat socially responsible and ecologically friendly. I would call it a cross between a safari and a zoo- the distinction being that on a safari there are no fences and in a zoo there are.  Here there were fences, but often inadequate, only some of the animals were behind them, and sometimes it wasn't clear which side of the fence I was on.

This place was at times absolutely terrifying.

Now people over the age of five don't usually find zoos terrifying, so maybe that requires some explanation.

First I saw a sign about feeding leopards. It had comforting phrases like "Did you know leopards can hunt from trees?". Yet weirdly, there wasn't a leopard cage in sight. 

Then I saw mentioning a "Forest Walk" and some assorted trails (which in retrospect, may or may not have been part of said "Forest Walk".

The brush was dense and dark, there was so much scurrying around me, and I was entirely by myself-- not a guide or fellow patron in sight.  This is the moment when I envisioned myself being the leopard food.  I turned back when I reached this part which would have required me to either have a machete or to duck and crawl through the brush to stay on the "trail".

Thankfully, after I turned back and walked down another "trail" I saw this guy behind a fence and felt relieved.

On another "trail" there was a fence to one side of me and really thick brush to the other and on the decidedly wrong side of the fence was this sucker (4 foot long reptile):

I also have some vague memory of ostriches being aggressive.  Here's an ostrich at the zoo.  I'm not sure if you can see the fence, but it raises about 4 inches high, to approximately the ostriches ankle. Totally ineffective.

This sign was only on one fence. Not the lion cage, not the leopard cage, certainly not the ostrich "cage". I have no idea what animal was supposed to be on the other side.

 Throughout the park there were lots of signs about emergencies. It seems a little odd to have to call someone's cell phone if you get bitten by a wild animal but given the acreage to staff size of this place, my guess is that's the only way anyone would ever find you.

BooJoo

I was so excited to be in an English-speaking part of Africa. It takes a certain amount of supplemental brain-power for me to operate in French, but here was my shot to be 100% and to *gasp* understand ambient conversation. However, for some reason everyone seems to think I'm French. Not that people really speak much French here anyway. It took me a while to figure out that the little kids saying "BooJoo" were talking to me. "Say 'ca va' to her, say it, say it!"called a mom I passed in the street. Even two guys who came up to talk to me in English said "you are from France!" Not like a question, but a statement. Wonder what it is...

Me, Jane

There are rumors that the original Tarzan was filmed here. Seems about right to me.

First Rafiki did a pretty daring swing on these vines to prove to me they were strong- this is my much less brave version (you can't tell but I'm like 10 feet off the ground).

Useful Plants and Other Intrigues

I usually eschew the unsolicited tour guides- especially the kind who just start showing you around with no mention of price. However I would have gotten nothing out of the Botanical Gardens if I didn't have Rafiki hilariously narrating along the way.

 "This is a termite mound. It is not advisable for young boys to urinate in the hole as sometimes cobras live inside"

 "The water is quite green.  It is not advisable to swim in it."

 "Jungle first aid- if you get a laceration, find these soldier termites and let them latch on to you to close the would like stitches (demonstrates one latching onto his coat). It will hurt though."

 "When you break your nest like this, they get very mad"

 Arachnophobia

 This is latex. Apparently latex comes from trees.

 "African nutmeg. It is very delicious, the only problem is if you eat too much it is a deadly poison."

 "This is an elephant apple. It is not advisable to make your picnic beneath the elephant apple tree for fear of head wounds."

 This is apparently what chocolate looks like before it is turned into those delicious brown squares.

 This is incense- since apparently that also comes from a tree.  Rafiki mentioned using incense in church ceremonies. This is not the use that I am most familiar with.

 This is a tree that elephants ram so the fruit falls down, they eat it, and then they become drunk. 

Apparently you can tell if an elephant's drunk because it walks funny.

These flowers are called Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow because they come in three colors on the same bunch. Apparently putting them in your bath makes you mosquito repellent.  They smelled like generic flower to me.

Wild grocery stores

Today I went to the botanical gardens in Entebbe. I think I expected a manicured garden with mazes and tropical flowers like the Botanical Gardens in Kuala Lampur or Brooklyn.  Instead it was just 48 acres that happened to have a lot of useful plants on it.

Essentially I walked around with a guide and he showed me plant after plant and I stupidly gawked at how all these things I buy and use regularly actually come from plants. Blah Blah Blah Americans are so disconnected from their food etc. but seriously, with the amount of chocolate I eat I should at least be able to recognize a cocoa plant, right?

