Big Bad Mauritius Customs Agents

And like that, two months have passed since I left home, though I could be persuaded to believe that it’s only been a few weeks. I left Samburu a week ago with the usual torrent of emotions that start forming days before I go but are shoved back down and dealt with once the place is squarely in the rear view mirror, and rarely a moment earlier.

After almost 20 trips, my final 24 hours in Samburu has become terribly predictable, which is ironic given that all of the days leading up to the final day are full of unpredictability. To begin, the word of mouth network in this community is thorough, flawless, and usually short on news; something as simple as "that one mzungu is leaving tomorrow" can make it into the pipeline. So on the day before my departure I’m often greeted by people – some whom I don’t know well --  with some variation of “I heard you are leaving tomorrow. Safe journey!” At some point during the harried part of the final day, when I’m trying to wrap up a long list of loose ends and good-byes, someone will contact me with a questionable explanation for why I owe them more money. These instances are usually short-sighted and grounded in a corrupted slate of ethics that could rival the U.S. tobacco or banking lobby. A few weeks ago I paid the entry fee to a local conservancy for all 14 of my students during our field course.  The amount due was given in dollars but I paid in Shillings based on a widely-accepted exchange rate around here of 80 Shillings per dollar.  The transaction had gone smoothly at the time.  On the day before I left the country, I was chased down and told they use a rate of 85 Shillings and therefore I owe 200 more Shillings, the equivalent of about $2.50. When I note the suspiciousness of this timing, it’s met with empty stares as though it’s me, not them, who is being questionalbe. On the spot, I called a lovely (and impulsive) woman at the bank where I have an account – she divulged her love for me in an email within 24 hours after I opened the account, which I took as an extraordinary level of customer service -- and she told me the rate that day was 80.8 Shillings. The money-grubbing conservancy manager told me they "round up” which didn’t make much sense in the world of rounding up, to go from 80.8 to 85. I don’t participate in these debates for long because there’s less logic in the discussion than a Rick Perry speech.  I could just put it off for the day and leave, but people love gossip and trash talk here so that’s the tradeoff in leaving behind a perception to some that I skipped out on a bill of $2.50.  It’s just easier to pay it, make a silent pledge to deliberate about supporting the place in the future, and later on deal with the effect has on my hopes for this place.

More comically, there’s always the same woman – I’ve never known her name – that finds me in town on my last full day to ask for start-up funds to open up a shop for her latest entrepreneurial idea which has varied between selling tomatoes, fixing motorcycles and washing people’s hair.  She wears a wig, and she’s often drunk. I assume it’s her inebriation that explains why each time we meet the wig sits a little bit differently on her head. Sometimes it’s situated forward and low over her forehead causing the wig’s bangs and her eyelashes to become entangled, but she often treats the irritation as a housefly and bats at her eyes to shoo it away.  Other times the wig is a little further clockwise and tilted on her head causing her to look like her head is tilted to the side, as though feeling quizzical about something. Once it was just a big mess, like birds recently had a fight in it.  Our interaction is always friendly, quick and my response is never in her favor. She always accepts my reply with a smile and says “maybe next time,” and staggers along.

By late afternoon on my last day I stop with the loose ends and accept it’s not all going to get done. The simplest of tasks rarely takes the time it should, and that quickly compounds throughout the day when you have a dozen things you had hoped to take care of but are barely half way through and it’s the end of the day. Instead, I take a final game drive, typically with more kids in the car than I realized I had allowed.  I think I have six or seven, and half-way through the drive I look back and see 14, some of whom are not familiar but give me gigantic grins when we make eye contact. The rangers at the entry, dressed in their issued camouflage and large guns draped across their bodies, smile widely at the scene as we approach and open the gate with no questions about the children I have temporarily abducted. They know what I’m up to and never charge any of us a fee.

We bounced along slowly on the corrugated roads of Samburu National Reserve in my beloved Bush Car, stopped to peer at all animals great or small, giving each one equal viewing time as my subtle way to teach them that all animals are amazing, though elephants always get a little more time because of their curious behavior, and it’s funny to see kids vacillate between utter excitement and complete fear as an elephant walks within 30 feet of the car.  I indulged in the beautiful colors of the Samburu sky at dusk with a group of kids who rarely get to see the wildlife in the park so close to their home, whose mothers most likely had no idea of their whereabouts and likely weren’t worried about it. That’s just how it is around here, for better or for worse.

