There's a Bat In My Banda

Fun in the Sun . . . and in the Rain

2007-06-06T12:16:00.000-07:00

While Laurel was back in the States to go to Matt Enquist’s wedding and to receive the Burton award, I was lazing on the beaches of Mozambique. From Maputo, I went up the coast, first to Inhambane, a small town about five hours north of Maputo. While Inhambane is one of Mozambique’s oldest towns and was an Arab trading post even before the Portuguese arrived here, these days it is a sleepy little town that serves primarily as a jumping off point for nearby beaches. And arriving on a Sunday afternoon, it was particularly sleepy. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant place to wander around, chat with people, take pictures of kids doing flips on the beach, and admire the colonial architecture.

The next day, Dennis, the owner of Pensao Pachica, took me out to Tofo, a beach town not too far from Inhambane. With long stretches of white sand and crystal clear water, Tofo is the kind of place that’s hard to leave. Even though I don’t dive (the primary activity in the area), it was easy to let the days slip away walking on the beach, reading, snoozing -- three days turns into four and then to five and you wonder where the time has gone. I did manage to get in a horseback ride on the beach and through the local villages, and I went on the “snorkeling safari” offered by the local dive shop to see the whale sharks, the largest fish in the sea, measuring eight to eleven meters on average. Unfortunately, though we never saw the sharks. Despite hearing about successful excursions every day, when I got on the boat, the South African guy next to me told me it was his third time out; he had gone twice before but had not seen any. It was his last day in Mozambique and he was determined to see the whale sharks before he went back to Johannesburg the next day. At that point, I knew we were doomed for failure – the pressure was too great, and he was, to put it mildly, disappointed.

Eventually, I managed to pry myself away from Tofo and head further north to Vilankulos. The trip entailed a chapa (mini-bus) ride from Tofo to Inhambane, then a short (but very crowded) ferry ride from Inhambane to Maxixe, and then another chapa ride to Vilankulos. While Tofo has a bit of a “you could be in Thailand eating banana pancakes backpacker” feeling to it, Vilankulos feels more like a place where people would live even without a tourist industry. Hit fairly hard by the cyclone earlier this year, Vilankulos is recovering quickly and open for business, despite persistent rumors to the contrary.

While I made plans to go on an excursion to Magaruque Island in the Bazaruto Archipelago the next day, the weather was bad and instead spent a lazy Sunday wandering along the water and around town with Noel from Ireland and Mia from Denmark. The highlight of the day was back at the hostel (Zombie Cucumber), sitting under the lapa (open-air, thatch-roofed building), drinking beer and enjoying the thunder and lightening storm before a delicious dinner of stuffed crab.

The next day, the weather cleared and we headed out to the island with Dolphin Dhow. We spent the day lazing on the beach, snorkeling along the reef that runs right along the shore, and eating a very tasty lunch of grilled fish, crab, rice, and a tomato-onion-potato sauce. After lunch, we wandered down to the other end of the island as the tide was coming in. Apparently, we lost track of time a bit, and when we looked up, the other dhows had all taken off; our boat came down to find us and we scrambled back on and headed off.

Unfortunately, my time at the beach had to come to an end and I had to make my way back to Maputo. The only real drawback to Mozambique is that all transport leaves really early in the morning (or really late at night depending on how you look at it), and the longer the trip, the earlier it leaves. The bus back to Maputo was scheduled to leave at 3:30 a.m., so I was up at 2:45; at 3:00, the night watchman walked me into town to catch the bus; and, amazingly, we were on the road by 3:50. After 11 hours and one bathroom break (the driver stopped the bus, yelled “baño,” and the guys took off for the bush on the left and the women for the bush on the right), we were back in Maputo.

Today, my last day in Mozambique, I decided I should have some culture, so I went to the Natural History Museum. Housed in a beautiful old building, it has an aging collection of taxidermy and a strange, but interesting, set of elephant fetuses, ranging from one to nineteen months, in jars of formaldehyde. By afternoon, it started to cloud up, so I treated myself to a long lunch of prawn curry followed by ice cream (although I subscribe to Laura Goldblum’s theory that the after-breakfast nap is the ultimate sign of vacation, Mia – the Danish girl—made a good argument that you’re not really on vacation unless you have two ice creams a day, so I’m trying her theory out for a while). Luckily, I made it back to the guesthouse before the rain started in earnest, and hopefully, it will stop before tomorrow’s 7:00 a.m. flight back to Johannesburg.

Chillin’ with the children (literally)

2007-05-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

While Mimi was traveling with Ellen and Sandy and making her way to sunny Mozambique, I traveled with my children: my son, Michael; my daughter, Julia; and my daughter's husband, Michael. (Yes - having two Michaels is confusing.) Not only was it great to see my children, but I loved seeing South Africa through their eyes.

The kids arrived, appropriately enough, on Sunday, May 12: Mother's Day. Although Mimi and I have always used public transportation or had guides or drivers, I decided that, given South Africa's great road system, I would rent a car. Thus, after picking up the kids, we piled into our rental car and, repeating the phrase “stay left, stay left, stay left,” headed out for Pretoria. The kids' immediate reaction was that South Africa didn't look like the Africa that Julia had seen in Uganda or that the boys had seen on TV or in the movie that they had watched on the plane ride: Blood Diamonds. Their image of Africa was changed even more dramatically when we arrived at the B & B that Mimi and I had stayed at when we were working in Pretoria, a colonial-style home on a tree-lined street with large rooms and silver in the dining room.

Early the next morning, we headed out on the M-4, a modern toll road, for Swaziland, an independent country in the eastern part of South Africa that is ruled by a 39-year-old king who dresses in his traditional clothing for all of his official photographs. While Swaziland is relatively prosperous, the kids decided that it looked much more like the Africa that they had imagined. The roads were narrower, there were people and animals everywhere, and, for the most part, their faces were the only white faces.

We spent Monday and Tuesday nights at Milwane Game reserve, which is in the central part of Swaziland. The game park is unusual in that you can drive through it, getting out of your car whenever you choose to do so.

Thus, we were able to get within a few feet of ostriches, zebras, warthogs, and the numerous impala that inhabit the park. Heeding the warning from part rangers, we did, however, keep our distance from the hippos and the crocodiles, who lined the edge of the waterholes.

Some of the highlights of this part of the trip were staying in the traditional beehive huts (and watching the locals construct new ones) and eating impala steaks for dinner. (Because there were only six guests at the park, the food choices were limited – it was impala steak for dinner or nothing at all.) As it turns out, impala steak is delicious, and we were assured that, by eating the steaks, we were doing the environmentally right thing by helping to “cull” the ever-growing herd.

On Wednesday, we headed to St. Lucia, a World Heritage site on the northeast coast of South Africa that features a large lake, an estuary, the only sand dunes in the world that are covered with vegetation, and the warm Indian Ocean. On our first night we saw one of things for which St. Lucia famous: hippos walking down the main street of town. (Actually, when we saw them, they were in grazing next to the main street.) The next day, Thursday, we headed to the beach to watch the sunrise and to give my Michael an opportunity to practice throwing the spear that he had purchased at a market in Swaziland. After a game of tag that ended with Julia, fully clothed, in the ocean, we headed back to the hotel for a late breakfast and a boat trip on the lake and estuary. It was then back to the beach for more spear throwing and football.

The day ended with a surprise. At a bout 8:30, a group of Swazi dancers appeared at the hotel for a performance for the small tour group that was staying at our hotel. Given that the performance was less than 20 feet from our rooms, we were invited to join the tour group, and we enjoyed an hour of boisterous stick fighting, dancing, and singing. At the end, Julia and her husband were given the opportunity to perform and, while they don’t have all of the moves down, they showed great promise.

Friday was “cultural day.” After breakfast, we drove to a trading center that was about 20 miles from our hotel to meet our guide, Mitta, who we were supposed to pick up at 9:00 a.m. for a morning visit to her village. Although we got to the trading center at 9:00, the school group that Mitta was supposed to greet and send off on a separate tour had disappeared, and she spent the next hour and a half looking for them, while a couple of young men took us shopping for bananas and other groceries. The delay gave my kids not only an opportunity to experience “African time,” but also an opportunity to hangout with people their own age: the young men filled my kids in on the local music scene, and my kids taught them how to play American football, which ended, unfortunately, with the ball going into a spiritual area.

We did, however, eventually leave for the village, about a 45-minute drive on dirt roads. We spent about an hour and a half at one of the local schools where we met with the principal and visited each of the three classrooms to let the students practice their English by asking us questions. We then moved to the school’s “auditorium,” a relatively large but dusty room where we were treated to a preview of the songs and dances that the kids were scheduled to perform the following week at a cultural festival.

After visiting the school, we piled back into the car, Mitta took off her wig and put on the traditional scarf that she needs to wear when she is on her father-in-law's homestead, and we headed to visit her father-in-law, with whom she lives with her husband, children, and assorted other relatives. As it turns out, Mitta's father-in-law is quite wealthy, "owning" more than 50 cows and two wives. Although he does not speak any English, Mitta taught us the basic greetings and showed us all of the buildings, which included both traditional buildings and kitchens and Mitta’s English “house” and English kitchen. (The kids sleep with one of Mitta’s two mother-in-laws)

Because Mitta’s father-in-law has cows, he also has flies. As a result, we went to a poorer

neighbor’s homestead for lunch in a traditional beehive hut with dung floors and walls. We sat on the floor and had a great lunch of chicken, spinach, some type of rice, and juice made from water from the local “tap.” At the end, all of the neighborhoodchildren crowded into the hut, where each of them were given a marsh mellow and, for reasons we did not quite understand, sang the South African national anthem for us. We ended our visit with some time with the kids, who seemed to love having their pictures taken, particularly while talking on their banana cellphones.

As the day ended, we headed back to the trading center, where we dropped Mitta off and headed for a quick visit to the Croc Centre, which was on the verge of closing for the evening. (Everything in town closes when it gets dark, which is at about 5:00 p.m.) We were, however, able to see the research center and the crocodiles and, as an inducement to get us to leave, someone who may--or may not-- have been a staff member, let my Michael hold one of the small crocodiles. Later that evening we joined the locals at one of the town’s two bars for a couple of quick games of pool.

Saturday was a driving day. Although originally we had not planned to visit Kruger, Julia wanted to see giraffes, and Kruger was the only place where we knew that we had a good chance of seeing them. Although the lodge that we booked turned out to be deep in the woods outside of town, by this time the kids were ready for some “night life,” so we made the 30 minute drive down dark roads into town in search of “the mall.” In town, we promptly got lost and spent another 30 minutes driving around a town in which many of the street signs did not match the names on our map (South Africa is the process of “Africanizing” many of its place and street names, which has created problems not only for tourists but also for the locals.) We did, eventually find the mall, and the attached casino, but after spending so much time looking for the mall, we were tired and, after eating dinner and witnessing a fight, we headed back to the lodge.

We started Sunday with a drive through some of South Africa’s most spectacular scenery: beautiful forest-covered mountains with waterfalls and viewpoints with names like “God’s Window.”

We then headed further east into Kruger. Although I had been skeptical about Kruger, thinking that it might be too touristy, we had a wonderful time. One of the rangers told us which road to take to find giraffes and, after about an hour of driving, we turned a corner and there were giraffes standing right next to the road. The giraffes seemed to be as interested in us and we were in them, and instead of running from us, they approached us, peaking at us from behind trees. Later, we had the opportunity to spend time with a herd of elephants who had taken over possession of the road and to see what we are quite sure was a leopard.

The next day was another driving day: Julia and I are great fans of the “Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series of books and, although it meant a bit a driving, we were determined to go into Gaborone, Botswana, where the stories are set. Because we made a number of stops along the way (and were attacked by birds), we did not get to Gaborone until 5:30, which means that we did not get there until after dark. We had made reservations at the President Hotel, one of the hotels featured in the books. Finding the hotel was not, however, easy. As it turns out there are very few directional or street signs in Gaborone, and there isn’t even a sign on the hotel itself, which can only be reached via a one-way alley. After asking at least six people for directions, we finally arrived at what we were quite sure was the hotel – a building that matched the description given in the books and on one of the few streets that had a street sign: President Street. Unfortunately, the street was the back entrance to the President’s home and the gun-toting guards were none too happy about the fact that we had driven up to the gate. When I got out of the car to ask about the hotel, the guns were pointed at us, and I was ordered back into the car. Although we thought that the subsequent hand motions meant that we should leave, when we started to leave, the guards got angry and asked us why we were trying to “run away.” Eventually, we found the hotel. Unfortunately, though, the hotel was in the process of being remodeled, which meant that the dining room was just a cold room and not the veranda described in the books.

We spent the next morning, Tuesday morning, exploring Gaborone before heading out to one final game park, Madikwe Game Reserve, which is on the border between South Africa and Botswana. After entering the reserve, we started on what should have been a forty-five minute drive to Jaci’s Tree House Lodge. However, within just a few minutes, we began seeing animals: impala, kudu, zebra, and warthogs, which required stops and pictures. In addition, about twenty minutes into the drive we saw a car stopped by the side of the road: a sure sign that the occupants of the car had spotted some sort of animal in the bush. As it turns out, the occupants had spotted a lion. Although the other car didn’t stay long, we stayed to watch and, as we did, a safari vehicle from another lodge pulled up beside us. The guide, who had just dropped some guests off at the private airport, asked us if we wanted a closer look. We said yes, and he had us drive short distance down the road, where we parked our car and got into his vehicle. He then took us “off road,” where we saw not only the one lion that we had originally seen, but a group of five lions who were busy devouring a wildebeest that they had killed earlier that morning.

As our forty-five minute drive turned into close to two hours, we continued to the lodge, which was spectacular. We had two large “tree-houses,” which were beautifully furnished and which featured not only huge tubs and outdoor showers but also great decks. Even more important, though, was that the tree houses had heaters of sorts: although the rooms were never warm, they weren’t freezing.

We spent the next two days taking morning and afternoon game drives, sitting by the waterhole watching the elephants come and go, and eating classy food (maybe a bit too classy for the boys) and doing our best to stay warm. On each of the three-hour game drives, we wore most of the clothing that we had brought and huddled under blankets that the lodge supplied. In addition, during the early morning drives, each of us received our own hot water bottle, which we placed on our stomachs. Although on some drives we saw relatively few animals, we learned a lot (one drive featured a dung lesson and another a tracking lesson.) In addition, two of the drives featured show downs with elephants and, after two drives spent looking, we finally found my Michael’s animal of choice, white rhinos, which we tracked and then got very close to.

Thus, by the last day, we had seen all of the big five, including the buffalo, which we have taken out the big five and replaced with the giraffe; my little five, which includes mongoose and bunnies, and even my middle five.

We ended the trip with a bit of shopping, first at curio stores in a small town outside of Pretoria, where we were mobbed by vendors and my Michael got to know the guys at the local bar, and with a final day in Pretoria. It was then off to Wits University to drop off my suitcases the projector, and teaching materials. Unfortunately, our directions were not particularly good and we ended up in downtown Joberg during rush hour and almost missed our plane. We are currently in the final hour of our very long plane ride, which included which included a 17-hour flight from Jo'berg to Washington DC, where Julia’s husband was detained for about 20 minutes for police questioning. With any luck, we will get home in time to shower before we head off to Matt Enquist’s wedding.

Bem Vindo a Maputo

2007-05-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

In Pretoria and Durban, we felt like we could have been in U.S.; in Capetown, a European city or Vancouver, B.C.; in the cities in Namibia, pure Germany, and in the Namibian desert, Mongolia, Bolivia, or another world entirely. But here in Mozambique – for better and for worse – I am squarely back in Africa.

