I am back in the real world. And the last two days were the longest in history.
On Tuesday morning I woke up around 7, in my bed with my mosquito net and no covers in the Karibu hotel in the heart of Stonetown, Zanzibar…wow it already feels worlds ago and away. We took a taxi to the airport for our noon flight to Dar Es Selaam, which is the capital of Tanzania. We had a close call with our bags: when we last minute decided to go check on them to make sure they were still on the plane, only to see them going around and around on the baggage carousel. Basically if we hadn’t checked, our bags would still be Tanzania. Got back on a plane to Arusha. We got into Arusha around 2pm and our next flight wasn’t until 9 that night. So we just camped outside under a tree and read books and ate our mangos. Around 7 we went inside and then we met Greg. Greg started talking to us by commenting on the tons of crushed peanut shells that were strewn all over the floor near us. They weren’t ours. He was basically just really friendly and such a character. He seemed slightly paranoid about the flight, ie he got up every 10 minutes to go check the planes progress and how much longer till we got to board, etc. But he was really funny and we made a bet with him about our flight. Loser takes winner out to dinner. We are taking him to John Jay dining hall at Columbia.
We took a 777 airplane from Arusha to Amsterdam, but since the Arusha airport is so small there aren’t any tunnel terminals. By that I mean that you walk on the pavement outside up to the steps and then get on the plane that way. We had done this plenty on all the smaller flights, but this time it was a 777. It was completely the biggest human creation I have ever seen. I have no idea how it actually gets off the ground. It was incredible. We actually had to fly right back to Dar and then we went to Amsterdam. Our flight left Arusha at 9pm and got into Amsterdam at 7 the next morning (with 1 hour time zone difference). We immediately left the airport (after some serious difficulty with reading the signs in Dutch) and took a swanky train into the city.
I walked out of the train station and felt something that seems nearly impossible to describe. I’ll try tho. The world is huge. The western world is even bigger somehow. To go from Stonetown and Nanyuki to Amsterdam is such a huge, cataclysmic change: everyone is white, everyone is walking fast, everyone is dressed soooo trendy (it made me sick). Everyone is white here. Duh soph, I know but it’s true. I am just another person, another white girl among hundreds and thousands. No one stops to talk to me on the street, no one calls out to me; the girl sitting next to me at Nussbaum this morning didn’t even look at me, let alone want to start a conversation. No one wants to talk to each other here. Amsterdam was this huge shock I was just walking around in a complete daze I could barely see straight. It doesn’t even make sense to me now because I’m separated from the feeling, but at the time it was the strangest sensation of my life. Life is just totally different in a western country. Everything is clean, everything has soap, and a toilet seat. Everything has toilet paper and a toilet! We were lucky to get a long drop in most of the towns we visited. There’s running water. There’s about 10 different muffin choices at each bakery. There are 5 salads on menus. Food doesn’t give me the shits. What am I saying, I know all this was here, I knew it was different when I was away from it. But it’s completely incredible how easy it was to forget it all existed and to just get used to not having a toilet, or running water that I could drink, or trendy clothes and fast walking people. Going to Africa was easy somehow. I think it was because I was going from big to small. Somehow going the other way is just really trippy. I thought about this for a while and realized that what is the strangest part of the whole thing, or maybe the best way to describe it is this: the strangest thing in life is when the familiar suddenly seems foreign and the foreign seems familiar. I expected Africa to be different and it was. What I didn’t expect was for NYC to feel like a foreign country does.