I dropped all of the kids off in a central location afterward, and they all ran home in different directions, perhaps excited to tell their mothers and friends about riding in a car and seeing wildlife, or maybe because kids just like to run. 

I left the next morning for Nairobi, and as usual, I felt mixed:  accomplished and reassured that it’s not entirely ridiculous for me to invest myself in a place 9,000 miles from home, uncertainty if this place will ever truly be better someday, and humility at how good natured, hopeful and hard-working many people here are – especially young people – despite an environment in which they could understandably be precisely the opposite.

And then it was off to Mauritius, an island 2,000 miles off the African mainland, due east of Madagascar, former home of the extinct dodo bird, and with the world’s #2 rated air quality.  It’s also where four of my first 24 hours were spent in a customs and immigration office sitting on a stool without my shoes and with four officers looking at me while one held an envelope marked “confidential.”

According to one index of good governance of African countries, Mauritius received an 88% rating and an overall #3 ranking of all countries on the continent.  I learned this a few weeks ago while preparing for my trip here, and I recalled this fact to myself while I sat on my stool, realizing there must be a reason it didn’t receive the #1 or #2 ranking on good governance, and perhaps I was in that gap between #3 and the two positions above it.

For U.S. citizens, visas to Mauritius can be acquired on arrival and there’s no fee.  So I was a bit unhinged when things started going amiss when answering the questions at the visa counter. Why was I traveling here? To facilitate a workshop.  For whom? The Durrell Institute of Conservation. The what?  I repeated the name.  Who’s your contact? Jaime (last name omitted). What’s his phone number? I have no idea.  Where are you staying? Pereybere Hotel. How are you getting there? I don’t know;  I’m figuring that out after your interrogation.  

He scanned my passport along its edge on his machine. The machine wouldn’t read it. He tried again. Still no luck.  He looked at me as though somehow I had something to do with this. He typed in the information manually, studied his screen, and typed some more. And then some more. And then it wasn’t typing but aggressively pressing keys one by one, like he was mad at the keyboard.  People on either side of me were sailing through immigration, barely breaking stride in the process with their big smiles and friendly greetings by the Mauritius authorities.  

While looking at his screen he asked me if I had been to Jordan.  Yes, I was there in May.

Within seconds of my response I realize I had forgotten to list Jordan on the part of the visa paperwork that asked which countries I had traveled to in the past six months. 

“I completely forgot. It was a last minute trip for five days.”  I realized how absurd that might have sounded; who travels to Jordan "last minute?" But sometimes the truth is absurd. 

“From May 16 to May 21,” he said sternly, in a clear attempt to communicate that he had information in front of him that gave him power.

“See? Like I said, five days,” I said, in a vain attempt to highlight my honesty.

He asked if I had an invitation letter on letterhead from the sponsoring organization, the one he hadn’t heard about. No, I didn’t. I usually associate the need to have such a letter as evidence that you don’t intend to defect to the country and remain permanently. Really, no one coming through this agent’s line would need a letter because he was doing a good job at making people feel like they want to leave.  But I remained cooperative though unnerved at how many times I had to answer “no” to the next requests, like I was a toddler who only knew the word “no.”  Did I have training materials I could show him? No (I had emailed them to be copied here). Did I have written proof of an onward ticket? No, it’s all on email.  Is this bag your only luggage? No, I have two checked bags.  His face showed suspicion that I was here for seven days but had so much baggage, and explaining that I was on the tail end of two months of travel didn’t seem to allay any of those suspicions.

I pulled up my departing flight information on my phone and showed him that I did have plans to leave Mauritius.

“Why are you arriving on Air Mauritius but departing on another airline?” he asked.

“Because it was more affordable.” It’s possible I sighed as I responded.  

He stamped my passport and waved me through without making eye contact. I had weathered the questioning and felt relieved and barely had anytime to enjoy the relief before another man appeared from an office adjacent to the corridor and approached me, holding a badge and a clipboard.

“You’re in Mauritius to conduct a workshop about what?” he asked.

No introduction. No context.  Straight to asking a question that instantly made me concerned, considering I had left the only person so far with whom I shared this information about 10 seconds ago.  The conversation was brief and repetitious with what I had been asked previously.  He also asked the question about why my departing flight was on a different airline than my arrival flight.