Maputo, the capital city, feels like a combination of Dar es Salaam (low-lying African city by the sea); Lima, Peru (colonial Latin capital); and Sebastopol, Ukraine (former Soviet outpost and seaside resort), with a bit of Miami Beach art deco through in for good measure. The Portuguese influences – architectural, culinary, and cultural – make me wish that the Southern Europeans did more colonizing than the British, Dutch, and Germans. While many of the old colonial homes are in varying states of decay and disrepair, plenty remain along the wide boulevards of Maputo’s upscale neighborhoods.

Maputo is a great walking city – flat, on a grid, and breezy (the only downside are the Kampala-style holes in the sidewalks). So during my two days here, I did little more than wander the streets, stopping in cafes, parks, and along the seaside to stare at the turquoise blue Indian Ocean. The street names, by the way, are mostly of Communist and Socialist heroes and dictators, depending on how you look at it: from Ho Chi Min to Lenin to Julius Nyerere to Mao Tse Tung. People are very friendly, greeting you with “bom dia” and lots of them walk down the streets singing. I pretended (not usually with great success) to speak Portuguese, basically by speaking Spanish and throwing in the three Portuguese words that I know.

For lunch on Friday, I went to the Feira Popular, a sort of amusement park area in the Baixa (lower) downtown area, which has a number of small open-air restaurants. The choice of prawns in curry sauce turned out to be an excellent one, made better only when I asked for hot sauce and was brought a spicy but sweet homemade sauce made from piri-piri (hot peppers) and Meyer lemons.

After lunch, feeling slightly lethargic, I stopped at the Café Continental, a colonial relic, for a café com leite (like a latte). Before I could even order, the man at the next table (who looked like he was in his mid-70’s) asked me: “Portuegesa o extrajera?” (Was I Portuguese or a foreigner?) When I told him I was from the U.S., he told me he was from Seattle (actually Kirkland, across the lake) and within five minutes, I knew his entire life story. His name was Hassan; he was originally from Mozambique, of Indian heritage; he left Maputo 37 years ago to move to London so the doctors could treat the beginnings of his wife’s life-long battle with schizophrenia. I also learned about every job he had in his life; how much he made, what his two daughters and their husbands did and how much they made, and I saw pictures of his children and grandchildren. It turns out that he was in Mozambique, visiting his cousin, for the first time since he had moved away.

After a lengthy chat, Hassan invited me to have dinner with him and his cousin, Amin (who turned out to be in his early 60’s or so). Thinking that we would try some quaint local place, I agreed.

Around 9:30, they picked me up, both wearing slacks, sport coats, and ties, and me (as usual) in jeans and a sweater. Before dinner, we took a drive around the city and then out to the Costa do Sol, the beach area just outside the city. For dinner, they chose a swanky, brand-new casino, and by the time we arrived it was close to 11:00. Nonetheless, we ordered and dinner arrived around 11:30. Apparently, Hassan chose the casino because he loves to dance, and after trying all of the night spots in Maputo, this was his favorite. So after dinner, we went upstairs to the disco to join the smartly- (and sometimes barely-) dressed, 20-something Mozambicans and Europeans dancing to a mix of house music, rap, and the occasional Donna Summers song. Needless to say, with Hassan and I dancing and Amin snapping photos, we stuck out just a bit. By 1:00 a.m., Hassan was still raring to go, but I was pooped and eventually convinced them to call it a night.

Today was slightly less eventful. After a visit to the Saturday morning crafts market (“amiga, amiga, I will give you a good price”), I headed over to the main food market, where Alex, 18 years old, showed me around, visiting all of his relatives’ stalls for free samples of honey, freshly-roasted cashews, and various hot sauces. Cutting through the park on my way back to the guesthouse (Residencial Palmeiras), there was a wedding party on a photo shoot. While the bride and groom were posing, the rest of the wedding party were singing and doing what appeared to be a traditional line dance. I stopped to watch for a minute and one of the guys called me over; after I demurred a couple of times, I felt compelled to accept his invitation to join them, and even though it was a relatively simple dance, after about five minutes, I felt like they had had enough fun at my expense that I could gracefully excuse myself.

Lunch was piri-piri chicken, a traditional Mozambican specialty and some of the spiciest chicken I have ever had, at a place that looked and felt like it didn’t know that the revolution had come and colonial rule was over.

After another long walk down the tree-lined seaside promenade of Avenida Fredrich Engels, I headed home to organize my stuff in preparation for tomorrow’s 5:30 a.m. mini-bus up the coast to Inhambane.

A Vacation from Traveling

2007-05-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

The next morning, Sandy and Ellen left for the airport, and I was on my own for the first time during this trip. I spent the morning just running errands, checking email, and doing all the little things you can’t do in the desert. I was glad to go back to downtown Windhoek before 1:00 p.m. on a Saturday. When we had first arrived, we came downtown in the afternoon and the city was absolutely dead: shops were closed and the streets were empty. Before 1:00 p.m., however, it was a different place, lively, crowded, and bustling with energy. Still, I wanted to just relax for a few days, and this was not the place to do it, so I headed back to Swakopmund on the coast.

Rolf arranged for me to stay at The Secret Garden, a lovely little guesthouse run by a very friendly retired couple and their three funny little dogs. While the owners kept trying to get me to organize activities, after four and a half months of traveling, I was very happy to do not much of anything for a few days. The highlight of my first day was doing my own laundry (for the first time on this trip) at the Swakopmund Laundrette and Amusement Centre, a bit of a strange place that in addition to having washers, driers, and coin-operated irons, had small amusement park rides, a bar, and slot machines. The bulk of the rest of my time in Swakopmund was spent walking on the beach, reading, getting treatments, and eating very fresh seafood.

I only made one culinary mistake. One day for lunch, I ate at the local brewpub. Under “Light Lunches,” was something called “brawn.” I asked the waitress what it was and she said (actually, I heard) a chili stuffed with vegetables and meat. Sounded good, kind of like a German chili relleno. What arrived was a big glob of cold aspic with chunks of meat and veggie in it. All I can figure is that she was saying that it was "chilled." Luckily it came with good homemade tartar sauce and a large side order of potatoes fried with bacon and onions. To make up for it, later in the day, I went back to the Lighthouse Bar and Restaurant, sat on the deck overlooking the ocean, and had one of our favorite Namibian specialties, the Don Pedro, a thick milkshake blended with your choice of liqueur, particularly tasty when made with Kahlua.

My last day, I rented a bike for a short ride in the morning. As I headed out of the rental shop, I was surprised that so many of the roads were one-way, until I realized I was riding on the wrong side of the street. (I’m glad I decided against renting a car on my own.) But once I realized it, I managed pretty well. The bike had seen better days, with no brakes in the back and barely functional ones in the front. Luckily the area is pretty flat and there are few cars on the roads. I road north out of town and was amazed (and a bit horrified) at how much development is going on: condos, townhouses, and McMansions popping up everywhere.

Yesterday, I returned to Windhoek by bus and along the way, during the four hour journey, I saw warthogs, guinea fowl, glossy starlings and other birds, and even one large male kudu. And this afternoon, I head off for the beaches of Mozambique. While winter is starting here, and the nights are getting chilly, Namibians are extremely warm and hospitable people. Just two examples: First, as the bus rolled out of Swakopmund yesterday, people on the street – and not just kids – waved goodbye and the same thing happened as we arrived in Windhoek. Second, instead of saying “you’re welcome,” Namibians say “pleasure” (as in, “it’s my . . .”), and they say it in a way that makes you believe that it really is.

Amphibious Namibia

2007-05-23T03:02:00.001-07:00

If I were running the Namibian Tourist Board (and lucky for them, I’m not), my slogan would be Amphibious Namibia because there’s so much to do both on land and on the sea. (In fact, I think the people here should be called Namphibians, but given that they’ve only been Namibians – as opposed to South-West Africans – for 17 years now, it’s probably not the right time for a name change. I also think people in Botswana should be called “Botswanese,” but that’s another matter.)

After we left Laurel in Swakopmund, we headed back inland for what would turn out to be a very long (and kind of boring) day of driving. But we started with a few tourist attractions. First stop was just outside of town to see The Martin Luther, a strange relic from colonial days. It is a 14,000 kg. steam engine that was brought from Germany in 1896 and was intended to replace the ox wagons that were used to transport freight from the coast to the interior. However, given that it consumed massive amounts of water – a precious commodity in the desert – and moved incredibly slowly in sand (3 months to cover 30 km), it was not a great success, and after a short life simply ground to a halt. Apparently, it was then dubbed The Martin Luther in reference to Luther’s statement: “Here I stand. May God help me, I cannot do otherwise.”

Next stop was Cape Cross, a sanctuary for fur seals. During breeding season, as many as 200,000 seals come here; we saw probably close to 60,000, which was smelly enough, but fun to see playing in the waves and sunning themselves on the sand.

We then started driving in earnest. When the road crossed through an industrial diamond area, we had to stop so that guard could radio ahead to the next guard to let him know we were coming. Apparently, they time you, and you get 15 minutes to get through. (Although I’m not quite sure what happens if you take longer than 15 minutes.)

By late afternoon, we arrived at the Palmwag (pronounced pa-lem-vag, accent on the “pa”) Lodge, where we had to leave our vehicle (a mini-van) and transfer to a LandRover. Although we had only 30 more kilometers to cover, it took another two hours on rough terrain.

The Palmwag Rhino Camp, our home for the next two nights, was run by Wilderness Safaris, the same company that ran our camp in Soussevlei and the next three that we would stay at. Again, we were welcomed with cool towels and fruit juice – a custom that we were coming to expect and enjoy. The camp was more low-key than the first one, but still luxurious for camping. Although we had flush toilets in the tent, hot water was brought on request for bucket showers and thermoses with hot and cold water were left for washing up. Still, we had real beds, with fluffy comforters and turn-down service.

Before dinner, guests gathered around the fire for drinks and for stargazing. So close to the equator and with no lights for miles around, it seems the stars will practically touch the ground.

The next day, we get up early – this is starting to be a pattern, but we go to bed so early that it’s really not too bad. After breakfast at around 6:00, we set off for rhino tracking.

Three trackers who work for the Save the Rhino Trust started out ahead of us, but by the time we caught up to them, they had seen nothing. After a couple more hours in pursuit, the trackers finally got out of their vehicle and started on foot. We followed, up a small hill, and in the distance, not more than 100 yards away from us were a black rhino and her calf. Although we had been briefed on what do if the rhino charged, luckily we never needed to use that information. Instead, we watched them, while they watched us, and eventually, they wandered off behind the next hill.

We also learned some interesting facts about rhinos. First, the names “black” and “white” rhinos are misnomers; all rhinos are grey. The difference between the species is the size of the lips, with the white rhinos having wider ones. Apparently, the word for “wide” in Afrikaans was mistranslated to “white” in English and the name stuck. Second, if you can’t get close enough to the rhinos to inspect their lips, you can tell rhinos apart by the way they walk with their young: a black rhino calf walks behind its mother while a white rhino calf walks in front. This is because, at least according to some people, Africans carry their babies on their backs while white people push them in front in a stroller. On the way back to camp, as an extra treat, we saw our first (of many) desert adapted elephants. While these elephants do not differ biologically from other elephants, they have developed behaviors that allow them to survive in the harsh desert environment.

At dinner that night, it was just us, one other guest, and the camp staff. The other guest, Tanya, has my dream job. She lives in London and works for a high-end travel agency, specializing in Africa. She was visiting Namibia as part of her training, so that she could best advise her clients on where to go. Sure seems to beat grading papers.

Our next stop was the Damaraland Camp, for just one night. The highlight here was an al fresco dinner in the boma (corral). One of the best parts of the dinner hour in these camps is the recitation of the menu, first in English and then in the very animated “click” language of the Nama and Bushmen people.

After Damaraland, we went on to Ongava, a private game reserve directly outside Etosha National Park. After getting settled in, we went for a game drive on the property and within five minutes, we came up two male lions taking their afternoon naps. Seated in the open-sided vehicle, we were so close that we felt like we could almost reach out and pet them, and so close that when Ellen sneezed, they both woke up, glared at us, but then luckily went on snoozing. Our next activity was the ritual sundowner; this time it was set up in a small clearing where we could watch giraffes, zebra, springbok, and oryx as the sun set and the moon came up.

One of guests that night was Lisa, a middle-aged American woman who visited Namibia for the first time just a year ago and loved it so much that she quit her job “selling bananas to Wal-Mart” to work as a bush pilot shuttling guests from one lodge to the next.

After a yummy Italian dinner prepared by one of the guests who just happens to be chef, we were escorted back to our tents by an armed guard. Although we didn’t see any, apparently lions are known to roam the camp after dark, and while we signed all kinds of waivers, the management is taking any chances.

The next day, we spent the morning on a game drive in Etosha National Park. Because it is so dry here, most of the game viewing revolves around the watering holes in the park, which makes it relatively easy to find animals. We saw loads of elephants, including quite a few babies; all kinds of antelopes, my favorite being the springbok, which “prong,” or bounce up in the air – several feet- just because they can; and the usual jackals, ostriches, giraffes, and zebras.

We came back to camp for a hot lunch and then lounged on the verandah in front of the watering hole. While a bit decadent, it was quite nice to be able to relax with a cold drink, feet in the pool, and watch the bushbuck, kudus, and oryx wander up.

That afternoon, we went for a nature walk with Cameron, one of the camp managers. Originally from Zimbabwe, Cameron’s family moved to Namibia during the war, and he has made Namibia his home. He and his wife, Wendy, a former social worker who worked with abused children and prostitutes, decided to give up city life and move to the bush in retirement. While Cameron showed us many of the wonders of nature, it turns out that his specialty was poop, or as they say in the scientific world, “scat.” Not only could Cameron identify each animal by its poop, but he could tell us quite a bit about the animal’s eating habits, digestive track, and territorial behaviors. In addition, he seemed to revel in our reactions as he picked up the poop, broke up apart, held it up to his nose like a fine wine, and then offered us the chance to do the same.

The next morning, we left Andre, our guide, to fly up to the Skeleton Coast. Andre took us to the Ongava airstrip, where we met our pilot, Grant, who looked like he started shaving maybe last week. We piled into the 4-seater Cessna, said our good-byes to Andre, and set off for the 45 minute flight. While driving across Namibia, we had some sense of how vast and sparsely populated the country is (in fact, it is second-to-last only ahead of Mongolia in population density in the world), seeing it from the air drove the point home. Amazingly though, amid miles and miles of nothing, away from any roads or even rivers, we could see small homesteads dotted around the barren landscape.

We arrived at Purros airstrip, a field of sand and nothing more, that made Ongava airstrip, with its gate and two restrooms, look like a modern airport. In fact, as we landed, Grant pointed out two other airplanes to prove to us that this was actually where we were supposed to land.

We were met by Rambo (yes, that is really his name), our guide for the next three days. Wilderness owns two camps, right next to each other, on the Skeleton Coast: the main camp and the research center, where we stayed. While there is no research currently being done, the camp was originally established to house scientists studying lichen in the area. The camp was the most rustic of all – but still luxurious by any standard – and we were the only ones staying there. At first we were a bit nervous about being so isolated, but the staff there were so much fun that we were glad to have them all to ourselves.

