SO LONG, AFRICA!

I’m in Johannesburg now, and this evening I catch my flight back to the states. My journey has come to an end! Last December in Bangkok, before ending my nine-month stint in Southeast Asia, I wrote a similar blog post, except this time it’s not 4 AM and I’m sober. But looking back on my trip over the last four months - starting in Ecuador with Grace and Heidi, then heading off to South Africa to meet my sister for the World Cup, up to Namibia with Phil and Jonah, and everywhere else in between - I’ve once again realized that my journey has really been shaped by the people that I’ve shared it with. I’ve had the chance to travel with some great friends over the last few months, and I’ve also had the chance to make some great friends along the way. And all the wonderful things I have done and seen wouldn't have been the same if it weren't for my friends. Thanks!
And so now I’m heading home! I gotta find me a job. Perhaps I can find some way to keep this blog interesting after my travels have ended, I guess we’ll see. Either way, I hope that people have enjoyed it. I know my mom has, she’s the only one who ever comments on things. And thanks to all those who have been a part of it with me! It’s been fun. Until next time…

WINDHOEK

After a long weekend in Swakopmund I crammed into a local minibus for the three hour ride back to Windhoek. My flight back to Johannesburg didn’t depart until the following evening so I had a day to hang out and explore the city. I was at a café in Zoo Park when I heard the sound of drumming and singing, and after my meal I walked across the park to see what was happening. On the lawn facing Independence Avenue a group of people dressed in traditional clothing had started a song and dance to promote an upcoming arts and culture festival. The sidewalk facing them became crowded, passersby stopped to watch, and those enjoying an afternoon in the park gathered around to see the show. It was a great performance. But what I thought was really interesting was the group of Himba women that strolled over from the nearby market and plopped down on the grass to watch. The Himba, who live mainly in the north, are some of the most traditional people in Namibia, maybe in all of Africa. And there they were watching a cultural performance in the park. They weren’t dressed for any particular occasion, just wearing what they always wear, which isn’t much from the waist up, except for their necklaces. The Himba coat their skin in a red paste called otjize, which is made from butter fat, ash, and ochre. And use the same paste to cover their long, braided hair, creating what looks like shiny red dreadlocks. They find this look to be beautiful, and I must say, something about it is very stunning, their complexions are immaculate. Anyways, they didn’t need to perform any song and dance to promote their culture. Meanwhile I just sat there and thought about how cool Africa was. Africa. I’ve been here for three months and have only seen a very small part of it. There’s so much more out there! But that’s what traveling does - the more I see, the more I realize that there’s more to discover…

SWAKOPMUND

Back to Namibia! The bus from Livingstone to Windhoek was another long journey, and the day we arrived Laura and Rhea caught their flights back home to Canada. They were great travel buddies, I was sad to see them go. I decided to head to the coast for a few days, to Swakopmund. Swakopmund is a quiet little coastal town surrounded by desert. One day I walked along the beach, crossed the highway, and entered the sand dunes just south of town, where the desert meets the sea. It was beautiful. My African journey is coming to an end, and what better than a lonesome hike through the desert to reflect on my travels...

MOSI-AO-TUNYA NATIONAL PARK

Exploring Victoria Falls from the Zambia side in Mosi-ao-Tunya National Park was incredible. We arrived mid afternoon and pretty much covered every square inch of the park. As the sun sank low in the sky we hiked back up to the Eastern Cataract, which provides an amazing view of the falls, and watched the sun go down. The park stayed open late that evening in the event of the full moon and the monthly appearance of the lunar rainbow. We stayed and watched as the moon came up and the metallic moonbow appeared over the falls, it was amazing. I tried to take a picture of it, but to no avail. The next day we packed our bags and left Victoria Falls...

BABOONS

The next day we decided to check out Victoria Falls from the Zambian side in Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. Mosi-ao-Tunya means 'The Smoke That Thunders'! There were tons of baboons in the park. Here's a little video of a few encounters that we had...

RAINBOWS

Victoria Falls spits out rainbows left and right! All that mist from the water crashing into the gorge, and the hot African sun... it's really cool.

ZIMBABWE

Victoria Falls is huge, and since it's split between Zimbabwe and Zambia, we decided to head across the border into Zimbabwe for a day and check out Victoria Falls National Park. After a stroll along the Zambezi River we entered the park, it was awesome. The falls are amazing! Here's a little video of our adventure...