“My brother works for Emirates but they don’t fly from Nairobi to Mauritius.”  He said thanks but didn’t mean it, turned around and was in his office by the time I turned around to look back.

Some time ago I remember reading about airline security personnel being trained in behavioral observation of would-be trouble-makers, and the kind of body language and physiological signs they look for.  As I walked toward baggage claim I wondered how to act like an innocent person. I needed to pee. I had a few cups of tea on the plane. But I thought maybe that’s what guilty people do; they’re nervous so they have to pee, or they try to pee away their guilt. I opted not to pee.  I stood and waited for my bags, wondering if guilty people stand still or shift from one leg to the other.

I retrieved my bags from the carousel and in the minutes that passed while I waited, my nerves calmed down a little bit.  People were sailing through the customs portion much like they had sailed through immigration, barely breaking stride.  But not me. I was diverted into a special screening room so we could all figure out—me included --  what I was guilty of.

My bags were x-rayed and then given a luggage colonoscopy. The agent pulled out my bag of dirty laundry and dumped it upside down, and Mauritius lost its #2 air quality ranking on the spot as a result. He was merciless and brave; he put his fingers in the pockets of shorts I had run in that morning but stuffed into the laundry bag while still wet from sweat. He found my portable scanner and set it aside. He pulled out my toothpaste, told me to open it and eat some. He found another tube and told me to eat some from that one as well, but it was suntan lotion not toothpaste so I refused. He placed it next to the scanner.  He removed the insoles of my running shoes, and their air quality ranking dropped another notch. He placed the shoes with the scanner and lotion. Mauritius’ customs agents were building their case. I had planned to illegally scan Mauritian documents while illegally protecting my face from sunburn, and all the while illegally wearing shoes. 

 

In my backpack, he found a manila envelope marked “confidential.”  The smoking gun.  Except it was a recycled envelope from work. There was nothing confidential about anything inside. It was mostly receipts. He told me to repack the mess he created, and then he picked up the pile of potential evidence in the Confidential envelope, and I followed him down a long hallway to an office wearing socks but no shoes; they had taken those for inspection.

Three people joined us in a room that was barely large enough for all of us. I should have asked for a cigarette.  It would have completed my stereotype for the scene: a blandly decorated room with only a desk and two stools, a metal door, and an attitude by the officers of “we’re willing to stay here as long as this takes.”  The scene reminded me of SWAT teams in middle class suburbs and campus police at universities who get excited at the remotest of possibilities to feel powerful.

The questioning ensued. Why didn’t I know the phone number of my contact here? Why did I give two different answers when asked why I was using two different airlines?  I said it was more affordable to one agent, but explained my brother’s employment with Emirates Airlines to another. They are connected answers, I tried to explain, unconvincingly.  If I was here to lead a workshop, why did I have no training manuals? Why did I withhold “Jordan” from the visa application?

“Why wouldn’t you eat this toothpaste?”

“It’s not toothpaste. It’s suntan lotion.”

“It’s in a tube that is like toothpaste.”

Right, so is BenGay and hemorrrhoid medication but we don't eat it.  Is this a requirement in Mauritius, that you must eat anything in a tube? Is that where we're hung up here?  I considered eating the lotion so it would put an end to what was sure to be one of multiple rounds of nonsense. Instead, I demonstrated by putting the lotion on my hand. They all watched, as though something more dramatic than a little bit of moisturizing would happen, and then they could finally haul me away. It was strange, the five of us watching me apply lotion on my hand like this was some kind of pivotal moment. Instead, all we saw was glowing skin emerge.  For a fleeting moment, I felt like an Avon lady and wanted to ask “now how many of you want the full skincare line?”

As requested next, I demonstrated how the scanner worked. One of them tried it for himself, though I was certain he did so because he wanted to try it for himself out of curiosity. Samburu kids have the same fascination.  We went from skincare demonstration to scanner show-and-tell.

Then we got to the envelope stamped “confidential” that held all of that non-confidential information.  They went through every piece of paper, every receipt. We relived most of my entire Kenya trip, one receipt at a time.  Many receipts were written in Swahili and they asked for translation, failing to realize the absurdity in asking the suspect (me) to do the interpretation. Why did I have four receipts for the same guest house for four separate dates?  They told me this is odd behavior, all of that coming and going. 