Because we had been sitting so much lately, we decided to walk that afternoon. We wandered around with Rambo, looking for the “small five.” While on game drive in Africa, we look for the “big five” (elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, leopard, and lion), in the desert we look for things like the ant lion, the fog beetle, and other tiny creatures that have adapted to the inhospitable conditions. (The fog beetle, locally known as the tok tokkie, is my favorite of these. It is a medium-sized beetle that looks kind of like a big peanut, with a crease running down the middle of its back. It catches moisture from the fog in the crease, and then tilts forward, with its head in the sand so the water rolls towards its mouth and it can drink.) After walking for a short bit, we climbed a small hill to find our sundowner table already prepared and our arrival perfectly timed. We enjoyed our G & T’s in the stillness of the desert before wandering back to camp.

After yet another delicious meal, with not much else to do and with temperatures dropping to close to freezing, we climbed into bed at around 8:30. Here, to our great joy, turndown service included the strategic placement of hot water bottles in each of our beds.

The next day we awoke to heavy fog and, after breakfast, set off for the 30 km drive to the Atlantic coast.

Rather than driving directly, we spent hours driving up and down the dunes and getting out every now and again to take pictures and to hunt for rocks and minerals.

We stopped at a small oasis, where we collected pieces of an oryx skeleton before Rambo convinced us to play in the quicksand. Rambo, Ellen, and I lined up at the edge of the quicksand for a race. On your marks, get set, and after two steps of running we were up to our knees and literally stopped dead in our tracks, propelling us forward and falling on our faces in the sand. We tried to wriggle ourselves out but were laughing so hard that we kept falling back into the sand. Halfway across the quicksand field, Rambo started running on top of the sand and challenged us to “run like Jesus” to the other side. Although Rambo, at well over 200 pounds could do it, the two of us could not manage to take more than two steps without finding ourselves facedown in the sand.

Around noon, we reached the coast. The Skeleton Coast has been the site of many shipwrecks and takes its name from the bones of the many lost and stranded sailors that have been found on the coast and in the nearby desert. As we drove, we saw massive bones from the Southern Right whale; huge pieces of gnarled driftwood; and cormorants (locally known as the Skeleton Coast Air Force because they fly in formation along the coast), sea gulls, terns, and other shore birds. What we didn’t see much of was people. One other car passed while we were eating our picnic lunch, and later in the day we saw a convoy of five vehicles that we traveling around the perimeter of Africa distributing free mosquito nets in an anti-malaria campaign.

The next day, we took a drive inland, first visiting a Himba family. The Himba people are pastoralists, following their cows and goats to grazing land and leading a very traditional lifestyle. We met two grannies who still dress and adorn themselves in the customary way: they rub a paste of ochre powder mixed with milk fat all over their bodies, making their skin supple and tinged with red; they plait their hair in a way that shows that they are married women; and they dress in nothing but a skirt made of sheep skin that is dyed to match their skin color. The kids, however, were all in Western dress, mugging for the camera like every other African kid that we met.

We then drove around looking at the stunning scenery and searching for animals. Here, we saw more desert-adapted animals, some of which were walking side-by-side with the local livestock.

We also saw more oryx, springbok, giraffe, and chakma baboons. The oryx, otherwise known as the gemsbok, is particularly well-suited to desert environs: First, it does not need to drink water; it can extract moisture from air and plants. Second, it is able to regulate its own internal temperature up to 116 degrees during the day and 97 at night. However, the 116 degree blood would fry its brain, so it has a sort of cooling system in the nasal passage that cools the blood before it passes into the brain.

That evening, for dinner, Morne, the camp manager, told us we’d have a chance to watch the Cooking Channel on bush TV. We had a “braai” or traditional Namibian barbeque, which Chris, the cook, prepared it over the open fire in front of us. Namibians love their meat, so the main course was steak, pork chops, and sausage. For side dishes, butternut squash stuffed with pinto beans and topped with melted cheese; stir fry of vegetables; corn on the cob; and doughboy rolls cooked over the fire. And, after all that, chocolate mousse for dessert.

On Friday, sadly we had to return to Windhoek. We took a leisurely drive back to Purros airstrip, where we sat under a tree waiting for our plane.

As soon as he heard the plane, Rambo jumped up, backed the vehicle onto the airstrip, and jumped on the hood, unfurling a roll of toilet paper as a homemade windsock to guide our pilot in. Phillip, as young as Grant, flew us back to Windhoek and back to civilization. Although we were sad to end our safari, Rolf softened the blow, welcoming us back to Terra Africa like we were long lost relatives and preparing us a delicious home-cooked dinner.

Some pix from Soussevlei

Sunrise over the Dunes

Deadvlei

Laurel and Ellen Climbing up Dune 45

Sherry at 10, beer at 11, champagne at 2, and sundowners at 5

2007-05-13T02:57:00.000-07:00

Our initial impression of Namibia was not good. We arrived in Windhoek, the capital and largest city, early Saturday afternoon and everything was closed. Thus, although we had two hours to explore downtown, the entire tour took about 10 minutes, and we spent the rest of the time wandering through empty streets in search of the city’s biggest attraction: a group of 33 meteorites from the Gibeon meteorite shower, which is believed to be one of the largest showers. We did, however, have a good “all meat” dinner at Joe’s, and Rolf, who owns Terra Africa, the bed and breakfast where we stayed, was a terrific host.

On Sunday morning our guide, Andre, picked us up, and we headed south into the desert. It didn’t take long for us to realize how empty Namibia is: although the country is the size of Texas, it has only 1.2 million people. As a result, even when your are headed for one of the country’s major tourist sites, the red dunes at Sossusvlei, you can go for miles and miles and miles without seeing any sign of life.

though we spent our first two nights at a tented camp near Namib-Naukluft Park, we did not rough it. When we arrived at the private camp, which is perched on the side of a mountain overlooking a valley, we were handed warm towels and cool drinks. In addition, our tents were not your typical tent: they were larger than a large hotel room and were attached to a small stone building that featured a natural rock shower and a toilet that faced a picture window and a view of the valley. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we did not get to use the air horn that comes with each tent and is to “call” the main building if there is an emergency. We ended our first day with a drive into the valley to get a close up view of the flora and fauna; the fairy circles, which are large circles in which nothing will grow which are, according to the locals, either the result of a plant poisoning the soil or aliens; and the few springbok that inhabit the very dry valley. Just before sunset, we stopped, and while we wandered a bit, our local guide set up a table, covered it with a table cloth, set out snacks, and mixed sundowners. With drinks in hand, we experienced sunset in the desert and the emergence of Venus and millions of stars. It was then back to the camp for more stargazing and dinner.

At 4:00 a.m. (yes 4:00 a.m.) we got up, had a quick breakfast, and headed to the dunes to watch the sunrise. The sunrise was all that we expected: The dunes are huge; they are very red; and as the sun comes up, the shadows create a dramatic landscape. After watching the sunrise from Dune 1, we headed to what seems to be the most famous of the dunes, Dune 45, which is reputed to be the largest of the dunes but really isn’t. Along with a number of other tourists, we climbed to the top of the first ridge, which is a lot more difficult than it looks. We then ran down, which is a lot more fun that you might think, and headed off for a hike to the salt pans. As the morning ended, we drove to one of the few places where trees grow for a picnic lunch of chicken, meatballs, pasta salad and homemade bread. It was then off to the canyon at Sesriem, and then back to camp camp for a dip in the very small and very cold pool, a short nap, and dinner.

The next day we set off, once again, across the desert: this time to Swakopmond, which means mouth of Swakop River. (Although the locals are reluctant to tell you what “Swakop” means, after some careful detective work we learned that it means “bottom excrement.” ) The town lies between the desert and the Atlantic ocean and looks and feels German. We spent the afternoon taking a long walk on the seaside path (which should get an award for its landscaping) and a very cool evening in a warm seaside restaurant.

Having been told by Andre to dress like onions, when we got up the next morning we put on most of the clothes that we had brought with us and headed out through the fog to Walvis Bay, which is about 30 kilometers south of Swakopmond. Although initially we were skeptical about being part of the group of about 40 mostly older German tourists who boarded our catamaran, we were quickly won over by the guide, who was both knowledgeable and personable; by the blankets that we were given and which we huddled under; and ay the sherry, which was served at 10:00, and the beer, which was served at 11:00. We also thoroughly enjoyed the sea lions who jumped on board for fish treats and who, at one point, walked right over us; the colony of sea lions that were on the far side of the harbor; and the dolphins, which swam next to the boats.

Just as the sun broke through at 11:00 a.m., the catamaran pulled along side a dock near the lighthouse and, while the rest of the group stayed onboard, the four of us were “offloaded” for our desert adventure. And it was an adventure. Unfortunately, we never figured out how to say or spell our guide’s name, but he was great: 24 years old and just back from several months of travel. We spent the first couple of hours driving south along the coast through the sand, stopping on a regular basis to watch the flamingos, jackals, and, unfortunately, some dead fish that had washed up on the shore. With the exception of the other vehicle that was traveling with us (it is not considered safe to go out in just one vehicle) we had the long and very beautiful coastline almost to ourselves.

Not to be outdone by the people on the other tour operators, when it came time for lunch, our guide stopped, the tables and umbrellas came out, and we had a wonderful lunch: fresh oysters, a seafood platter, rice salad, and, of course, champagne. After lunch, we put on our seatbelts and headed into the dunes, which range from a few feet to probably 200 feet tall. We drove the way only a 24-year-old male would drive: full speed to the top of the tallest dunes and then nose first straight down the steep side. We also learned that some dunes “groan” when you drive (or slide) down them and that if you roll an orange down a dune, the orange will explode. We also went down one dune backwards, which although planned, took us by surprise.

We ended the day back in Swakamond at yet another lovely dinner and yet another interesting conversation with Andre, an Afrikaner who has provided us with a very interesting perspective on apartheid, (pronounced aparth-hate) the relationship between South Africa and Namibia, and the United States’ involvement in the war in Angola. Although a man of few words, Andre has warmed up to us and us to him, and we have been impressed with his respect for nature and for all people, no matter their race or nationality, and his deep love for Namibia and for his three-month old daughter.

No, we are not mad at each other

2007-05-13T02:49:00.000-07:00

In fact, we are even better friends. However, after traveling together for 18 weeks, we have temporarily parted ways. Mimi has headed to the northern part of Namibia with her Ellen and Sandy, her mother and stepfather, and Laurel has headed back to Johannesburg to travel with her children. We will, however, meet up again in Johannesburg on June 8^th to get ready for our summer school course. The following lists give yet another view of our travels.

Number of flights 20
Number of times we have packed and unpacked 48
Number of times that we have talked about legalese 28
Number of countries we have visited 5
Number of times our vehicle has broken down 3
Unplanned encounters with wild animals 2
Number of time we had to visit a hospital 1
Types of transportation
Planes
Buses
Safari vehicles
Matatus
Boda bodas
Bicycles
Tuk tuks
Private cars
Taxis
UN vehicles
US Embassy vehicles
Judicial studies vehicles
Train
Houseboat
Dhow
Kayak
Catamaran

Museums, movies, and more meals

2007-05-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

A visit to Cape Town is like a visit to Vancouver, B.C. on a sunny day. The city center is nestled between the mountains and the ocean, the waterfront wharf has both commercial and pleasure boats, and at one end of town there is a several mile long beach walk with condos on one side and the sea on the other.

We arrived in Cape Town midday on Saturday and, after settling into our waterfront hotel (which is lovely but is smack in the middle of a very touristy mall), we spent the afternoon exploring the city center. Although it was a holiday weekend and the streets were mostly empty, we enjoyed not only the beautiful Cape Dutch style buildings but also a large African crafts market. Later in the afternoon, we explored the Company Gardens, which were established by the Dutch East India Company in the second half of the 17^th Century to supply fresh fruits to vessels making the trip around the Cape to India and back to Europe. Needing a bathroom break, we began looking for a place to have tea. As we started looking, we stumbled on the Lord Nelson Hotel where the doorman, dressed in uniform complete with top hat, asked if we had come for tea. Quite by accident, we had arrived just in time for high tea. While our lack of reservation earned us place on the terrace (charming if a bit chilly), we enjoyed the watercress sandwiches (white bread, with crusts cut off, of course), the smoked salmon (with requisite sour cream and capers), fresh raspberries, raisin scones and homemade jam, and assorted pastries, our favorite of which were the miniature chocolate éclairs. Africa? Yes, but a world away from East Africa.

The next morning we woke up to typical Seattle weather: cool, overcast, and a little drizzly. With uncharacteristic early morning enthusiasm, we dug out our fleeces and raincoats for a walk along the beachfront. Although we managed to detour through a particularly unattractive construction zone, we eventually found the walkway and enjoyed a blustery walk along the rugged Atlantic coast. Eventually finding our way back to the hotel, we enjoyed one of our favorite breakfast buffets: highlights the three kinds of yogurt (Greek, Bulgarian, and plain), a wide array of fresh fruit, and the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. We then retired to our room for the ultimate luxury: the after-breakfast nap under fluffy down comforters.

We had booked a tour to Robben Island for that afternoon, but when we arrived at the dock we discovered that the tour had been cancelled because of the rough seas. Although disappointed, we regrouped quickly: we purchased some wine and cheese and took it to our room where, for only about the fourth time in four months, we turned on our TV, and much to our delight, we hit upon The Daily Show with John Stewart. Next on our relaxed-day agenda was another great movie, Venus. To cap off our day, we had planned to go for fish chowder for dinner, but the restaurant was closed for a private function, and for reasons that we don’t quite understand, in the harbor side mall, no other restaurant actually had soup on the menu. After dinner, Mimi’s mother and stepfather arrived to join us to travel to Namibia after we finish with the presentations in South Africa.

Monday was museum day. We began the day at the District 6 Museum, which is a tribute to and a gathering place for the “Cape Coloured” a designated racial group who were forced to move from their city center homes when the area was razed and reclassified for whites only. The museum’s power comes from the fact that it tells the stories of ordinary individuals who were living ordinary lives before they were forced to move. One particularly telling story came from a man who trained homing pigeons. After he moved, he kept his pigeons at home for a few months. When he felt that they had become accustomed to their new home, he let them go. However, they didn’t return. But, when he went back to the District 6 area; although his home was gone, he found the pigeons where the house had been. No matter how long he stayed in the new location, the pigeons kept returning to District 6. As a result, he suggested that the museum be built, not only for visitors to learn about Cape Town’s history but also for former residents to gather to reminisce and commiserate.

We then moved on to a very different museum: the Gold of Africa Museum. Our guide, originally from Cameroon, was a great storyteller, telling us not only about the history of the artifacts in the museum but also about the culture of the peoples who created them. We ended the day with yet the Bo Kaap museum, in the Cape Malay area. After viewing the museum, our guide took us into the streets in the Bo Kaap area to see the brightly-painted houses and to stuff us with sweet meats, most of which we learned are neither sweet nor meat.

While Monday was museum day, Tuesday was nature day. We drove south along the Cape Peninsula, first along the cold Atlantic side to the Cape of Good Hope and then up the Indian Ocean side to see the African penguins. The weather was spectacular, sunny and almost warm, and the scenery was breathtaking.

We started out passing through small fishing villages, then traveled along a rugged coast line, the turquoise water decorated with swirls of white foam.

By mid afternoon, we reached Cape Point, the southernmost point in Africa and the point where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.

As we climbed to the viewpoint, clouds came in covering and then uncovering the jagged tops of the mountains. Our guide not only explained the area’s history, flora and fauna, and geography, but also provided us with some interesting trivia. Did you know, for example, that while each of an ostrich’s eyes weighs 40 grams, its brain weighs only 30 grams?