We wandered around and the guide, Rafiki (which cannot be his real name) pointed to various trees, picked up their nuts or fruits, ground their leaves to let me smell, and gave me many serious "advisories".  In a totally uncharacteristic fashion, I actually attempted to capture this experience on film.

Bird Party

There is a veritable bird party going on in the grounds of my hotel.  It's truly incredible. There are tweets and chirps and caws and tiddles coming from every bush and combining to make background noise that would rival NYC taxi horns. There is also a flurry of activity- swooping, rustling, hopping around.

I've never been a bird watcher but this is actually sort of amusing.

Right before I was about to push "publish" some bird confrontation occurred on the awning above me and one bird made a sound that was just like Steve Martin in the Three Amigos.

I heart lonely planet

Everyone has their opinions about the various options for guidebooks but I am Lonely Planet all the way. I think I'm exactly their target audience and I appreciate the hidden sarcasm throughout the guides. I also own at least a dozen of their phrasebooks.

Why I love lonely planet can be summed up with two quick examples from their chapter on Uganda (though don't get me started on how East Africa is one guidebook with just a chapter for each country).

*The book begins with a simple question:  WHY GO? I love that it isn't assumed that everyone is going to want to go everywhere. I love that they're pretty straight forward about which places may not be awesome destinations (like Nairobi). However, Uganda gets this glowing review:

"Why Go?  Emerging from the shadows of its dark history, a new dawn of tourism has risen in Uganda, polishing a glint back into the "pearl of Africa".  Travellers are streaming in to explore what is basically the best of everything the continent has to offer. "

Pretty good sell- and I believe them.

*Lonely planet writers also seem to have a pretty good idea of how their destination compares to others. In one museum description they write "There's a varied and well-captioned collection".  That is exactly what I care about! Going to museums without captions is amusing in its own right but maybe not something I'd go out of my way to do. Hours of operation, cost, and presence of captions- that's what I want in a blurb.

African movie!

Okay, it felt pretty colonial/patronizing/weird for the inflight magazine to have a special star next to a film that read “African Movie!” but I fell for it. 

I tried to get books on Uganda to read on my way here and failed. I didn’t even read my Lonely Planet Uganda in advance, so here was a chance at redemption- a film. Anyway, the only one with English subtitles was from Burkina so that doesn’t really count, but I watched it to get into the mood of the continent at least (if there is such a thing). 

I really wanted this to be good. There was a 10 year old kid who could act, so that was nice. I also relearned a little about the role of elders in a village and some of the dynamics with white outsiders. But mostly I was distracted by the terrible writing, terrible acting, and really jarring use of slow-motion montages. 

Plot summary: white man returns to village with biracial daughter. Mute woman kidnaps girl. Child ends up having cancer and dies. 

Here's the thing- it was pretty clear from the first two seconds that the only female protagonist was the girl's mother. She apparently hasn't spoken for 9 years and the girl was 9 years old. She ran away when the white dude returned but he really wanted to speak to her about something. She kidnapped the girl and mothered her for days. This is all fine, except there was this moment toward the end that was set up as this big reveal- there's dramatic silence, a drawn out confession by the white dude- She is her mother! Apparently we weren't supposed to know this incredibly un-subtle plot twist until that moment.  Hollywood has spoiled me.

Paying it forward

On my flight I was asked not once but twice to switch seats so that pairs of people could sit together. The first time it was a serious downgrade from aisle seat to window seat but the second time was redeemed and I was back on the aisle plus had curried favor with the head flight attendant for having been so flexible. 

Thing is, it was a JOY to do this. I love traveling with a companion and would be devastated (okay maybe just super grumpy) if I couldn't sit next to them on a 7 hour flight. I arrive at Chinatown buses an hour early to ensure that Noah and I get a seat together so we can share headphones and listen to Dan Savage podcasts together or watch movies on a tiny telephone screen. 

So hopefully I just paid it forward and if ever I am not obscenely early for an accompanied trip (which frankly, will never happen), someone will swap seats with me J

Yelping the Lounge

Since I’m now apparently a business class snob I feel justified in not just reveling at the magic of business class lounges, but also critiquing them. Here’s how the one in Brussles stands up: 

Nice food, nice coffee maker, nice design… okay I really just want to talk about the bad stuff.

Demerit 1:  Bathroom located outside the lounge, down the hall.  This is annoying because when you want to use all your free toiletries from the plane to freshen up, you have to haul your carry-on with you (or be sketchy and leave it in the lounge unattended and hope that “see something, say something” isn’t a thing in Belgium… which is what I did).