We got buried in the minutiae of my travels. Yes, I went to Dubai to visit a family member, and had a last minute trip to Jordan because last minute travel is normal in an “airline family,” and yes I traveled to Kenya where I bounced all around the country because I have teaching, research, a non-profit and a safari company there. The opportunity in Mauritius came up when I met someone at a meeting in Colombia in February to teach in workshop about the social considerations of endangered species recovery.  

 

I had a moment when I wondered if my life was really as unfocused as it sounded when I verbally explained it, and made a mental note to do some thinking about it later, perhaps when I had my shoes back.

I feared they would keep the envelope labeled “confidential”. It held every receipt from two months of travel, and I would rather spend months in a Mauritius prison then return to the university and have to look the bureaucrats in the face and tell them I had no receipts. If they intended to keep the envelope and leave me receipt-less, then I would in fact seek asylum in Mauritius or wherever Eric Snowden settled; that seemed to be working for him.

 

Eventually, I was allowed to enter Mauritius though I don’t think the decision was unanimous. I never found out what it was they suspected.

I had a beautiful week in Mauritius. I went scuba diving for the first time in years, sea kayaked, hiked, ate a lot of bread and cheese (Mauritius is former French colony), and soaked in the island lifestyle. The organizations for which I taught – the Durrell Institute and the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation – have some great people, the kind of people you want to keep working with because of the professional fulfillment and fun that comes along with it.

I’m en route back to the U.S. at this moment, on first class on Emirates Airlines which is even more unbelievable than my business class seat on the way over. The suite area fully encloses via electronic slide doors, I was given a pair of flannel pajamas to keep, there are two showers at the front, and a long menu from which I can order anything at anytime.  This is barely reality. 

I have a good life. No, I have a great life. And a lucky life. Not because I have grilled salmon, a bowl of fresh fruit and a glass of Bordeaux on the way shortly while I sit here in my new pajamas on the upper deck of an international flight. Because I had the dumb luck to be born in a country where you can set a vision for your life and chart a viable path to achieve it; a family where achievement, independence and travel were nurtured and encouraged; and the means to have experiences that help you realize just how damn lucky all of this really is, including a job where you can earn the opportunity to escape your routine and let your mind and body wander around the world’s places.

I have about another month of sabbatical but the signs of its end are emerging. Requests for meetings, emails from students about Fall courses, a dog protesting my absence by jumping the fence periodically, so I'm told. My clothes have only been hand-washed and dried for the past two months and are getting stretched out; most of my shorts and pants barely stay around my waist and my dad would be appalled at the sag. I return home and will complete this sabbatical as fulfilled as ever, perhaps with a clearer sense of purpose for my time on this planet, and assuredness that things have worked out well in the big picture.

Mixed Emotions

Warning: this is a long one. Grab a bottle of wine.

A few years ago, maybe around the time of my 10^th or 11^th trip to Kenya, I finally and more fully recognized why each trip continued to have an impact, no matter how predictable my time here had become as I became more familiar and more comfortable. What I realized is that while in Kenya, I more fully feel a gamut of emotions. As someone who generally lives a life focused on efficiencies and productivity, I either keep emotions neatly packed away, or in many situations, I really just don’t have any which is why I wish I had more friends who are robots.  I sometimes think of “emotions” and “distractions” as synonymous terms.  Go ahead, psychoanalyze it. My mother does it all of the time. She considers all four of her children to be emotionally challenged which is ironic given that she sits on the other end of the spectrum with her box of tissues, claiming to live the human condition more fully as she holds a to-do list that fits on the back of a wine label. Conversely, living a more partial human condition enables me to get a lot done.

Nonetheless, I allow emotions to see the light of day at times while I’m here, before packing them up prior to my flight home.  It’s often not just the emotions, but the combination of emotions that has its effect.  In one situation, or even one moment,  I can experience emotions that otherwise don’t seemingly belong together and that might make a nice title for a future Kenya-based memoir.  Amusement and sadness.  Inspiration and hopelessness.  Respected and ill-treated. 

I ventured to the western part of the country with my Kenyan colleague, David, with whom I started Uso Africas Safaris (“Faces of Africa”), on the latest edition of what I refer to as one of our Tours of Hunger and Exploration. We take a 10-12 day safari we might offer clients and cover it in 5-6 days, and on at least a few of those days we fail to plan sufficiently and find ourselves in the 10^th hour of no caloric intake while trying to navigate with a road map of poor detail. If there’s an occasion when attention to detail is necessary, I daresay it’s when publishing a road map, though the publishers of Kenyan’s road maps apparently think otherwise.  Maybe that’s my Western bias showing itself though I’m comfortable sounding like an arrogant Westerner when making the statement “Roadmaps should actually be helpful for getting to places.” Low blood sugar, mild uncertainty about whereabouts and a shoddy map. Bad combination.