We ended the day with a stop to see the African penguins, which established nests just south of Simon’s Town in the mid 1980s. The penguins had formerly been known as Jackass Penguins, which was not a comment on their intelligence or personality, but came from the fact that when they are trying to attract a mate, they bray like a donkey. There are now about 3000 penguins living just outside of town, and they seem to be oblivious to the hundreds of tourists who come to see them each day. As a result, we were able to watch one couple mate (apparently, the braying worked): afterwards, the male stood next to the female with his flipper resting gently on her back. For more on the penguins, please feel free to ask us to email you our several hundred pictures.

We wish we could tell you that we had another trip planned for tomorrow, but we don’t. Although Ellen and Sandy will spend the next three days seeing more of the Cape Town area, we head back to work: on Wednesday and Thursday we will be presenting a workshop for attorneys and on Friday we have one for magistrates. Our only consolation is that there is no doubt that this is a city that we will return to, if not during the next couple of months, sometime in the near future.

Massages, mountains, and meals

2007-05-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

After 13 nearly-identical presentations in 14 days, we were more than ready for a couple of days without the now-famous Kenneth Q. Washburn III and his alter egos, Ken and Kenneth. Luckily, there several public holidays at the end of April (Freedom Day) and the beginning of May (May Day), which gave us two days off in Durban and then four more in Cape Town.

To celebrate our first evening off, we visited what is, perhaps, the biggest and most elaborate mall either of us has seen. Given how long we had spent in East Africa, we found the experience a bit overwhelming, and the only thing that saved the evening was the movie that we had gone to the mall to see: History Boys.

The next day we managed to find a place with even more glitz: a Las Vegas style casino, through which we had to walk (quickly) to get to the spa where we celebrated Laurel’s birthday. Having now had treatments on at four continents, we now consider ourselves to be spa experts: our most unusual treatments were the treatments that we received in Costa Rica; the oiliest were the ones that we had in India, and the ones in the strangest location were the ones that we had in our tent outside a game park in Tanzania. This spa was the most structured: Everyone at the spa had the same lunch, we all had the same robes and slippers, and when the drums were banged, we moved to the next station. However, by the time we had had the neck and head massage, the hot-stone back massage, and the foot scrub and massage (punctuated by several glasses of champagne), we were completely relaxed.

After our massages, Judge Dhaya Pillay, a Labour Court judge and the person who got us involved in teaching in South Africa, picked us up and took us and her two very energetic Alsatians – Ginger and Plums -- for a walk on the beach. In South Africa, it turns out that the beaches fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks, Recreation and Cemeteries, which seemed like a bit of an odd combination. After our walk, we returned to Dhaya’s home for an informal dinner with Dhaya and her partner, Yunus, and friends from the U.S. Consulate’s office. Although we tried to help Dhaya cook, our lack of culinary ability became readily apparent when Laurel attempted to dice some butternut squash but managed to send the squash flying across the kitchen and onto the the floor.

The next day, we went a few hours outside of Durban with Dhaya and Yunus to the Drakenberg Mountain range (know to locals as “the Berg”), where we spent the afternoon hiking through heathery meadows beneath dramatic cliffs and outcrops ending at breezy waterfall.

Alive and almost well

2007-04-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, we know, it has more than two weeks since our last entry. Although you may be thinking that we’ve been lounging on the beach or on safari seeking out rare animals and birds, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the last two weeks have been the most hectic of our trip. After spending Easter weekend on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kisumu, Kenya, we had one last day in Kampala. We started the day with a visit to the U.S. Embassy, where the metal plate in Laurel’s arm set off the metal detector (which it has not done in any airport anywhere in the world) putting the U.S. Marines on full alert and requiring supervisor approval before we could enter. After running around doing errands and packing up all of our stuff, we threw ourselves a little going away party at our apartment at the Mosa Courts. Our guest list included many of the attorneys and academics that we have met over the years. We even had a few law students crash the party because they wanted to get some legal writing advice.

Very early the next morning, we left for the Entebbe airport for the last time during this trip. We’d been in Uganda for so long by this point that we were a bit sad to be moving on, but the porters at the hotel seemed pretty pleased to get packing up and moving all of our luggage for the last time. Although our flight to South Africa was just a few hours, when we arrived we felt as if we were a world away. The Joburg airport reminded us of Amsterdam airport; the multitude of multi-lane, pothole-free highways leading to Pretoria reminded us of Los Angeles; and the weather, cool and cloudy, reminded us of home.

This part of our trip is being hosted by the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, and the Public Affairs Section could not have given us two better hosts for our weeklong stay in Joburg and Pretoria. Mary Ellen Koenig, an American, and Rina du Toit, a South African were extremely well organized, but they were also great fun. They did, however, keep us extremely busy: On Friday, we did a day-long workshop for magistrates; on Saturday we visited Wits University, which is where we will be holding our summer school program in June and July; on Sunday, we participated in a conference for women judges and magistrates; and on Monday we did another day-long workshop for magistrates. We had a change of pace on Tuesday, when, instead of talking still one more time about audience and purpose, small-scale organization, and sentences, we had meetings with academics at the University of Pretoria and the post-graduate Law Education and Development program, where we made presentations on effective teaching methods and development of legal writing curricula. Finally, on Wednesday and Thursday we did a session for the Law Society of South Africa, with a lively group of attorneys, some of whom also teach on a part-time. The only downside to the week was that both of us came down with a particularly nasty stomach virus. As a result, our experience with the local food has been primarily limited to ginger ale and dry toast.

On Thursday afternoon, we took what we think is our 18^th flight: a short flight from Joburg to Durban. Although the tourist brochure advertises Durban as having 365 days of sun a year, we arrived during a major rain storm and fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. The good news is that, because we have presentation all day everyday for the next six days, the weather doesn’t really matter, and we have been assured that, by the time we get a day off on Thursday, the sun will have returned and we will have the opportunity to see this beautiful coastal city at its best.

Drinking, Dancing, and Teaching

2007-04-08T02:11:00.000-07:00

Miss November and Miss December

During last week’s two-day training sessions for the faculty at the Law Development Centre in Kampala (LDC), we couldn’t understand why everyone -- including people who had never met her -- kept asking Mimi whether she wanted a beer. However, we found out why when the Director of the LDC presented us a copy of the 2006 LDC calendar, a wall-sized calendar filled with photos of illustrious members of the Ugandan judiciary, group shots of the LDC faculty, and a page for yours truly. The November/December page featured a 10 x 12 inch glossy photo of us with the Centre’s director and several other members of the LDC faculty taken during the closing reception from our 2005 visit. Although Laurel is hiding in the back row, Mimi is in the front row, beer in hand, enthusiastically toasting the photographer. In her defense, several of the LDC faculty members were also holding their beers, just not quite as prominently. (The calendar will be featured prominently in Mimi’s office upon her return to Seattle.)

This year’s cocktail reception was even more raucous than 2005’s. Complete with a full bar and dinner buffet, the party got underway when one of the faculty members volunteered to be an emcee and started an “open mike” session, which quickly moved from lawyer jokes to singing. The overall favorite seemed to be a call-and-response in Luganda, which we obviously did not understand, but we were told that it translated loosely to “We love alcohol, and we’re sad when there’s no beer.” Unfortunately, we had a very early bus to catch the next day and had to leave just as the dancing was starting.

As we were leaving, we went to the Director’s office to sign the school’s guest book, and as it turns out, the book contains signatures from many famous Ugandans: But the first entry in the book, from 1973, gave us the chills: Right in front of us was the signature of the “King of Scotland,” Idi Amin Dada.

(We seem to have lost the cable that connects the camera to the computer, so no pix for now, but hopefully they’ll be coming soon.)

More teaching and more dancing

Very early the next morning, before the sun had even come up, we headed down to catch the bus to Eldoret, Kenya, to visit with Edwin Abuya, one of our Nairobi conference participants and a faculty member at Moi University Faculty of Law. After a seven hour journey (six on the bus and one to cross the border), we arrived in Eldoret, a medium-sized city in Western Kenya. We had arranged to stay with Edwin’s sister, Pamela, and her family, and it didn’t take us long to settle in and feel like part of the family. After three months sleeping in hotel rooms and eating in restaurants, we enjoyed a great home-cooked dinner, and we were pleased that Cheryl Ivy, Frances and Pamela’s 10-year-old daughter actually wanted to see our pictures.

On Thursday, we presented guest lectures in three classes at the Law Faculty – two in Edwin’s classes and one in Henry Mutai’s (another one of our conference participants). After the classes, we had the opportunity to chat informally with students about their writing projects and about their interest in attending LLM programs in the U.S. (If there was scholarship money available, we could have signed up at least 25 well-qualified students on the spot.)

On Friday, Edwin played tour guide: Although the Lonely Planet recommended the cheese factory as the highlight of a visit to Eldoret, Edwin is not a big fan of cheese, so we went on a far better journey, a series of matutu (minibus) rides, first to Etin, a small town about an hour outside of Eldoret, which featured a viewpoint high over the southern part of the Rift Valley. We also saw several rock hyraxes, an animal that that resembles a large groundhog, but apparently is part of the elephant family. We then crossed down into the valley and back up to the other side to Kabernet, where we drove to see even more spectacular views. Edwin was a great travel partner: it was great to travel with someone who spoke the local language and who would listen to all of our stories. (Sorry Edwin.) And Edwin got a first-hand look at what it’s like traveling with two mzungu ladies – he’d never had so many offers for taxis or boda-bodas in his life.

We were pooped when we finally got back to the house and were tempted to turn down Pamela’s invitation to go listen to a local band and to go dancing. Luckily though, we got a second wind and had a blast dancing until the wee hours. Apparently, the club doesn’t get too many out-of-towners, and Mimi was “it” in a game of “how many people can dance with the white girl?”

It was with much regret that we left Eldoret this morning to go to spend the Easter weekend in Kisumu on Kenyan side of Lake Victoria. Because we don’t have any Easter eggs or chocolate bunnies, we are instituting a new Easter tradition: Sometime during the night, Mimi will get up, cut up the cheese that Pamela and her husband purchased from the cheese factory and sent with us, and hide it so that Laurel can have a “cheese cube hunt” in morning. And yes, it appears that maybe we have been on the road for a wee bit too long.

"Promoting Prosperity Through the Rule of Law"

2007-03-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

Back in Kampala, we spent the week conducting a seminar through the International Law Institute’s African Centre for Legal Excellence. Luckily, we had a small class: Margaret, from the Tanzania Insurance Board; Robert, who worked for the Kenya Power Authority; Isaac, from the Zambia Telecommunications Agency; another Isaac, from a high-end Kampala law firm; and Daniel, a lecturer at Makerere, who we met at the conference in Nairobi. Having a small group and five days to spend with them made this training session one of the highlights of our trip thus far.

Plus, these participants had a good sense of humor. The participants in the other sessions -- including a group of Southern Sudanese legislators studying legislative drafting and Tanzanians studying good governance -- could not believe that legal writing could generate as much laughter as it did. For example, in a debate among the participants on the reasons why lawyers should or should not use “legalese,” we heard all of the standard arguments, but this time we heard a new one. According to Robert, at least in Kenya, legalese can be used to pick up girls in bars. We had a hard time imagining this technique working in the U.S.: “Hey baby, want to come up and see my res judicata?”

And during the week, we learned as much from the participants as they did from us. Enlightening lunchtime conversations tended to focus on the problems with African leaders; law firm politics and billing practices; and some of the more esoteric traditions from different tribes, including hiring someone to sleep with a woman’s dead body if she refused to be “inherited” by her husband’s relatives after her husband’s death and having a father-in-law deflower his son’s new bride.

Just Like Home . . . Almost

2007-03-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

When we told people that we were going to spend seven months in Africa, they worried about where we would stay, what we would eat, and what we would do to keep ourselves occupied. It seems that they envisioned us living in huts, eating nothing but bananas, and spending our free time gathering firewood and carrying water on our heads. Life in Kampala, however, is practically like life at home . . . with just a few exceptions.

After spending a couple of days at Gately-on-the-Nile, a lovely little hotel in a converted colonial home located in Jinja, the town at the source of the Nile, just about two hours north of Kampala, we returned to Kampala to prepare for a training session at the International Law Institute next week. We’re back at the Mosa Courts Apartments, but we’ve moved downstairs into an even bigger apartment (for the same price) with two-bedrooms and three bathrooms, one of which we’ve designated as the toothbrushing bathroom to make sure that we get use out of all three. Our apartment is equipped with DSL internet as well as cable TV.

On Saturday, we went to the mall to see Music & Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. Before the movie, we had lunch at a restaurant/specialty shop at the mall, where Mimi found the one thing she had been missing: bagels, lox, and Philadelphia cream cheese. On Sunday, we had lunch – a lovely salad nicoise -- at a local café complete with wireless access. And this evening, we watched CNN’s weekly showing of The Daily Show with John Stewart – the international version.

And now for the exceptions: When we come home from the mall, we usually come by boda-boda (motorcycle-taxi) to avoid the uphill walk. The salon in hotel only charges $15 for an hour-long massage. And then there’s language. While English is English, our English doesn’t always translate. After having cleared out the diet soda selection from our local mini-mart, we ventured further a field and found Diet Coke, in bottles, at yet another gas station. When we discovered that there was no bottle opener in our room, we called housekeeping to bring one to us. About an hour later, someone from housekeeping arrived with a light bulb and said she was told to replace the bulb in one of our bedside lamps. Oddly, we have no bedside lamps, but she was convinced that one of us had called to ask for the bulb. After several minutes of confusion, we determined that somehow when we said “bottle opener,” they heard “lightbulb.” And so it goes . . .

We Built It and They Came

2007-03-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

One day last year, shortly after we had decided to spend the semester in Africa, Laurel stopped me (Mimi) in the hall at school and said: “I think we should have a conference. We should invite some people from the U.S. and some people from East Africa and bring them together to talk about ways to teach legal writing.” I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical. How were we going to finance this conference? How would we find potential participants? And, even if we found them, would they really come? But those of you who know Laurel know that once she makes up her mind to do something, it gets done – one way or another. So we got some money; we (with the able help of SU 2L Lyn Arnold) made some brochures; we sent out emails to embassies, law schools, and law societies all over eastern Africa . . . and we waited, hoping that someone would want to come to our party. And, lo and behold, people started to respond and actually wanted to come, which meant, of course, that we had to organize a conference for them to come to.

While it is easy to announce that you are going to hold a legal writing conference in Nairobi, making that conference happen is much more difficult. You have to pick a conference site based on pictures on websites and postings on Trip Advisor; many of the people that you want to invite do not have reliable email access; and setting a budget using foreign currencies that change from day to day is, if nothing else, frustrating.

The good news is that Mimi is, by both day and by night, a wannabe travel agent and was able to find a hotel, purchase airline tickets for 20 of our African participants, and book rooms for more than 40. (Despite a small crisis two weeks before the conference when we were told that the conference hotel was short about a half-dozen rooms.) She is now on a first-name basis with all the agents at the Kenya Airways office in Kampala and can, if you ask her, tell you the flight schedules for all of the flights going from not only the U.S. to Nairobi but also from Entebbe, Dar Es Salaam, Addis Ababa, among others. The bad news is that just one month before the conference, after most of the tickets had been purchased and the hotel had been paid, the United States government issued a travel warning for Kenya, suggesting that Americans “seriously consider the risks involved in traveling in Kenya” based on a series of recent carjackings. (Yes, we intentionally waited until after the conference to mention the travel warning to our friends and families. We did tell the conference participants.)

It is, therefore, an understatement to say that, a week before the conference, we were nervous. On the plane ride from Uganda to Nairobi, we made a list of all of the things that could go wrong: the hotel would be a dump; we would not have enough rooms; we would have scheduled the flights for the wrong day or city; we would have done the math wrong and not have enough money; or one of the conference participants would be mugged.