Demerit 2:  There is no designated sleeping area. This means the snoring people (i.e. me) are mixed among the business people doing important business things.  I’ve written before about the awkwardness of sleeping with strangers in public but it’s way less awkward if it is in a designated area. While I definitely look like I belong on a prairie and not in a business class lounge, I am ever thankful for my giant maxi skirt which avoids too many accidental exposures while sleeping in a fully lit area with strangers.

Demerit 3: There is one teaser reclining chair.  There are probably 50 café chairs with tables, 20 upholstered seats, and 20 upholstered love seats, and then there is ONE reclining chair.  That means at any given time, one person gets to be comfortably sleeping.  The rest of us, cramped up in awkward supine positions on love seats stare greedily at them and lift our eye masks every time a flight is called just in case that lucky reclining chair person vacates so we can jump in.  No luck for me, I was asleep during the crucial moments and only witnessed a rainbow of different people on the throne.

Demerit 4: Normally I wouldn't even expect this but since the lounge at JFK made an announcement for the boarding of my flight to Brussles, I sort of thought that the lounge at Brussles would make an announcement about the boarding of my flight to Entebbe.  Totally wrong. And this is not to say that they didn't announce other flights, they did-- just not mine. I was deep into reading my novel and realized boarding had already started AND I was in the wrong terminal.  Nice to start the second leg of a trip with an adrenaline-pumping run through an airport.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the coffee machine had a great decaf cappuccino.

Our wandering is meant to lead back toward ourselves.

Liked this article: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/07/reclaiming-travel/

"Our wandering is meant to lead back toward ourselves. This is the paradox: we set out on adventures to gain deeper access to ourselves; we travel to transcend our own limitations. Travel should be an art through which our restlessness finds expression. We must bring back the idea of travel as a search."
Ilan Stavans 

NYC Cabbies/ L'homme africain

So due to the crisis in Mali I haven't been traveling much lately, so my only interaction with Africans (besides brief status updates from my facebook friends) has been with NYC taxi drivers.  

Once upon a time some NPR show interviewed NYC cabbies and asked them what they dislike most about passengers and one of their top answers was "when they ask me where I'm from." I, however, choose to blatantly disregard that preference or more accurately, haughtily assume it doesn't apply to me. 

As a slight concession I never ask them their country of origin first thing, I first chat with them in general to ascertain whether they want to talk to me or not.  If they are feeling chatty (particularly with a french accent) I ask.  And frankly, once it's clear that I know where their country is and have probably been there, they don't seem too offended that I asked.  

I imagine the annoyance comes when people gape in awe at how mystical their homeland is and use it as a distancing measure to emphasize the differences between driver and passenger. I've had enough people confuse Monaco and Morocco or ask me if there is any food in Ethiopia to understand a little why they might not want to engage in those conversations. But me, I just want travel tips and some "word on the street" political analysis.  

I took a cab with a guy from Guinea the other day and once we established that we both spoke French, I got some fascinating opinions on the current political crisis in Mali and what it represents on a larger scale.  I like to listen to people talk about political events and religion, and all other sorts of things people feel strongly about. 

One thing makes me uncomfortable though (and I fully acknowledge that I have no right to be uncomfortable):  when African men talk about "L'homme africain".  These conversations come up a lot.  It is usually after a rant about the deteriorating political situation in this or that country.  The conversation elevates from current events to some variation of "this is the problem with the African man".  

Yikes.  I am probably hyper-aware of generalizations, particularly those based on race or ethnicity.  I think this probably has a lot to do with me being an "American woman" (see what I did there :P).  But it's really hard for me to listen to a person put down an entire vast and varied group in one fell swoop: "African men only want power" "African men let their leaders walk all over them" "African men only know corruption".  Each statement makes me want to interject "well clearly not ALL African men" or "people everywhere have that trait" or something to soften the blow of slapping such labels on a big group--- even though the labeler is a member of that group.  

And perhaps that is what perplexes and disturbs me most- the willingness and facility with which these  men that I meet criticize their group and therefore themselves.  And it's not a silly joke like "ha, well I'm an American woman so I walk fast and drink lots of water".  It's deep criticism and resentment.  Which means it is self-criticism and what borders on sounding like self-loathing.  I don't mean that as an accusation- and perhaps I am over-interpreting, but that is why I shudder every time I am in a cab and I hear "L'homme africain".