“Turn left at Highway A-4,” I instructed.

“Is that toward Homa Bay?” David asked.

“Homa Bay isn’t on this map.”

“It’s one of the largest cities on Lake Victoria.”

“I promise, David, it’s not on here.”

“Give me that map.”

“Give me peanut butter.”

“What?”

 “We went down, in a blaze of glory.”

That last sentence was from neither David nor myself, but from Kenny Rogers who sang to us from the radio. Frustration with my hunger and the company who produced a crappy map, while amused that Kenny Rogers serenaded us through our lack of direction. Throwback songs from the 70s and 80s have some impressive staying power on Kenyan radio.

Before David and I offer an itinerary or destination through our company, we scout everything out in that location in great detail.  We show up at hotels like home inspectors before a real estate closing. We lay on the beds, test the door locks and flush the toilets, often to the bewilderment of the hotel staff. We visit places around the area to get an idea about the community experiences available to visitors. We rule out tourist-trap sorts of places – the kind that fail to provide any awareness-building or knowledge – and which tend to involve experiencing other human beings in the same way that tourists experience wildlife: mostly through the lens of a camera and with a focus on “looking at” rather than interacting with.  I’m troubled by this willingness for one human being to experience another human being in such a way.

Despite the long days and long hours in the vehicle traveling much of Kenya’s subpar road network, we get a lot done and we have the routine on these trips fully developed such that we rarely need to discuss next steps.  We tour a site, get back in the car, debrief while I write up notes on the laptop and David drives, fail to take food, and move on to the next destination, and occasionally confuse each other with our respective accents.

David:  “We need to bring along KATO” (kay-tow)

Me:  “Why do we need cattle?”

David: “They’re a good organization that can help us.”

Me: “What am I missing here, David? I’m already lost by this conversation.“

David: “What are you missing? I’m not talking about the bag at the airport.”

Me: “It’s just a saying. We need to start over.  Are we talking about cows at all?”

David: “Not cows.  Unless you were talking about cows but I thought you were talking about the bag.”

And so it went.  We’re together 24 hours of the day on these trips, so moments like this are common.

KATO is Kenya Association of Tourism Operators, and “bring along” in Kenya means something like “partner with.”  Cattle are all over the place in Kenya, and not just in fields. They’re on the roadsides, roaming around parking lots and outdoor markets, and so on, and they are a show of wealth in nearly all tribes here. Kenyans often give the “L” a soft pronunciation when they appear in English words, and David is a shrewd businessman always looking to diversify, so all of this led me to think it was reasonable from a practical standpoint that I heard David suggest  we have cattle on safaris, though the idea  seemed absurd to me personally.

On this trip of western Kenyan we first visited the tea-growing region, the most lucrative cash crop in the country.  We toured a facility’s leaf-to-tea bag factory that would have sent an OSHA employee into seizures as we ducked under moving conveyor belts and dodged forklifts. I appreciate that Kenya defers to people’s common sense not to get run around by forklifts or carried away on a belt to the leaf chopper. The whole tour was awesome. I was fully enamored by the automation of the process and its creative and simple ingenuity.  At the end of the line stood two employees with white lab coats and the title of “tea taster” written in big block letters on the back, and there they stood all day, with dozens of thermoses of hot water and tea cups on a nearby table that included a lacy tablecloth, which made me smile. Nearby was a giant lever with the words “Stop Factory” written above it, which seemed dramatic and serious, yet precariously unprotected; it looked like someone could accidentally brush it as they walked by and shut down all operations. Below it was a posted sign about safety and helmets, and one of the silhouetted people on an illustration was missing their head from some kind of factory sign-making defect, not graffiti (I made sure to look closely). It made me smile wider.  I love these unexpected moments of hilarity in this country.

After the tea tour and a stop in Kenya’s soapstone carving region, we arrived late to Mbita town on the shores of Lake Victoria. We had a rotten sleep courtesy of two barking dogs on our side of the guest house. At some point during the night while we both laid awake I jokingly asked David if he had a slingshot and he replied his yard isn’t big enough but maybe he could just get a slide because his daughters would love it.