Our fears were for naught. We were met at the airport by Daniel, who was, until a few years ago, one of the President of Kenya’s bodyguards. He took us to the hotel, the Fairview, which resembles a British manor house set in a tropical garden, and our fears were set to rest. Later that afternoon, Daniel took us on a quick tour of the city, which on a Sunday afternoon is as nice (or nicer) than most U.S. cities (during the week, it is still nice, but the “jam” makes getting around quite difficult). In recent years, the government has rebuilt the roads, replanted the gardens, and, it appears, picked up every scrap of litter. Thus, from the downtown area, you would not know that Nairobi is frequently referred to as “Nairobbery” or that it is the home to Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, housing close to three-quarters of a million people in 2.5 square miles.

Things got even better when we returned to The Fairview a week later for the start of the conference and met with Anita, a Kenyan who graduated from Seattle University School of Law last year, who we had hired as our conference assistant. Despite an unscheduled 30-hour layover in Detroit on a non-stop from Seattle to Amsterdam, Anita was full of energy and had finalized the arrangements for the field trips for the U.S. participants. (Later in the week, we held a contest for worst travel experience. Anita’s travel nightmare was rivaled by Adam’s – he was supposed to transit through Dubai, but had an unplanned diversion to Kuwait – and Benga’s – on his flight from Lagos, Nigeria, the airline lost his luggage, including his laptop, and as far as we know, it has never been found.)

Most of the U.S. participants arrived a few days before the official start of the conference to go on “field trips” that Anita had organized for us. On Monday, Anita and her aunt, Kate, took a group of about six of us to woman’s hospital, which has established the only Rape Crisis Center in East Africa, and to a women’s law clinic where Kate, a fourth-year law student (and high-school teacher and mother of two small children), volunteers. (On Monday morning, Laurel had a field trip of her own, visiting almost every bank in Nairobi trying to get enough cash to reimburse the African participants for their airfare. Unfortunately, she was not successful, and while the hotel finally agreed to let us take cash out on our credit card, it came with a hefty fee.)

Then, on Tuesday, when almost all of the U.S. participants had arrived, we had “tourist day.” We started with a visit to the Maasai market where many of us overspent our budgets on local crafts. Next, we visited the Karen Blixen house, where we took turns standing on the lawn and saying, “I had a farm in Africa.” Then, at the Langata Giraffe Centre, we not only hand-fed endangered Rothschild giraffes, but the more adventurous in our group (see Jana McCreary below) put the pullets between their lips for a big wet giraffe kiss.

For lunch, we headed to Carnivores, a Nairobi landmark, where the all-you-can eat meatfest escalated from chicken, beef, lamb, and pork to crocodile, ostrich meatballs, impala, and zebra. And to wash it all down, the dawa, a tasty and potent mixture of vodka, lime juice, honey, and sugar. After lunch, we waddled back to the bus for our last stop of the day, the Bomas of Kenya, a cultural center where we watched a variety of dances from different ethic groups and toured displays of bomas, or homesteads, from different regions in Kenya.

On Wednesday, we went back to being law professors, and dressed up to visit the courts, the Kenya School of Law, and the University of Nairobi Law Faculty. A highlight was lunch at a typical Nairobi restaurant where we tasted local favorites, including a variety of stews (chicken, beef, and innards, among others) accompanied by rice, ugali (maize porridge) or chapatti (flatbread), and chatted with Nairobians on their lunch breaks.

The conference officially started on Wednesday evening with a pool-side reception sponsored by the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Several of our U.S. participants, however, showed up a little late. They had gone with our bus driver, Maurice, to the Kenyan version of Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. On the way there, the bus was pulled over, the police took Maurice’s license, and they told him to drop everyone off and return to pay the police off. Apparently, according to Maurice, that is one of the dangers of “driving while white” (or “driving with whites”) in Nairobi.

Within minutes after the reception started, the Americans and Africans were deep in conversation and the reception, which was scheduled to end at 7:00 p.m., ended well past 10:00 p.m. Among other things, we learned each others' traditional greetings. (See below for Lisa Hatlen practicing a traditional Ethiopian greeting.)

The next three days were packed with presentations by participants from the U.S., Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nigeria on topics ranging from how to teach various aspects of legal writing to the relationship between legal writing and clinical education to the role of effective legal writing in the enhancement of human rights and the rule of law. We were also treated to dinner speeches by Camille deJorna, a consultant for the American Bar Association (and, we learned, first cousin to Lani Guinier), and Okech Owiti, the Dean of the Nairobi University Faculty of Law. At dinner on Friday night, Anita and Kate treated us to an elegant fashion show in traditional long dresses and matching hats. (Mimi, however, could not pull off this look.)

Although the presentations and speeches were all excellent, the informal conversations among the participants at tea breaks and over meals; in the lobby and by the pool; about students, teaching, and the successes and frustrations of the profession are what will be the lasting impression for most of those who attended. In fact, the conference went so well that at the last session, the group decided to form a new organization. Although as of yet this organization does not have a name, it does have a logo (thanks to Lyn) and a mission: to advance the teaching of legal writing in Africa and to promote to further exchange of ideas between U.S. and African academics teaching in the area of legal writing. High on the list of the organization’s goals are book exchanges, additional training sessions and conferences, and faculty and student exchanges. More information to come.

Planes, Trains, Donkeys, and Dhows

2007-03-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

After two days in Nairobi, getting to know the city and finalizing details for the upcoming conference, we headed out for a seaside escape at the Kenyan coast before the arrival of the conference participants. The first leg of the journey – from the hotel to the train station by taxi – was the toughest, taking us over a half-hour to travel less than two miles in the Nairobi rush hour traffic, or “the jam” as it’s called here.

Our first-class cabin on the overnight train ride to Mombasa had seen better days, but the ride itself gave us a great opportunity to see some of the Kenyan countryside. The service on the train, however, was stellar. The train manager, the car supervisor, and the car attendant each came to our compartment, introduced themselves, showed us how to lock the window and doors, and practically tucked us in and read us a story. The dining car was a throwback to colonial days, with waiters dressed in all white, some with turbans; china bearing the “KR” Kenyan Railways logo; and cutlery and tableware (included covered butter dish) embossed with the crown. We dined with our neighbors, a French couple who had just come from safari, and the dinner conversation, a mishmash of English, French, and charades, improved steadily with the intake of Tusker beer. The greatest challenge of the somewhat jerky ride was the toilet – of the squat variety, but luckily with a handrail for stability.

By the time we arrived (only four hours late), we had less than 24 hours to spend in Mombasa, Kenya’s second city, so we started the sightseeing immediately. First stop: the Old Law Courts, which has been converted into a small museum with an exhibit on Swahili culture and dress. Next stop: Fort Jesus, built by the Portuguese in 1593, then overtaken by the Omani Arabs, then the British, and back and forth nine times until finally falling into British hands in 1875 and remaining with the British until Kenyan independence in 1963. We then headed over to the old town, but before we could get very far, we met Humphrey (“Call me Humphrey Bogart”) who became our unofficial guide. Winding our way through narrow back alleyways past homes with traditional wood carved doors, we learned to distinguish between the Arab doors, bordered with a chain that signified the slave trade; the Indian doors; and the Swahili doors. We wandering through the markets: the spice market; the Indian market; and the market operated by Mombasa’s newest immigrants, Somali refugees who began arriving about 15 years ago, and, according to Humphrey, offer the best quality and the lowest prices. We also made a stop near the old dhow port, now made close to obsolete by the huge commercial port on the other side of the harbor. Today this port is used by dhows transporting goods from Zanzibar, Somalia, and other ports of call on the Swahili coast, but in the past, it had been the last point that thousands of people would see before being packed into ships and sent off as slaves.

The next day, we flew to Lamu, which now vies for our title of “best place on earth.” We stepped out of the plane onto the sandy airfield; collected our bags from the thatch-roofed hut; and walked, with the rest of the passengers, to the wood-planked jetty to catch the dhow into town. After a quick crossing from Manda Island, we landed in on Lamu. The island has twenty thousand human inhabitants, ten thousand donkeys, and two vehicles: one belongs to the District Manager and the other is a donkey ambulance. However, with no paved roads, the vehicles get very little use.

We wove through the maze of small streets and alleys to Jannat House, an old Swahili home converted into a guesthouse. The central courtyard (which now has a small swimming pool and a bar) is surrounded by guestrooms on the first and second floors and a ring of terraces on the third floor. Each of the terraces is furnished with couches and daybeds piled high with overstuffed pillows. With midday temperatures well over ninety, we retired to the terraces for the afternoon activity: pretend to read, doze off, drink a beer, repeat. By four or so, the air started to cool and people and animals stirred back to life, with the braying of donkeys, the cries and laughter of children, the chanting of the Muslim call to prayer, and the insistent buzzing of flies.

The next day, we forced ourselves to make a move off the terrace and wander around town. As we did, we were greeted by hundreds of school children, all in uniform, with the typical greetings of “Jambo,” and “Hello, how are you?” In Lamu, however, we never heard the usual requests for money, pens, or candy. Lamu is a predominately Muslim island, with mosques at every turn, 56 in total, and only four churches. Life here moves very slowly, and we had little trouble falling into the rhythm of the island. We’d walk for a bit, stop to chat or a look at what the local vendors had to offer, have a cold drink, watch the world go by, and move a bit down the street for another drink. (And tried to get the donkeys to drink orange Fanta with us.)

For lunch, we stopped at a small place facing the sea for our first of several meals of fresh cracked crab. While we waited for lunch to arrive, the owner of the restaurant taught Laurel to play bao, a traditional African game involving moving small seeds around a hand-carved wooden board. Later that evening we wandered back to Jannat House, through the narrow backstreets filled with too-skinny cats and Muslim women, clad in all-black bui-bui’s, silently appearing out of the shadows.

After two days in town, we moved out to the Peponi Hotel, a swanky resort on Shela Beach. We had been told to come down to the main jetty at noon and that Abdul would find us and take us on a dhow out to Peponi. And, because Lamu is the kind of place that it is, we did and Abdul found us. Peponi, which means “paradise” in Swahili, is just that: a resort in the old colonial style but that treats its staff extremely well and takes an interest in the environment and local community. It’s the kind of place where you walk in at 10:00 a.m and the same old British guy is sitting at the corner of bar drinking gin and tonics and smoking cigarettes and has probably been there since before independence. But on the other hand, when the maybe-four-year-old son of one of the staff members sits on the floor of the bar tentatively approaching the hotel’s resident dog (a “stray-and-stay” who just wandered in one day), the British guy speaks to him in fluent Swahili and gently coaxes him to pet the dog.

We moved to the veranda and were immediately handed welcome drinks. Laurel took one look around and decided that we had walked onto the cover of Travel and Leisure: a white-washed porch with rows of hard-wood deck chairs overlooking the Indian Ocean, crystal clear and dotted with dhows sailing from island to island After a quick dip in the bathtub-temperature sea, we joined an excursion to see the hatching of sea turtles. Admittedly, we were both a bit skeptical that seeing turtles crawl from their eggs and make their way to the sea would be as thrilling as it had been made out to be. Two hours later, we found ourselves among twenty or so tourists, gasping in awe, clicking our cameras, and cheering the tiny turtles on. The proprietors at Peponi had actually convinced the main turtle poacher on the island (apparently, turtles or their eggs are used to make a traditional aphrodisiac) to become the main guardian of the turtles by paying him for each turtle egg hatched and a premium for each turtle to return for mating season. We returned for dinner: our second crab meal, this time with three kinds of melted butter, one plain, one with minced ginger, and the third with minced garlic. And for dessert, fresh mango ice cream with a nice glass of port.

On our only full day at Peponi, we started with an early morning water-ski on an inlet set among the mangroves, where the ocean is like glass. After breakfast, we waded along miles of pristine shore, collecting perfect sand dollars and watching donkeys carrying saddle bags full of sand move up and down the beach. For lunch, more crab, and that evening we took a sunset cruise on a dhow, the wooden Arab sailing boats that have plied these waters for centuries. Simple boats, with detachable sails that can move to catch the wind from most any direction, the dhow is a surprisingly efficient and stable vessel. Accompanied by Habib, Nawa, and Isaac, and with Laurel at the tiller, we sailed from Lamu to Manda, meandering through channels between the islands, before heading out to sea to watch the sun go down. When Laurel asked for advice on where to go or when to turn or whether we were going to hit a rock, a tree, or another boat, the answer was always the same: “Hakuna matata, as long as the dhow keeps moving, we’re just fine.”

The next morning, we had hoped to go out on a snorkeling expedition, but we were told that the tides were wrong. Instead, we decided to rent a kayak and paddle along the shore where we had been the day before. We started off in a dead calm sea, but when we rounded the point, the current started to pick up. We went a bit further and the waves started to break on the kayak. We decided to pull ashore, rest, and regroup. That was our fatal mistake. While we managed to get to shore with minimal incident, once we were on shore we realized that we could not get the kayak back out past the surf: not even after we had carried the (very heavy) double kayak 500 feet down the beach and not even when the poor donkey guy that we accosted tried to help us. We (actually the donkey guy) managed to push the boat out past the waves and Laurel managed to get in, but before Laurel could untie a paddle and before Mimi could catch up with the boat, not one, but two, waves hit the kayak knocking it, and Laurel, back to shore.

At that point, we gave up. Mimi parked herself next to the kayak on the sand, and Laurel walked back, announcing to the kayak rental guy: “You know something’s wrong when only one client returns and she’s on foot.” After some negotiation, Laurel hired a speedboat to come save us. After being towed out past the surf, we had no problems paddling back, but now we were escorted by a small armada – Salim in the kayak to our side and Bongo in the speedboat pulling up the rear. We arrived back at Peponi with just enough time for one more lunch on the veranda before getting back in the dhow for the ride back to the airport.

“The Judiciary Laid Down Their Tools”

2007-03-05T05:02:00.000-08:00

Upon our return to Kampala, we read some disturbing news in The Monitor, one of the local papers. That Thursday afternoon, for second time in two years, police officers surrounded the High Court to rearrest prisoners who had been released on bail. There was a confrontation between the judicial officers and advocates and the police, resulting in injuries to one defense counsel and one police officer. While the government and the judiciary have presented widely differing accounts of the incident, the judges have announced that they will go on strike -- the first time since independence -- until they receive an apology from the executive branch. As of today, the executive has stated that the incident was regrettable, but has not apologized. Protests are expected during the week. We are currently in Kenya, but watching the local papers carefully; in fact, we have written a letter to the editor, supporting the judiciary in its attempt to abide by the rule of law, but so far it has not been published.

Strolling Around Sipi

2007-03-05T04:32:00.000-08:00

Laurel got a chance to do at age 55 what she did not get to when she was in college – stay in a backpackers’ hostel and spend two days trekking around Sipi Falls, a series of three waterfalls in the eastern part of Uganda that sits in the shadow of Mt. Elgon not far from the Kenyan border. On our first afternoon, we toured the local villages with our guide, Alex. Alex, at age 19, had to leave secondary school when his house burned down. He is working as a guide to earn money to allow him to return to school. On our short walk we made a number of friends, especially among the children and the women, who invited us to share in a millet-based local brew with them. However, they thought that our fascination with livestock, particularly a litter of piglets, was a bit strange.

We spent the second day walking from one waterfall to the next. From our camp, we descended to the bottom of the first fall, a 95 meter cascade. From there, we climbed back up (see, e.g., Laurel on the ladder) to the top, then to the second waterfall at 65 meters. Finally, we hiked to the last fall (with a stop to put our feet in the freezing pool at the top of the second fall), which measured 87 meters.