ZAMBEZI RIVER CRUISE

After some good times in Cape Town, I took off with Laura and Rhea for Victoria Falls. And after a long couple of days on the bus we arrived in Livingstone, Zambia. Victoria Falls is split between Zimbabwe and Zambia, so we decided to use Livingstone as our base and spend a few days exploring the area. On our second evening we took a sunset boat cruise on the Zambezi, just above the falls, where the river is wide and calm. It was a great evening, with a delicious BBQ and an open bar, hippos and crocodiles swimming in the river, and an amazing sunset. There were a couple of families on the boat, and a handful of kids running around, who almost provided as much entertainment with their commentary on the animals, as the animals themselves. After the boat cruise ended and we arrived back on land, we hung out at a riverside bar and danced late into the night with our new friends. Here's a little video of the boat cruise...

LION'S HEAD

It's rainy today here in Cape Town. But yesterday was the perfect day for a hike! Laura, Rhea, and Maria wanted to climb Table Mountain, but since I had already hiked it, I set out to conquer Lion's Head. And after Lion's Head I set out to meet them on Table Mountain...

CAPE PENINSULA

After a week of hanging out around Jeffreys Bay, I went back to Cape Town to meet up with Laura and Rhea. They had just recently finished their research in Tsumkwe, Namibia and came down to Cape Town with a couple of friends, Maria and Roshina. The day after we all met up we took a tour of the Cape Peninsula. Cape Town is amazing! I think it may be one of my favorite cities in the world, and this day trip totally reaffirmed that. We started our morning with a drive through wine country - wine and cheese and crackers for breakfast! After that we took off for the peninsula, stopping in Simon's Town for lunch and to see some penguins. Then we drove to the Cape of Good Hope, the most southwestern point on the African continent, where the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet. The picture on the left is of the Cape Point lighthouse, and the picture on the right is of the Cape of Good Hope. The ostrich in the picture next to us must have been the most southwestern ostrich on the African continent at the time...

JEFFREYS BAY

After a week in Cape Town I took off up the coast to meet some friends in Jeffreys Bay. It was a long ten hour bus ride, but man alive was it beautiful! The drive took us along the Garden Route, one of South Africa's most beautiful coast lines. Ten hours on a bus... I wish I could have spent ten days getting there! My friend Fungai, who I hung out with in Swaziland, has a house on the beach in Jeffreys Bay. His friends Luke and Refilwe were there, along with our friend Sheela. The five of us had a great time that weekend, zip-lining, horseback riding on the beach, and just hanging out. Everybody had jobs to go back to after the weekend ended, so they all left. I decided to stick around Jeffreys Bay for a few more days and ended up finding a nice little guesthouse perched up on a hill overlooking the beach at the end of town. Jeffreys Bay is a one of the biggest surf spots in Africa, if not the world! The pictures of the guys surfing were taken at Supertubes - Jeffreys Bay's world renowned surf spot!

ROBBEN ISLAND

I went to visit Robben Island one day - the Alcatraz of Cape Town, and the former prison that held South Africa's political prisoners during apartheid. I caught the ferry mid morning and the ride out gave way to great views of Cape Town and Table Mountain. After a short bus tour around the island, we entered the prison grounds and met our tour guide who was also an ex-political prisoner. One of the cell blocks was full of prison cells where former prisoners had come back and left a memento and a story about their experience on Robben Island. We had about ten minutes to explore this section of the prison before being quickly ushered over and past Nelson Mandela's old cell (middle picture on the top). The tour was a little too quick for my liking. I could have spent a lot more time exploring the grounds and reading about all of the prisoner's experiences. But it was worth it. Such a recent and tragic history, and how amazing to be told by someone who was there to experience it. Wow.

TABLE MOUNTAIN

Cape Town has the amazing backdrop of Table Mountain. It's beautiful. I decided to climb to the top one day. Here's a little video.

THE CASTLE OF GOOD HOPE

The Castle of Good Hope is the oldest building in South Africa and was built by the Dutch East India Company around the mid 1600s. I decided to check it out one afternoon, it was pretty cool. Here are a few pictures I took while I was there.

SHARKS

After Swaziland, I spent a couple of days in Johannesburg, and then caught a train down to Cape Town where I met up with Sheela and her friend Klaus. The next day we went diving with great white sharks! Well, in a cage. My camera batteries died after a few minutes, but I was still able to capture a few clips from up on top of the boat. Being in the water with those things, man alive, I almost shit my wetsuit...