Back to the story. We left the train station in a daze and went pastry shopping. They have the most amazing pastries there all over the city. We basically had the plan to walk all day and see as much of the city as we possibly could. We had 12 hours between our two flights. Everyone in Amsterdam rides bikes everywhere. Seriously, there are possibly more bikes than there are cars. Instead of car garages, there are bike garages; there are lanes on the roads just for bike. Anyway, we decided to rent bikes for a few hours. Best decision ever. Just biking around this city neither of us had any idea about was so much fun. It was so weird to be in Europe with all the expensive fruit, expensive clothes, expensive trains that don’t bump you once…
We biked for about 3 hours all over the city, through a little park and along all the beautiful canals. Amsterdam is laid out in a really neat way. I don’t really understand it, but there were all these rings of streets all circling around the center of the city. And there were canals and little bridges to cross the canals at each ring. It was so beautiful. We stopped to buy some peaches, which I had completely forget even existed. I knocked into an entire display of blueberries in the process. I think buying the fruit was the first time I realized just how different it all was. In Africa people are so on top of you to buy what they are selling that you actually cannot walk down the street without being pretty much attacked by people selling you things, like I’ve said so many times. But here there’s nothing like that. I was buying a book today on the street here in the city, and I caught myself walking by the tables of books and, though I wanted to look at what they were selling I had this feeling inside that I wasn’t allowed to stop and look because if I did, then they would pounce on me and I’d end up buying something I didn’t want or need. That is what would have happened in Kenya. Then I realized that it wasn’t like that here. First of all, the guy selling books wasn’t saying anything to me, and second of all it wouldn’t have been an issue if I hadn’t bought something. So I stopped and looked and asked how much a book was. He told me it was $4 and I was about to bargain with him and pay $3, when he told me he would give it to me for $3 before I even got the chance to banter with him. That was really funny and made me smile. I told him the whole story actually. So when I picked another book out and asked how much he said $4 and then he let me bargain with him just for fun.
New York is huge. And it doesn’t end. And I know that. And I knew it. Maybe I just forgot just how big it all really is…
I think this is the final, final entry. I am so glad I wrote all this. I was reading it over the other day and it was such a great way to relive the whole experience. I’ve been back in the states for less than a day and the entire trip already seems ages ago and it seems like so far away from me. Last night was the first night I spent away from Lauren in 6 weeks. I miss her. Not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do without her by my side experiencing everything along with me.
Hope to see anyone who has read this at my house on Saturday. We’re having a party. And Lubin party’s rock.
Love to everyone,
sophiebess
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Monday, July 03, 2006
last real day
i am back from the ocean. it was too beautiful to describe. i don't have the words. i am all dried up of words. i am fully spent and over saturated and cannot wait to come home. that being said i continue to see things that i cannot beleive each day and that take my breath away. it is hard because i am still living here in africa even though it is so close to the time when i will be home. it's a real state of limbo between home and here. i am trying to live still in the amazingness that is all around me each day, but it is hard when i know home is so close.
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
coming back from the beach up north i find that the combination of writing so much about my experiences and the unbelievable beauty of this beach, also combined with the fact that i am totally wiped at the moment...is making me unable to describe just how gorgeous the beach really was. it was like a postcard...i have pictures.
yesterday we drove up to nungwi, which is the northern most point of the island. we checked into a little hotel for $25, walked around and relaxed. we went to the local grocery store and got these little ice creams that were the best ice cream i've had this whole trip; fell asleep at 8 and didn't wake up til 8 this morning. had a really strenuous time of lying on the beach for a few hours and then our friend Fasel came to meet us (it's his day off today). he drove us to membwe where his brother is in the process of building a hotel. the beach was, if possible, more beautiful. the best part of the whole excursion was when we decided that we wanted lunch so Fasel walked down to the beach and asked this guy for a few fish. the guy gutted them right there and Fasel brought them back to his brother who cooked them and they were soooo good! talk about fresh!
so now we are back in stonetown and we just watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean for the last time. we were talking about how crazy this trip has been and all the poeple we got to know. starting when we got off the plane we met eston and louisa and steve mcqueen; then we met nancy and tony. then we flew to the farm and met suzanne and randy, hamish, the dogs, cecelia and wanjoi. then we went on our hike up the mountain with grandpa and smelly (christopher and james). met cameron on the mountain, and the french people, and uncle and his nephews, and of course jan. came down the mountain and went to the ball, met derek and all the weird poeple at the ball. saw jan again at the airstrip. then we went away to lake turkana and met bev and lee, helen, jim and jeff, caroline and dani, bosco and kamunge. the annoying guy in the matatu back from tfalls. back on the plane to nairobi to louisa's house. saw derek again and met RK at casa blanca. Onto the bus to arusha with jan! hotel night in arusha and then flight to Zanzibar. Met Fasel and since then we’ve been living on paradise island.
The last stretch starts tomorrow: flight at noon to arusha, wait there til our 8pm flight to Amsterdam. Then we have 12 hours of fun there. Back on the plane to new york to arrive in the city at 8pm on Wednesday night…that’s a lonnngg day.