That night, to reward ourselves, we decided to have dinner at a more upscale camp very close to the first waterfall. While the food was quite good, it turned out that no one else was there, and so, with the roar of the falls in the background, we pretended that our private dining room was in a large ship on rough waters.

Hot, Dark, and Steamy (but not in the way that you may be thinking)

2007-03-02T06:42:00.000-08:00

While our trip to Mbarara got off to a shaky start, our trip to Soroti got off to a steamy one. About four hours into the six hour drive, the fan belt on our Judicial Studies vehicle broke, resulting in steam spewing from the engine . Unfortunately, the timing could not have been worse. We were, once again, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, and within a few minutes the skies became dark, and we were engulfed in torrential rains. Although the battery on the driver’s phone was dead and the secretary's phone was out of minutes, luckily our phone worked, and we were able to call the judge who heads the Judicial Studies Institute, who was in another vehicle ahead of us. To make a long story short, we were able to purchase two ropes and, using the judge’s car, tow our car about 20 miles to a police station.

Now for the hot and dark: While the morning of the first day of our training session went off without a hitch, things went downhill after lunch. First, the room was like a sauna, which made it difficult to keep people awake during a presentation on small-scale organization. To compound the matter, as we moved to Plain Language vs. Legalese, the power went out, making us realize why the word “power” is in ‘PowerPoint.” We were able to re-organize our afternoon sessions, but we were in the dark until about 10:00 that night. Finally, when room service knocked on the door with the fruit salad that Laurel had order several hours earlier, the lights came on. Needless to say, had we known that you could get power from room service, we would have placed an order much earlier.

Off to a Shaky Start

2007-02-24T19:42:00.000-08:00

Our second round of magistrate trainings had a bit of a shaky start – literally. At about 5:30 on Monday morning, we were awakened by what we later learned was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake and a small aftershock about 10 minutes later. After that, our training session in Mbarara went off without incident. We had about 20 participants in a much quieter and much cooler room than we had had at the previous session.

We had decided to visit a small lodge outside of Fort Portal after the training. Although we had originally planned to travel on public transport, we were lucky enough to hitch a ride with two of the magistrates who were headed in the same direction. During the ride, we learned about the day-to-day lives of the magistrates and visited one of their families.

As was often the case with the magistrates, the conversation turned to the question of the relationship between their low salaries, which barely allow them to pay rent and their children’s school fees, and the potential for corruption. Moreover, many of them struggle with whether to remain in public service when they see that their classmates in private practice can earn in one day what they earn in one month.

After a night in Fort Portal, we headed out to Ndali Lodge, an old British homestead that has been converted into a small resort perched high atop the rim of one of the region’s many crater lakes. The fresh air of Ndali was the perfect antidote to Kampala. While we enjoy the convenience of Kampala and its shops and restaurants, it is a noisy city with severe air pollution. At Ndali, there is no electricity, but our cottage was lit by kerosene lamps and candles. We spent our days walking – around the rim of the lake, to a nearby vanilla farm, and to the local market – our afternoons sitting on the veranda with “sundowners,” and our evenings eating four course meals (soup, followed by appetizers (bruschetta one night and a spicy guacamole the next), a main course of fish (in a coconut curry sauce the first night and in a roulade with white asparagus the second), and of course, dessert (flambéed bananas in a caramel raisin sauce or banana fritters with a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of honey)).

Unfortunately, we had to leave after just two days to return to Kampala, wash our clothes (ok, to be honest, to have our clothes washed) and to head off to Soroti tomorrow for the last of the magistrate trainings.

The “New Lawyer”

2007-02-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 16:

Before we left for Arusha, our hosts at the Judicial Studies Institute invited us to attend a ceremony, which at first we thought was called the “New Lawyer.” We didn’t really understand the title given that we were told that the ceremony was meant to assess the effectiveness of the judiciary in the prior year and to set goals for the coming year. At dinner with Elizabeth Musoke, we asked about it, and she explained (or so we thought) that it was called “The Law! Yeah!,” which we thought was an enthusiastic, but odd, name for the ceremony. Finally, we figured out that we had been invited to the opening of the “New Law Year.”

While we have become accustomed to some level of pomp and circumstance in our training sessions here in Uganda, this ceremony took it to a new level. The emcee for the event announced each honored guest as he or she arrived, and the police marching band gave a fanfare before the arrival of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Although we did not get announced, we were the only foreigners present other than representatives of the embassies of China, Kenya, and Rwanda.) During the ceremony, we sat on the balcony of the High Court, surrounded by judicial officers ranging from Grade I magistrates to High Court and Supreme Court judges decked out in ceremonial wigs and elaborately embroidered robes.

Then the speeches began. We were particularly impressed by the first speech, from the president of the Ugandan Judicial Officers Association, a group that represents the interests of magistrates; he focused on the fact that while High Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court judges have received recently raises, the magistrates have not gotten a raise in seven years and are currently paid about $300 per month. Next, the president of the Ugandan Law Society spoke chastising on the executive branch’s interference with the judiciary during the presidential election last year.

After the speeches, we joined the judges and other visiting dignitaries for a sherry party, where we had the opportunity to catch up with a number of the individuals that we have met during prior visits and where it was proposed that we be made honorary citizens of Uganda.

“Challenging Impunity”

2007-02-20T21:58:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, February 13 and Wednesday, February 14:

While our last entry may have left the impression that our sole purpose in going to Tanzania was to go on safari, in fact, our primary purpose in visiting Arusha was to observe proceedings at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the U.N. court that has been authorized to try individuals involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Upon arrival at the tribunal, after clearing several steps of security, we were briefed by Moustapha Hassouna, the Director of Protocol and External Relations. We spent two days observing portions of three trials, including one in which the accused (defendant) was both a Minister in the government and a musician. He was accused of writing and performing songs that incited genocide. After listening to a linguistic expert analyze his songs on a linguistic, semantic, and stylistic basis, the accused himself cross-examined the expert on whether the words of the song were anything more than an accurate representation of Rwanda’s history under the Belgians.

We had another first: a ride in an U.N. vehicle to the home of Judge Solomy Bossa, a Ugandan High Court judge who is currently sitting on the Tribunal. Over tea, we discussed her views on the attorneys who practice before the tribunal, on the effectiveness of the tribunal in bringing closure to the family members of victims of the genocide, and on the tension between doing a job that has deep implications and the day-to-day tedium of presiding over a trial of six defendants that will go on for years.

On our last night in Arusha, we had Valentine’s Day dinner with our safari guide, Peter; his two children; the half-dozen other children of friends and relatives living in his home; and his cousin and cousin’s wife.

If it’s Tuesday, this must be Tanzania

2007-02-17T05:07:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 8 to Monday, February 12:

Picture yourself standing up in an open-roofed Land Rover, the warm breeze on your face as you bounce along off-road for miles and miles, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of wildebeest migrating from the Serengeti, in Tanzania, to the Masai Mara, in Kenya, in search of water. You watch hyenas at a watering hole and one of them takes off in pursuit of a baby Thompson gazelle; two adult gazelles run crisscross in front of the hyena in an attempt to throw it off track, but in the end, the baby tires and the hyena takes in down in two mouthfuls.

You see zebras, giraffes, and impalas grazing next to a group of a dozen ostriches lined up in single file, parading across the plains. You hear the songs of the tiny yellow weaver birds and overhead you see African fish eagles soaring. And for hours while you drive, you do not see another vehicle or any human presence.

And then you see him: Simba, the king of the jungle, the majestic male lion with his golden mane, lounging by the edge of a small pond. You park, not more than 10 feet from him, watching him while he watches you.

After some time, you decide to move on. Your driver turns the key: click – nothing happens. Again: click –but no ignition. Click, click, click, oh shit, click, click, click.

And thus, the second day of our safari with Scan Tan Tours took a turn for the worse. Eventually, we managed to shoo the lion away (“Please go away Mr. Lion, please”), so Peter, our driver-guide, could get out of the car and use a metal rod to bang on parts of the engine in a seemingly indiscriminate way, while Mimi kept trying the key. Laurel, to her credit, diagnosed the problem as the solenoid¸ and eventually either Peter’s banging or Mimi’s key-turning did the trick, and we were off again (and did not turn the car off until we made it back to camp that evening).

We kept driving and came upon a group of five more lions with a freshly-killed zebra. Although initially a bit squeamish on seeing (and hearing) the lions rip first through the zebra’s flesh and then turn to its internal organs, we became comfortable enough with the scene to eat our box lunches while watching the lions eat theirs. And we were not alone: the scavengers, including vultures, Marabou storks (quite possibly the ugliest birds on earth), and hyenas, ringed the lions, waiting for their turn at the carcass once the lions were done.

Click on the photo below for the movie version.

We ended the day by cruising through a herd of migrating zebras, thousands of them grouped in twos and threes facing back-to-back, resting heads on shoulders to keep a look-out for predators.

And to cap off a perfect day on safari, we happened upon a pride of lions, with a male and female and two adorable cubs.

The next day, we took an early morning game drive in the Ngorogoro Crater, an enormous caldera, which is all that is left of a mountain that was likely larger than Kilimanjaro. Although the animals were not as plentiful as they had been the day before, we added one cheetah and two rhinos to our list.

Having spent three days sitting in the car, we were ready for a bit of exercise. Peter took us to E Unoto Retreat, a high-end resort with beautiful bungalows overlooking a remote lake, and set us up with a local guide for a picturesque, but very muddy, hike to a waterfall. By the time we got back to our campsite, we were hot, sweaty, and covered with mud from the knees down. Peter jumped out of the vehicle, announcing to the staff as well as to about two dozen German tourists: “These two mamas need a cold beer before they die.”

The next day, our last on safari, we visited Lake Manyara National Park, where we saw troops of baboons playing, grooming each other, and swinging from tree to tree. And while we had seen a handful of elephants in the other parks, here we saw a herd of 20-25 including several babies. Finally, a flock of thousands of pink flamingos graced the alkaline lake in the middle of the park.

Back at L’Oasis Hotel, a charming little lodge just outside of town, we took a dip in the pool. The hotel’s resident crested crane stood at the edge of the pool watching his reflection. We later learned his very sad story: Like all crested cranes, he had had a mate, but she died after jumping from a bungalow and breaking her wing. Since that time, he spends most of his lonely days gazing at his own reflection in the pool or in the bungalow windows.

“We didn’t just find these two kind ladies on the street”

2007-02-14T00:48:00.000-08:00

While we were introduced as the “three eminent professors from Seattle” during each of our presentations in India, our introduction in Uganda was equally flattering, but in a different way. To open the first of three training sessions for magistrates, Justice David Wangatusi, the Director of Uganda’s Judicial Studies Institute, told the participants that “these were not just two kind ladies we found on the street; they are our friends.”

We spent two days working with approximately 30 Grade I magistrates, the judicial officers who handle petty crimes, property and contract disputes, and family matters. Because Uganda does have a jury system, these magistrates must write a judgement (opinion) for each case that they hear. They will then read that judgement to the parties in open court.

The magistrates were an eager group and quick study despite fairly poor teaching conditions. The air conditioning was broken, and because it was quite warm, we had to open the windows. Unfortunately, the building is on a very busy thoroughfare jammed with trucks and mini-busses throughout the day, which left us feeling a bit like we were teaching in a sweaty, polluted tunnel. Nonetheless, we all persevered.

As this was our third formal training session in Uganda, we are finally mastering at least some of the protocol. While we remembered to call the judge, my lord, and the magistrates, your worships, Laurel got in trouble by launching into her thank you speech without waiting for the invitation to begin.

Speaking of old friends, after the seminar was over, we had dinner with Elizabeth Musoke, the Director of Legal Affairs at the Inspectorate General of Government. Elizabeth is the one who first invited us to Uganda and by doing so set our work in Uganda in motion. We ate at Haamdi’s, an Indian restaurant, with food as good as we had in India.

The next morning, sitting our hotel room, we heard a loud crash in tree outside our window. We looked and saw a macaque monkey sitting in the tree. While we have seen many monkeys on safari, and even in the cities in India, we had never seen one in Kampala. Apparently, very few other people had either because when we went to breakfast, everyone including tourists and staff, were up from their seats and watching the monkey run around the roof of the hotel.

Pineapple Black Pepper Tarte Tatin with Vanilla Bean Creme Fraiche and Pina Colada Cream Sauce

2007-02-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

After four days spent primarily in our hotel room preparing for the magistrate training, we decided to treat ourselves to a swanky dinner on Saturday night. We've had some very good food in Kampala, but dinner at the Fez Brassierie, in the Emin Pasha hotel, was nothing short of divine.

The hotel is located in the Nakasero neighborhood of Kampala, an upscale area high on the hill about a mile out of the city center, formerly home to British colonials, and now home to embassy staff, NGO directors, and other Westerners living in Kampala. The hotel is relatively new and is described as Kampala's first boutique hotel. The main building has been converted from an old British home, complete with hardwood floors and antique furnishings, and the rooms (or at least the one we peaked at after dinner) are decked out with four poster canopy beds, down-stuffed chaise lounges, and claw foot tubs.

But back to dinner: Sorry to gloat, but we were able to sit outside, on the patio overlooking the city, with just enough of a breeze to warrant a light jacket. To start, we had a butternut squash salad on a bed of dandelion greens with roasted beets, green beans, goat cheese, and toasted hazelnuts in a balsamic reduction. For the main course, we split two dishes: a broiled nile perch
with wilted greens and banana fritters in a red pepper sauce, and spring chicken served on mini-corn cakes with a sweet black bean sauce. (And by the way, the fruits and vegatables here bear little resemblance to their counterparts back home: here, they are fresh, sweet, ripe, and juicy.)

But the crowning touch was dessert: a tarte tatin of pineapple and black pepper topped with vanilla bean creme fraiche and served in a pool of pina colada cream sauce. We gushed about it so much to the waiter that he offered to have a second one made for us to take back to the hotel but we resisted, only to give us an excuse to go back for another dinner.

Coming Home to Kampala

2007-02-03T04:40:00.000-08:00

January 31 – February 3:

When we bought our tickets from India to Uganda, we thought that saving several hundred dollars each on the fares justified leaving at 4:30 a.m., changing planes twice, and spending almost six hours in the Nairobi airport. In retrospect, that may not have been our wisest decision, but we (and all our luggage!) made it to Kampala exhausted, but in one piece.

During our journey, we noticed that quite a few people were staring at us (you don’t see many pairs of white women traveling from India to Uganda). We decided that they probably thought we were nuns, so we’ve decided to form our own order. We’re thinking about the Daughters of Clarity, but we may go with the Sisters of the Immaculate Contraction. Other suggestions are welcome.

In Kampala, we’re staying at the Mosa Courts, where we stayed on our first trip to Uganda. What our two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment lacks in décor and charm, it makes up for in size, which is nice because we will be here for a while. We also have a full kitchen, and after a month of traveling, we were thrilled (sad, but true) with our excursion to the supermarket and subsequent tuna sandwich lunch. We have also been scouring the city, buying out the limited supply of Diet Pepsi.

On Monday, we start the first of three training sessions for Ugandan magistrates, so we have spent most of our time preparing for the sessions. In doing so, we have read through a number of judgments (opinions) written by the magistrates. In one, we found our new favorite ambiguous pronoun example:

The complainant saw the accuseds come to her bedroom and one of them tried to touch her breasts. She shouted for her husband, and he came into the house and tried to grab them, but went for his gun and the accuseds escaped.

We assume the husband was trying to grab the attackers, but then again, maybe not.