SWAZILAND

After Etosha National Park we left Namibia and took off for Johannesburg. And soon after that Phil and Jonah left to fly back home. Originally I had planned on heading straight to Cape Town when I got back to South Africa, but instead decided to join some friends on a weekend road trip to Swaziland. Sheela, Fungai, and Dan are all here from Harvard Business School working on summer internships, and the four of us left Joburg on a Friday evening and hit the road to Mbabane. We met our friend Jed when we got there, and his friend Paul put us up for the weekend. Friends of friends of friends! On Saturday Paul took us out to visit one of his friends, a chief, who is also the ambassador to Kuwait. Paul had just given a cow to the chief as a gift, and we were all invited out to partake in an afternoon celebration. The trip out to the chiefdom was beautiful; the two-hour drive on dirt roads took us up and over mountains, through valleys, and past small villages. It was a great tour of rural Swaziland. As soon as we arrived, the chief was quick to invite us into his home for some drinks. The picture on the bottom left is of Jed drinking homemade fermented sorghum liquor out of a big black gourd. It was tasty! And outside there was a group of young guys who were in charge of slaughtering a goat for the feast – they were excited to pose for a photo. We actually didn’t stay too long since Paul was having a barbeque back at his place, but it was a fun afternoon, and an overall great weekend in Swaziland.

ETOSHA ANIMALS

I know I already posted a video of our adventures in Etosha National Park, but here's a little collage of some of the animals we saw. Amazing!

ETOSHA NATIONAL PARK

After a couple of amazing weeks in Tsumkwe, Phil and Jonah and I took off for an adventure in Etosha National Park. What an awesome place. Right in the middle of the park is the Etosha Pan, a huge flat desert that fills up with water for a few days a year during the rainy season. Here’s a video…

BARAKA VILLAGE SCHOOL

One day we took a little day trip out to a village school for San children. There are a handful of these village schools around Tsumkwe that help prepare San children for the primary school in town. My favorite part of the visit was playing soccer with the students during their break. It was girls versus boys, and after the boys went up a few goals, Jonah and I joined the girl’s team and helped even the score a little bit…

TSUMKWE SOCCER

Not only did Phil and Jonah and I get a teaching gig at the high school, but we were also recruited to help coach the soccer team. The team doesn’t really play many matches, maybe a couple every year, but in a few weeks they were going to be competing in a huge national tournament sponsored by Coca Cola. The soccer field was rough, and a few of the guys played barefoot. Some played in socks or slippers, and some shared one of their shoes with a friend. Here’s a little video...

TSUMKWE SECONDARY SCHOOL

Phil is a teacher and will soon be starting a doctorate program in the fall. And I taught English last year in Thailand. After Phil walked into Tsumkwe Secondary School to see if he could interview some teachers about the local school system, he walked out with a weeklong job for us teaching 11th and 12th grade English. Jonah helped out too. Sadly, they didn’t have any fulltime teachers filling those positions. The classrooms were in bad shape, broken windows, crumbling concrete floors, and walls that were worn and scuffed. The school itself was shit, but the students were wonderful! Making it to the 11th and 12th grade is quite a challenge in that part of the world, so the students were all very dedicated and serious about their schoolwork. The teachers and students were very thankful that we were there, and we were very happy to be able to help.

BOTSWANA

The border of Botswana is fifty kilometers east of Tsumkwe, and the town of Dobe is just five kilometers past that. Phil spent some time there eleven years ago with his mother helping her conduct research, so we decided to go back and check it out. On the way out of town we saw our friend Steve who was a translator for Laura and Rhea during their interviews. He decided to join us last minute. Having Steve along was great. Without him we wouldn’t have been able to sit down and chat with the villagers. I have to say, I’m pretty bad at learning languages, but having lived in Southeast Asia for a while I guess I’ve kind of gained an ear for tonal languages. But man, these click languages! Now that’s something else! I love the way they sound. Anyways, here’s a video of our day trip to Botswana…

SHEBEEN

A shebeen is an unlicensed drinking establishment. There are quite a few scattered around Tsumkwe, which isn’t actually a good thing for the community. A few can be found right off the main road; they play loud music, sell big bottles of beer, and may even have a TV or a pool table. Then there are the ones that are a little more off the beaten path, off the grid and out in the bush. These don’t sell bottled beer, but instead make and sell their own concoctions. One afternoon Phil, Jonah, Lucah, and I (all sons of anthropologists) went out to get a taste of something local. We found a dark shebeen, lit only by a small candle, and came out with a bottle of something… well, not too tasty, but it didn’t kill us…

BRAAI

The word for barbeque here is ‘braai’, and in celebration of the World Cup final we decided to have one. Just our luck, word around town had it that there had been a cow slaughtered that morning. Here’s a little video about the making of our tasty feast.

SEVEN

Here are some more pictures that I took one afternoon while I was out on some interviews with Laura and Rhea. The name of the village in this picture is Seven. It’s made up of twelve government built houses and the families that live here were some of the wealthiest families interviewed.