I don’t feel like writing more right now. Maybe I’ll write from Amsterdam, otherwise this might be the last entry ever…try not to die without me.
sb
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Snorkeling
yesterday we got to zanzibar and checked into our hotel. it is full of backpackers from all over the place and has a really great vibe. Louisa's friend runs the hotel and he has been taking care of us and showing us around the town and island. he's really nice and interesting.
nearly everyone on this island is muslim. it's actually something like 95%. all the women cover their heads and wear long skirts and wraps. and a lot of the men wear those roundish square hats...you know what i'm talking about. the island is beautiful, with white beaches, teal water, and palm trees all over the palce. zanzibar has become a huuge tourist attraction. there are more white people here than i have seen in 6 weeks. it is so weird to see them actually, now after so long of feeling unique and singled out. now i am just another mazunge. it's a different feeling. since there are so many tourists there are a lot of tourist things to do. things like snorkeling and scuba diving, and there are streets just line with shops one after the other selling trinkets and souvenirs. the weird part about the shops is that each one is literally selling the exact same stuff as the shop before it. so i wonder how any of them make any money. but somehow they must.
when i wrote yesterday i was in the strangest of moods. it was like there was some part of me that could not take being a traveler anymore. i can't walk down the street on this island without getting called at my 20 (no exaggeration) people. i felt yesterday so totally overwhelmed by the desperation that surrounds me: these people live off my $2 purchase of a bracelet. and if i don't buy the bracelet, then maybe they won't be able to feed their kids. at the same time, they overcharge me by about 100% and that just gets me mad. so it's a really hard situation to be in, for both of us. it's hard for me as the white buyer, and it's hard for them, as the black sellers. anyway, yesterday i couldn't see the sadness of the situation and only saw the annoyance of it. i become hard walking down the street. my face turns cold, i know it does, and i don't smile or look at anyone. i have learned that this is the ONLY way to avoid further callings and approaches. it's a sad thing to come to, this realize that it's either walk with curiosity and interest towards the world, and therefore get stopped every 5 steps, with my entire being held within me, which shows that i have bushiness on my mind.
anyway, i couldn't really take it anymore. so i went to get ice cream but they were closed, so we went on a hunt for some ice cream. we didn't find any, but we did find the ocean. watched some local guys kick around a soccer ball and it was so nice to sit there on the ocean wall and not be bother by people and just be within the social situation. i mean here that these guys didn't have anything to sell to us, and so they weren't bothering us. granted they certainly would have slept with us if given the chance, but none of them could really speak english well enough to start a conversation with us. it was a nice respite.
we left to meet up with Facel, Louisa's friend, who took us to this restaurant that looks out onto the ocean, so we could watch the sun set. we watched the game (another disappointment as argentina lost) and then went to get some food. Facel took us to this really great night street market nearby. apparently, every night the boardwalk along the beach turns into this outside food fair. there are poele lining the street, selling all this amazing seafood and authentic tanzanian food. ate great prawns and octopus. it was really good.
this morning i woke up and went for a walk. taking both my mother and suzanne's advice i decided to have some quiet time. i bought a mango and went to the beach and ate it and didn't say a work to anyone for at least 2 hours. a really sad thing happened. a man came up to me and wanted to talk with me (who knows about what but i am sure he wanted to tell me that i wanted something he had). he said hi, and i ignored him. i didn't even turn to smile, i pretended i coudln't hear him. it was sad because it wasn't exactly a nice thing to d, but i did it because i wanted some peace and quiet.
around 2 this afternoon lauren and i hopped on a boat with a snorkeling company. i have never been snorkeling or anything like it. if anyone does not know this, i have an irrational fear of sharks and i don't really like swimming in the ocean because it freaks me out. i decided that it was bullshit and pathetic to be afraid of something so dumb and i didnt want to let it ruin a potentially great experience. so i tried it out. of course i wasn't eaten my sharks and it was completely amazing. seeing the ocean, which is completed crystal clear, is totally amazing. eve just being out there on the middle of the ocean on this little island of sand that we took the boat to was amazing. i did occationally have moments of minor panic and think that lauren next to me was a shark coming to eat me (this was aided by lauren pouncing on my and pretending to be a shark), but beyond that i was fine. and it was really amazing.