Kicking Back in Kerala (and a Tiny Bit of Tamil Nadu, too)

2007-01-31T22:47:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 21:

In Cochin, we stayed with Jenny and her husband, Jose, at their home, Le Royale. We learned about Jenny through India Mike, and the rave reviews that she received on his website did not even come close to preparing us for the grandeur of her home or the hospitality that we received.

On our last night at Jenny’s before heading out for our tour of Kerala, Jenny treated us to a lesson in Keralan cooking and helped us dress up in saris. While Indian women put their saris on in a matter of minutes, had we been left to our own devices, it would have taken hours get the six meters of silk tucked and draped in all the right places. We then had a modeling session on the central stairway and on the chaise lounge in the living room.

Monday, January 22 and Tuesday, January 23:

On Monday morning we left Cochin and headed to Munnar with our driver, Sulfi, at the wheel. Munnar is at about 6,000 feet, and the road winds its way through the mountains with very little shoulder and nothing resembling a guardrail. The road, although open to two-way traffic, is often only wide enough for one car. Sulfi is, however, a skilled driver, and we managed to make the four-hour trip with only a few close calls.

The area around Munnar could not have been more beautiful: steep hills carpeted with a mosaic of verdant tea fields. On the way to our hotel, we stopped at a tea field, and a few of the women working in the fields let us pretend to pluck tea. Although the view was great, the work was quite a bit more taxing than grading papers. In the afternoon, we climbed from our cottage into the valley and tea fields below. The climb back up was a bit of a challenge for Laurel, but she made it, causing the staff only a bit of concern.

We were very happy with the hotel in Munnar, with one relatively minor exception. When we booked the tour, we asked for one room, but we specifically requested two beds. When we arrived, we were shown to a room with one king bed, but told that it would be removed and two twins would be brought. We were a bit skeptical, given that our cottage was at the bottom of a very steep hill, but we didn’t argue. By the time the sun went down, we got a bit nervous, so we called reception and were reassured that beds would be brought. Within a few minutes, the desk manager arrived at our room to announce that “we had a small problem.” Long story short, Mimi slept in the king bed in the lovely teak frame and Laurel slept in the small prison cot in the corner.

We spent Tuesday seeing the sights, the highlight of which was a visit to a tea museum, where we learned about tea harvesting and processing, about the difference grades of tea, and about the development of the tea industry in India under British rule.

During our stay at Blackberry Hills, Laurel managed to achieve one of her two goals for our trip: liking beer. She’s still working on the other one: getting in shape. Unfortunately, achieving goal number one is likely to hinder achieving goal number two.

Wednesday, January 24:

On Wednesday, we left early for Madurai in the state of Tamil Nadu; we later learned that Madurai means “drop of honey.” According to Hindu tradition, Lord Vishnu dropped four drops of honey from heaven to earth, one of which became Madurai. In the afternoon, we, along with hundreds, if not thousands of pilgrims, visited the Sri Meenashi temple complex, accurately described as a “riotously baroque example of Dravidian architecture with gopurams covered from top to bottom in a breathtaking profusion of multi-colored images of gods and goddesses, animals, and mythical creatures.”

The difference between Kerala and Tamil Nadu was striking. We had read that Keralans have the highest literacy rate and highest income in India, but we did not expect the differences to be so visible. In Tamil Nadu, we saw much more subsistence farming and fewer motorized vehicles. We even noticed that many more people were going barefoot and their clothing was not as elaborate as the outfits that we saw in Kerala.

That evening, we ate at the rooftop restaurant of the Hotel Supreme, which has a stunning view of the temple. For dinner, we had a dosa (like a crepe) filled with shredded coconut, Kashmiri pulau (a sweet rice dish with nuts, raisins, and other dried fruit), and paneer masala (cubes of cottage cheese with a curry sauce). We thought it was a great combination, but the waiter looked at us as if we had ordered a dinner of lettuce, a waffle, and a hot dog and then poured hot fudge sauce and beef gravy all over it.

Thursday, January 25 and Friday, January 26:
Elephants, elephants, elephants.

From Madurai, we traveled back to Kerala, to Thekkady outside the Periyar National Park. We stayed with Dolly and Cyriac at Pepper County Villa, a private home just outside of town.

On Thursday afternoon, we toured a spice farm, where we learned about growing and harvesting cardamom (the King of Spices), black pepper, cinnamon (the Queen), cloves, vanilla (the Princess), nutmeg, mace, sandalwood, ginger, turmeric, and allspice. We asked about the Prince and the Jack of Spices, but apparently they don’t exist. At the end of our tour, we declined the offer to ride the trained elephants, but we couldn’t resist buying a few baskets of fruit and feeding them to the baby and mama elephants.

Early (really early) the next morning, we trekked through the hills (many of them) of Periyar. Although our guide did not speak much English, he excelled at spotting birds and animals, and when he could not recall the English word “parakeet,” he used his cell phone to call back to the office from the middle of the park.

After a few hours of trekking, as we reached the top of yet another hill, the guide turned around, grabbed Mimi’s hand, and told us to run back down the hill. It turns out he had just come face-to-face with two elephants. We scrambled back down the hill, across a small ravine, and up the other side, where we crouched in the underbrush watching the elephants, while the guide made what we interpreted to be elephant “shooing” noises. (Earlier in the trek, Laurel had been a bit hesitant on the downhills, but now had no problems. I’m convinced her earlier nervousness was just a ploy to the get guide to hold her hand.) We were surprised that the guide, who was quite experienced, seemed fairly flustered; his heart was beating palpably and he took off his red shirt to avoid attracting elephant attention. He later told us that we were very lucky because this was the first time that he had seen elephants in this part of the park.

Later that day, we had our third elephant encounter. Along with several hundred tourists, we took a cruise on a lake in the park, the highlight of which was seeing a herd of seven elephants at the lake’s edge. When cruising back to shore, there was quite a bit of commotion, with shouts of “dolphin” and “porpoise”; we saw nothing in the water and then heard others shouting “otter.” No otter in sight, we heard the final shout of “sea mouse,” and looked to see two mongooses (mongeese?) running along the shore.

Saturday, January 27:

Next stop on the tourist trail: a houseboat through the backwaters of Kerala. We set sail out of Alleppey, with approximately 500 similar boats carrying tourists. The backwaters are a network of 900 kilometers of canals and lakes providing access to rice paddies. With a crew of four (the captain, the engineer, the cook, and the trainee – training for what, we’re still not sure), we spent the afternoon and evening alternating among enjoying the view, waving to children on the shore, and arguing over who was Ginger and who was Mary Anne.

Sunday, January 28 and Monday, January 29:

Our last days on tour were spent in Samudra. We did very little other than lounge by beach, watch the sun set, and get bit by mosquitoes. We did, however, venture out a few times, once to buy Julia a hot pink salwar kameez and for her husband, Michael, a pale orange dhoti. We look forward to seeing photos!

Having been on the tourist trail for a week or so now, we’re starting to see many of the same faces. While in Samudra, we ran into Percy, a corporate lawyer from Mumbai, and Cashmera, who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. While chatting about family, Percy told us that he lost both his parents, one brother, his sister-in-law, and one nephew in the tsunami. His 10-year-old nephew was found alive, in the top of a tree. Percy and Cashmera were able to fly to Sri Lanka to bring him home, and he now lives with them in Mumbai.

Tuesday, January 30:

After a long drive, we’re back at Jenny’s, saying our good-byes, and getting ready for our 4:30 a.m. (ugh!) flight to Entebbe. If all goes according to plan, tomorrow we’ll be in Kampala, preparing for the first of three training sessions for magistrates in Uganda.

Chillin' in Cochin

2007-01-21T04:49:00.000-08:00

January 20, 2007: After two days, we agree with the locals: Kerala is “God’s Own County. Cochin is surrounded by blue water and blue skies; the food is wonderful; and, as the pictures demonstrate, the people could not be friendlier. Given the number of times that people approach, wanting to chat with us, you would think that we were Bollywood stars and not just two middle-aged women from the U.S. We have spent the last two nights at a private home, which can best be described as a mini-mansion: the house comes with a cook, a car and driver, and Jenny, our hostess, and her husband, are both college professors, who, despite our protests, insist on personally serving us our three and four course meals.

Highlights of the last two days include a tour of old Fort Cochin; a Kathakali dance performance; a visit to Cherai beach; a chance to play fisherman with the Chinese net; and the highlight of highlights, an ayurvedic synchronized massage, which involved laying on a teak table, having oil poured on us from head to toe, being massed by two therapists simultaneously, and then sitting in a steam box. We are feeling very supple.

Bye Bye Bombay (and Annie)

2007-01-19T18:31:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2007 (Happy Birthday Terry)

Starting our walking tour at the Gateway of India, which was, as we learned, constructed in the Indo-Saracenic style, an architectural style that while basically Neo-Classical combines elements from traditional Hindu and Muslim design. The imposing arch was intended to be constructed for the arrival of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911; however, construction was not even begun until before their arrival, so a temporary structure made of plaster of paris was temporarily erected, and construction was completed in 1924. As our guide, an extremely pleasant and knowledgeable young woman, told us, not only were the British welcomed here, but upon independence, the last of the British troops ceremoniously departed India through the archway. Other highlights of the tour included the Kenesseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, the second-largest of Mumbai’s five synagogues; the David Sassoon library, which contained a private reading room with its own balcony and deck chairs; and the High Courts, with its matching statues of Mercy and Justice.

The night before, after the seminar, the judge recommended that we eat at Ankur restaurant and wrote out a menu for us. Another circuitous taxi ride, with several stops to ask directions, took us to the restaurant, where highlights of dinner included a crab in coconut curry sauce, fresh grilled fish, and orange kulfi, a Creamsicle-like frozen treat.

January 18, 2007:

Our last seminar in India! This morning, we presented at G.J. Advani Law College in Bandra, on outskirts of Mumbai. We had a very enthusiastic, standing-room-only audience of students and faculty. Today, rather than bouquets of flowers, we received garlands of marigolds and roses.

That afternoon, we visited the office of LegalPundits.com, owned and operated by Shom Jagtiani, the nephew of Anil Harish. Started in 2001, the company is one of the few on-line legal publishers in India, and seems to be growing by leads and bounds. We ended our stay in Mumbai with a visit to the law offices of D.M. Harish, the firm founded by Anil and Shoba’s father, at which they are now both partners. They told us how, after partition, their parents and Shoba, who was four-years old left their homeland of Sind, which is now part of Pakistan, with only the clothes on their back. Landing in Mumbai as refugees, the family has grown roots that reach far into the legal, philanthropic, and educational communities in just two generations.

January 19, 2007 (Happy Birthday Julia):

We said our good-byes to Anne as she heads back to Seattle through London, with a major storm brewing Europe. We hope she makes it home without incident.

We arrived in Cochin late in the day, with just enough time to take a walk at sunset and watch the fishermen pulling in the day's catch.

A Taste of Mumbai

2007-01-17T01:34:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 15:

Our first full day in Mumbai started with lunch at Trisha, a popular seafood restaurant, located in the historic Churgate neighborhood. Our first course was crab slathered with garlic and butter sauce; luckily the restaurant provided bibs as well as fingerbowls after each course. Next was fish in masala sauce, accompanied by naan, and for dessert, we had lychee nuts with ice cream and kulfi, a delicious Indian specialty that is somewhere between ice cream and crème caramel.

To make up for the damage done at lunch, we decided to walk back to the hotel. We stopped in at Mumbai University, a lush campus of neoclassical and gothic architecture dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Down the street from the University, we stopped at Mumbai City and Civil courts, where we observed a proceeding in progress. The courtroom was packed with both advocates and spectators, distinguished only by the white dickeys worn around the advocates’ necks. The court was hearing a construction matter and was quizzing counsel about the facts of the case. When wandering through the court building, we peaked into the Registrar’s Office, which was filled floor-to-ceiling with legal documents.

Dinner that night was hosted by Anil Harish, a prominent Mumbai attorney, at the Cricket Club of India. The Club is a relic of colonial days, with several restaurants, hotel rooms for members, a variety of sporting and recreational facilities, and a professional- size cricket stadium. At dinner at the outdoor barbeque restaurant, we were joined by Mr. Harish’s wife, Honi; his sister, who is also a partner in the law firm that bears his father’s name; and his nephew, who owns an on-line legal publishing company. Although we were still stuffed from lunch, we could not resist the grilled kabobs, vegetable biryani, and other South Indian delicacies, followed by mango ice cream, an Indian version of bread pudding, and a rice pudding with pistachio nuts on it.

During dinner, Mr. Harish told us about the legacy that his father started and that he and his sister continue. About thirty years ago, his father decided to provide scholarship money to any person who asked him for it; the only condition for continued support was that the recipient of the funds continue on to the next level. Other than that, there are no restrictions on the amount of the scholarship, the level of education, or the subject matter studied. To date, they have provided scholarships to over 1000 students, some of whom now have returned the favor by donating to the scholarship fund.

Tuesday, January 16:

On Tuesday, we were back to work. In the morning, we met with the CEO of Pangea3, which we believe is the largest legal outsourcing firm in India. Although the office is in an old building, the office itself is modern and has about 50-60 attorneys in cubicles working on projects ranging from document reviews to fifty-state and international surveys to research memos. In the late afternoon, we went to K.C. Law College where, in a room that was even too blue for Anne and Laurel, we taught what is now our standard four-hour seminar to a highly-engaged group of about 60 law students, professors, and attorneys. Our guest of honor was the Honorable Shaixa J. Vazifdar, Judge of the High Court.

Today’s gifts were ornate beaded clutch purchases, glasses cases, and tissue holders. The dinner that followed the presentation had a tropical theme, with fruit drinks with umbrellas in them and plenty of Mumbai’s signature dish: bhelpuri, a miniature version of puri bread filled a mixture of rice, lentils, lemon juice, onions, and herbs.

Wednesday, January 17:

This morning, we played tourist, spending our morning at the Taj Palace Hotel, built in 1903 by the Parsi industrialist J.N. Tata after he was supposedly denied entrance to one of the European hotels because he was “a native.” After massages and manicures, we had lunch poolside, taking a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of Mumbai street life.

This afternoon, we are off for a walking tour of the architectural highlights of the city with a tour group owned and operated by two female Mumbai architects.

“A Remarkable Journey”

2007-01-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 10 (Happy Birthday Matt!):

After being rescued from our room, we visited the Gandhi Smriti Memorial Museum, which is on the grounds of the house where Gandhi spent his last 144 days. The museum, like all of India, is a study in contrasts. The ground floor of the house, which was left as it was the day Gandhi died, contains an a simple but powerful display that tells the story of his life through photographs and quotations. The upstairs, however, contains a high-tech, multimedia, interactive exhibit that attempts to bring life to the principles that he espoused. Outside, you can trace Gandhi’s last steps to the spot where he was assassinated.

That evening, we made a presentation sponsored by the Bar Association of India and the Society of Indian Law Firms. We arrived at the headquarters for the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) to find that we were going to present in an auditorium that reminded us of the U.N. with microphones at every table, two screens for Powerpoint, and a banner the size of a billboard announcing our program. Picture the words “Legal Writing Programme” three-feet high and twelve-feet long. (Pictures will follow once we receive the disk from the two professional photographers who were there.) During the introductions, we were presented with bouquets of two dozen red roses each. In addition, we received beautiful lacquer pencil boxes.

Thursday, January 11:

Starting at 7:00 a.m., in what the locals insist upon calling fog, but which feels suspiciously like smog, we set out for Agra, 120 miles to the south. On the way, our driver wove his way among not only cars, motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, and bicycles but also camels, ox- and horse-drawn carts, and the occasional cow wandering in the road.