now we are going. because it's dinner time (8:40pm) and who knows what the night will bring. tomorrow we are going up north to a beach hotel for the last 2 days of our trip!!
nearly everyone on this island is muslim. it's actually something like 95%. all the women cover their heads and wear long skirts and wraps. and a lot of the men wear those roundish square hats...you know what i'm talking about. the island is beautiful, with white beaches, teal water, and palm trees all over the palce. zanzibar has become a huuge tourist attraction. there are more white people here than i have seen in 6 weeks. it is so weird to see them actually, now after so long of feeling unique and singled out. now i am just another mazunge. it's a different feeling. since there are so many tourists there are a lot of tourist things to do. things like snorkeling and scuba diving, and there are streets just line with shops one after the other selling trinkets and souvenirs. the weird part about the shops is that each one is literally selling the exact same stuff as the shop before it. so i wonder how any of them make any money. but somehow they must.
when i wrote yesterday i was in the strangest of moods. it was like there was some part of me that could not take being a traveler anymore. i can't walk down the street on this island without getting called at my 20 (no exaggeration) people. i felt yesterday so totally overwhelmed by the desperation that surrounds me: these people live off my $2 purchase of a bracelet. and if i don't buy the bracelet, then maybe they won't be able to feed their kids. at the same time, they overcharge me by about 100% and that just gets me mad. so it's a really hard situation to be in, for both of us. it's hard for me as the white buyer, and it's hard for them, as the black sellers. anyway, yesterday i couldn't see the sadness of the situation and only saw the annoyance of it. i become hard walking down the street. my face turns cold, i know it does, and i don't smile or look at anyone. i have learned that this is the ONLY way to avoid further callings and approaches. it's a sad thing to come to, this realize that it's either walk with curiosity and interest towards the world, and therefore get stopped every 5 steps, with my entire being held within me, which shows that i have bushiness on my mind.
anyway, i couldn't really take it anymore. so i went to get ice cream but they were closed, so we went on a hunt for some ice cream. we didn't find any, but we did find the ocean. watched some local guys kick around a soccer ball and it was so nice to sit there on the ocean wall and not be bother by people and just be within the social situation. i mean here that these guys didn't have anything to sell to us, and so they weren't bothering us. granted they certainly would have slept with us if given the chance, but none of them could really speak english well enough to start a conversation with us. it was a nice respite.
we left to meet up with Facel, Louisa's friend, who took us to this restaurant that looks out onto the ocean, so we could watch the sun set. we watched the game (another disappointment as argentina lost) and then went to get some food. Facel took us to this really great night street market nearby. apparently, every night the boardwalk along the beach turns into this outside food fair. there are poele lining the street, selling all this amazing seafood and authentic tanzanian food. ate great prawns and octopus. it was really good.
this morning i woke up and went for a walk. taking both my mother and suzanne's advice i decided to have some quiet time. i bought a mango and went to the beach and ate it and didn't say a work to anyone for at least 2 hours. a really sad thing happened. a man came up to me and wanted to talk with me (who knows about what but i am sure he wanted to tell me that i wanted something he had). he said hi, and i ignored him. i didn't even turn to smile, i pretended i coudln't hear him. it was sad because it wasn't exactly a nice thing to d, but i did it because i wanted some peace and quiet.
around 2 this afternoon lauren and i hopped on a boat with a snorkeling company. i have never been snorkeling or anything like it. if anyone does not know this, i have an irrational fear of sharks and i don't really like swimming in the ocean because it freaks me out. i decided that it was bullshit and pathetic to be afraid of something so dumb and i didnt want to let it ruin a potentially great experience. so i tried it out. of course i wasn't eaten my sharks and it was completely amazing. seeing the ocean, which is completed crystal clear, is totally amazing. eve just being out there on the middle of the ocean on this little island of sand that we took the boat to was amazing. i did occationally have moments of minor panic and think that lauren next to me was a shark coming to eat me (this was aided by lauren pouncing on my and pretending to be a shark), but beyond that i was fine. and it was really amazing.
now we are going. because it's dinner time (8:40pm) and who knows what the night will bring. tomorrow we are going up north to a beach hotel for the last 2 days of our trip!!
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