Two and half hours later, we arrived at the Taj Mahal. Among the three of us, we’ve seen the Great Wall, Machu Picchu, and Angkor Wat, but the Taj Mahal left still left us speechless. No matter how many pictures we had seen, we still were not prepared for its elegance, grandeur, and serenity. And luckily, because the Taj is on a river, the skies were blue.

Our guide was superb at showing us details of the artistry of the etched and inlaid marble. Anne was so impressed that when we were taken to the obligatory tourist marble store, after the seven salesmen treated us to a live infomercial, she not only bought a lovely blue and white tray, she also purchased a table with 897 pieces of stone inlaid in marble. While they charge by the numbers of stones, the good news is that they do take VISA.

Friday, January 12:

We were picked up by one of Mr. Bhasin’s associates and traveled to the Karkardooma Courts Complex for a presentation for the Delhi Judicial Academy. After being saluted on arrival, we entered through the “Judges Only” entrance and were escorted through the busy courthouse by a half-dozen judicial and police officers, who literally parted the seas for us, pushing members of the general public out of our way. Because we were running a bit late, we had a quick cup of tea with the administrators, then proceeded to the lecture hall, received large bouquets, this time irises, and then got underway.

Although we’re not exactly sure where we got the idea, we thought our audience would be High Court judges. As we entered the room, we noticed that the audience members were all in their twenties, and we assumed that that they were law clerks. However, once we started the presentation, we realized that these people did, in fact, draft judgments. After the presentation, we finally found out that they were magistrates in training.

In India, graduating law students can apply for positions as magistrates, the lowest rung in the judicial system, and if they are accepted, they go through an intensive one-year program combining theoretical training and “student magistrating,” so to speak. Half of the participants in our session were going to be sworn in and start hearing cases the following week, so they were very eager for any practical advice we could give them.

Our next appointment was with Lexadigm Solutions, a firm that provides outsourced legal services to attorneys and companies in the U.S. When we planned our day, we had no idea that the firm was in the complete opposite direction from where we were. The Judicial Academy was kind enough to lend us a car and a driver for the drive out to Gurgaon, a fast-growing satellite city about 25 miles outside Delhi. While our driver knew how to get to Gurgaon, he didn’t know the address we had been given, and we had no idea that Gurgaon is a huge, sprawling high-tech center with one construction site after another, each one with a bigger and more creative futuristic glass-and-steel office complex.

We stopped to ask directions, headed in one direction, stopped again, headed in another direction, called the office, turned around again, found a building with a name similar to the one we were looking for, turned around one more time, asked one more person, and arrived . . . only an hour and fifteen minutes late (although it took us another 20 minutes to find the office once we were inside the building).. When we finally arrived, our driver proclaimed, “It has been a remarkable journey,” and it certainly had been.

Lexadigm, with approximately 20 attorneys and room for 10 more, is one of the first and largest legal process outsourcing (LPO) firms in India. We met with Rahul and Teeshna, the two founding members of the India office. Both young, bright, and entrepreneurial, they gave us a tour of the office and explained how they train their new employees to conduct research on Westlaw and how to write memos and briefs for a U.S. legal audience. Both were quite proud of the business that they had built and were particularly proud that they had written two briefs that had been filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. Our favorite moment during the meeting, however, came when Laurel was telling Rahul and Teeshna about our article exploring whether Ugandan attorneys might benefit from engaging in similar arrangements with U.S. firms. Laurel began explaining that Ugandan attorneys would probably not be able to compete with Indian attorneys at this point because the infrastructure in Uganda is not reliable. Just as Rahul was about to respond, we found ourselves sitting in the dark. The irony was not lost on anyone. (However, the power came back up within seconds and the computers, which are on back-up generators, never went out.)

That evening, we had dinner with Tanvi, a friend of Anne’s brother-in-law. Talking to Tanvi, a young female architect, was nice change from talking to lawyers about law.

Saturday, January 13:

Another day, another presentation. Today, we presented to students and faculty at Delhi University, Campus Law Centre. We learned that Delhi University, with 400,000 students, is the largest university in the world. As with all of our other visits, it started with the obligatory tea with the “Professor in Charge” in his office. As before, all the faculty troop in (actually they “toddle” and that really is the word they for it) one by one to greet us. This time the welcoming committee included numerous High Court judges who were there for the release of a new student-written law journal.

Today’s presentation took place in a large lecture hall that was not heated. Given that Delhi was experiencing one of only 20 cold days of the year, we were impressed that the audience stayed through the presentation even though all of us were shivering . Today’s flowers were carnations. The presentation went off without a hitch and with a new addition—a stray black cat strolled across the stage during Anne’s presentation.

After a tour of the campus and as we were saying our goodbyes, the students invited Laurel to join them in their game of cricket. The pictures speak for themselves. Laurel is keeping her day job.

One last memory of the Delhi Law Campus—just inside the gate to the campus we saw the outdoor unauthorized bookstore.

Dinner that evening was with the family of our student and research assistant, Amrita Sharan Srivastava. We thoroughly enjoyed hearing her father talk about his cases as an Additional Solicitor; meeting her sister, brother, and cousin; and eating her mother’s delicious homecooked food. For one night it felt like we were part of an Indian family.

Sunday, January 14:

We’ve just arrived in Mumbai, having flown here on SpiceJet, which, according to their website, offers “spicey good fares,” but little in the way of food (spicy or otherwise) on the flight, so we’re off in search of dinner.

This week’s stats:

Animals we’ve seen in or on the side of the roads: cows, goats, camels, monkeys, one pig, and one elephant. Animals we’ve seen in the room during our presentations: one pigeon and one black cat, who joined us on stage.

Flowers and gifts we’ve received: roses, irises, carnations, lacquer boxes, shawls, and bronze statues of Shiva.

VIP's we have met: president of the Bar Association of Indian, president of the Society of Indian Law firms, several High Court judges, a number of magistrates, a consumer court judge, an additional solicitor general, a former attorney general, numerous deans of law schools, and countless law faculty members.

Free at Last

2007-01-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Actually, we were only trapped for about 15 minutes. After the building engineer determined that we did, in fact, know how to open a door correctly, he attempted to disable the deadbolt from the outside. When that didn't work, he moved to Plan B. Luckily, Anne's room was across the hall, so he backed up into her room, got a running start, and kicked in our door. Afterwards, he kindly reenacted his feat of strength for us, and then moved us to a room down the hall.

Not a Good Start to the Morning

2007-01-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

As we write, we are trapped in our room. The deadbolt is stuck, but the building engineers have been summoned. There is very little left in the mini-bar and we are contemplating whether a piece of naan can be slid under the door. Luckily our presentation today is not until 4:00 this afternoon. Will keep you posted.

Our New Hobby: Collecting Business Cards

2007-01-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 8:

Although we’re a little embarrassed to admit it, we didn’t leave the hotel until dinner time today. In our defense, we worked out in the hotel gym and spent some time finalizing our presentation for Tuesday, but in all honesty, jet lag had kicked in and we spent most of the day in bed and treated ourselves to massages and manicures. We did manage, however, to get up for our 7:30 dinner engagement.

Wanting to be good dinner guests, we called the concierge to order flowers for our host. When given the choice, we decided to go with the small bouquet and arrived in the lobby to find that the “small” bouquet included over two dozen long-stem roses and was elaborately wrapped in cellophane and ribbon, making it almost bigger than Mimi.

Mr. Bhasin and his driver picked us up to take us to the home of Ashok Desai, the former attorney general for India, for dinner. Mr. Desai’s home is in Defence Colony, a ritzy area of Delhi originally built for military officers, but now home to many of Delhi’s upper class residents. Mr. Desai’s home, with a spectacular fountain in the entryway, was lovely, and the guest list at dinner read like a who’s who of Indian legal society. In addition to Mr. Bhasin and his wife, who is one of the few female attorneys in India who argues before the Supreme Court, we were joined by several other prominent Delhi attorneys. Mr. Desai’s wife was in Mumbai, so his sister joined us as the hostess.

We started with cocktails and appetizers in Mr. Desai’s home office, a room lined with shelf after shelf of Indian law books and classic works of literature. Upon our arrival, he showed us one opinion of the Indian Supreme Court that filled an entire volume of 1006 pages and suggested that the court could use a lesson in concise writing. When several of the guests did not arrive until close to 8:30, Mr. Desai assured us that it is was typical Indian custom to “toddle in” at one’s own pace.

For dinner, we moved upstairs to the dining room, where each place was set with a large tray containing at least ten different dishes ranging from homemade samosas, to a potato curry, to cucumber salad, to a variety of dishes we could not identify, each one tastier than the next. The cook and his assistant made constant rounds around the table refilling our plates practically after every bite. For dessert, we retired to the living room, for strawberry yogurt served in a chocolate shell.

Throughout the evening, we learned quite a bit about our host and the other guests, from the fact that Mr. Desai’s daughter and grandchildren live in Issaquah and that he visits Seattle annually to the fact that Mr. Desai had authored an article, entitled Public Interest Litigation: Potential and Problems, which he gave us copies of, to the fact that to the fact that Justice William O. Douglas liked to trek in northern India.

Tuesday, January 9:

After yet another delicious breakfast at the hotel, we were picked up by Mr. Sudan, the Officer on Special Duty, for Amity Law School. We rode in a midnight blue Mercedes limo out to the Noida campus of the law school, a half hour outside the city center. Upon our arrival, we were greeted by about a dozen faculty members and administrators including the Director of Global Legal Education, the Director of the Law School, the President of the University, and the Senior Vice President for the University’s International Affairs Division. After tea in the visitor’s lounge, we proceeded to the auditorium, where about 150 students were gathered for our presentation. As we entered, the students rose to their feet and applauded. After the requisite preliminary introductions and greetings, we conducted a four-hour presentation covering an introduction to the U.S. legal system, writing concisely and clearly, and writing persuasively, among others. The students were eager and engaged, and Laurel practically had to break up a fistfight during a debate on the use of plain English v. legalese. After the presentation, we met with the faculty and administration to discuss possible future relationships with Seattle University.

At the end of our visit, we were each presented with a lovely embroidered shawl, which can be seen in this less-than-flattering picture.

And we returned to the hotel to learn the best news of the day: the last of our luggage had finally arrived!

Day One in Delhi

2007-01-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

“Anne Enquist, Anne Enquist. Please report directly to security as soon as we land in Delhi.” And so our welcome to India began. As it turned out, the problem was that about half of our luggage had not made it on the plane (and as of this moment, Anne is still wearing what she wore for 15 hours on the plane.) The good news, as Laurel would say, though was that our hotel did send our car for us—actually two cars—and we got to the hotel only about two hours late at 5:00 am.

Sunday was our day to get oriented in Delhi. Being led by our new best friend and guide Surrendar, pronounced like “surrender,” we toured old and new Delhi. Here’s Laurel with Surrendar in their “tricycle” on a busy boulevard headed toward an historic mosque. The streets were crammed with vendors selling everything from deli sweets, to goats and sheep on the hoof, to the Kama Sutra, which we said we did not need.

Using BA’s shopping allowance (thanks to the missing luggage), we headed to a government-run, tourist-trap where we were outnumbered by the staff about 7 to 1. Mimi decided to go native—here she is in her new outfit, which matches her Ipod and phone.

Then we were off to India Gate, the President’s home, and then Humayun’s Tomb. We ran into a large group of Indian students on tour there who fixated on Laurel and Anne. Here’s Anne with “her girls” from the school.

Back at the hotel, we all crashed until our host, Mr. Lalit Bhasin came to meet us at 10:00 pm. He is exactly what we expected—charming, polished, and wonderfully connected to all areas of the Indian legal community. Tomorrow night he is hosting a small dinner in our honor, which will include the president of the Indian bar and the former Attorney General of India. Let’s hope Anne will not be still wearing her same travel clothes. That might make “an impression.”

Let the Packing Begin

2006-12-12T21:11:00.000-08:00

Although grading dozens of student briefs and memos still stands between us and our flight to Delhi, we have turned our attention to packing. We will be gone for almost seven months, with activities ranging from a conference for law professors in Washington, D.C. to training magistrates in the "upcountry" in Uganda to teaching in a summer abroad program (in our summer, but their winter) in Johannesburg. And, we have optimistically (perhaps overly so) decided that we can take everything that we need in one checked bag and one carry-on each. Given that one bag is already dedicated to computers, cameras, phones, I-pods and their necessary chargers, cords, and other accessories, and another will be filled with books and school supplies, we have have to be judicious with clothes, no less toiletries or other personal items.

So far, we have considered a number of different criteria for determining what we should take. The first idea was to take only things that could be described by a four-letter word. That got us Pert, Deet, and a shoe. Not too successful given that we each think that we need at least five pairs of shoes: hiking boots for hiking, work shoes for working, dress up shoes for dressing up, and of course, sneakers for sneaking and sandals for sandaling. Perhaps instead, we should take one thing starting with each letter of the alphabet: aspirin, bathing suit, credit cards, Deet . . . . Of course, that would leave us without bras, books, or cash. We'll have to keep working on it.

One Month and Counting

2006-12-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

The countdown begins. We leave Seattle on January 3. First stop, Washington, D.C. for the American Association of Law School conference, in particular for the panel on Legal Education in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities, and for the Section on Legal Writing, Reasoning and Research Luncheon, which will honor our colleague Anne Enquist with the Section’s annual service award. From D.C., we fly to Delhi, India on January 5, and will be in India for the rest of January before we travel to Uganda on January 31.

There's a Bat in my What?

2006-11-15T22:50:00.000-08:00

Summer 2005, Paraa Safari Lodge, Murchinson Falls National Park, Uganda: Early in the morning, I walk out of the bathroom, barely awake, still jet-lagged, and Laurel says to me, "We're going to write a book. A memoir. I have a title and a chapter structure started already. We're going to call it There's a Bat in My Banda and an Elephant in My Pool."

First, a bit of background: Laurel and I first visited Uganda in 2003, when we presented a five-day workshop on effective legal writing to attorneys in the legal department of Uganda's Inspectorate General of Government. We returned in 2005 to train some of Uganda's High Court judges in effective judgment (aka opinion) writing. During that trip, we met with a number of legal academics as well as prominent attorneys and representatives of the Uganda Law Society (the bar association). As a result of these meetings, we decided to return to Uganda for a semester to continue working with the academic programs and to provide additional training sessions for attorneys and judges. So, one thing led to another, and a semester in Uganda has expanded to almost seven months away, starting in January 2007, in India, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, and possibly more.

Now back to the book: The idea was to look at the differences among visiting Uganda as a tourist, working there on a short-term basis, and living there for a longer period. The title refers to two of the stranger experiences we had had so far in Uganda. On our first trip, I had travelled on my own for a bit, spending a few nights at the Ssese Palm Beach Resort in the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria. On my first night in my banda, a lovely lakeside hut, I was under attack from a dive-bombing bat, driving me to retreat to the bathroom, dragging all of my bedding to the bathroom floor and hiding out. At the much more luxurious Paraa Lodge, we had no encounters with bats, but on our first night we heard one of our neighbors, a Texan, shouting (and I'm not making this up), "Bubba, c'mon out here on the balcony and a get a load of this." Sure enough, we go out on the balcony to see an elephant family that had come up to drink from the pool and the hotel staff insistently trying to shoo them away.

As we get ready to return to Uganda, we are excited about travelling, working, and living in Africa and will do our best to share our experiences with those who are interested through this blog. Check back starting in early January, when we'll start chronicling our adventures. For those of you who want to keep track of us on a day-to-day basis, we'll try to keep our calendar up to date.