A full day personal tour on a dhow fishing boat took us around a section of Lake Victoria – the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume --  and we loved it. We visited small islands and met people in their 30s and 40s who have never left their island but asked me about Hillary Clinton and Chuck Norris.  They were incredibly hospitable and welcoming.  We met a 70-year old man who I would have guessed was in his 50s; he started a school in his village after he said God spoke to him and told him to close his bar and open a school, which he did.  He also said God spoke to him once about his multiple wives and 11 kids, but he said he felt mixed about that message.

“He told me that I must take care of the ones I already have, but I’d like to have another,” he said.

“Another wife or another child?” I asked.

David chuckled but I didn’t intend the question to be funny.  I’ve become too comfortable in this culture at times.  

“Maybe both,” he responded.

‘Near, far, wherever you are…”

Celine Deon was belting out a song on a speaker somewhere nearby. It was time to go.

The western Kenya tour ended with a drive through Masai Mara National Reserve, one of my favorite places on this planet for its amazing savannah landscape and abundant wildlife. A male lion slept directly on the dirt road, and we waited for an hour while he held us hostage until he finally awoke and moved out of the way.

After returning and staying in Nairobi for two nights, I headed back to Samburu where the past 24 hours have again produced a swirl of oddly-coupled emotions.  Part of the journey included driving a colleague’s vehicle from Nairobi to the town of Nanyuki, about two-thirds of the way from Nairobi to Samburu.  “Driving” isn’t really the right verb; “racing” is a more appropriate description. There’s about as much order and cooperation on Kenya’s roads as a bumper car ride, punctuated by periodic challenges to yield enough room for you, the oncoming vehicle, the other oncoming vehicle attempting to pass, a motorbike threading the smallest of spaces through which to pass, and a multitude of living things along the shoulder: a herd of goats, a bicyclist with six crates of soda stacked on the back, a man pushing a wheelbarrow of watermelons.  

The final segment of the journey to Samburu was by matatu (mah-TA-too),  a 14-seat mini-van that serves as public transportation throughout most of the country. The inebriated and poorly spoken ticket-taker asked me to buy him a soda while we waited for the matatu to fill up. It was more of an order than a request, and he spit the words along with the green leafy remnants of the miraa (or qat) he chewed. Miraa is a mild and perfectly legal stimulant in Kenya, but like most substances that are available here, I find that it’s typically used in excess in this region.  If you drink one beer, you’re probably intending to drink at least five more. 

The behavior of the matatu conductor encroached on one of my breaking points, which is when a complete and non-desperate stranger requests or demands something for the only reason that I’m a mzungu (non-African).  My usual response is a friendly and straight-forward “no” spoken in Swahili which sends the message that I’ve been in this country enough to know some of the language and the antics of clever people around here.  He repeated his request a few times, and I sat there fiddling around in my backpack looking for nothing but avoiding continued interaction as my frustration silently mounted.  Though our matatu was full by the Kenya legal standard of 14 people, we were going to wait longer while he solicited more passengers to cram into the vehicle so he could make a few more shillings probably to buy more miraa, holding the 14 of us in the vehicle to facilitate his self-interest.

“How am I supposed to live without you?” Michael Bolton asked from a speaker in a nearby shop. It wasn’t a song that was appropriate for the moment.

A teacher I know from one of the primary schools was also on the matatu. He, too, chewed miraa, and his benchseat in the vehicle was shared with four school-aged children.  He told me he was returning home from attending church service (it was Sunday). A self-proclaimed Christian who works as a teacher is chewing miraa in a community with significant substance abuse issues while sharing a seat with school children.  I could feel the reaction building in my stomach and moving through my chest; it’s a feeling I easily recognize here. 

Realizing it would still be awhile before we left, I exited the matatu to use the bathroom. There was a bathroom attendant selling toilet tissue, by the square, at the entry, which I assumed meant it was not available in the bathroom itself.  “How many pieces do you need?” he asked, and I was thankful I only needed to urinate, and hoped that most buyers erred on the side of over-estimation. Then again, I think it’s a tough thing to estimate. You don’t really know until you’re in there and even then I think it’s tough to give it a number. He’d arguably be more successful in taking a door-to-door sales approach and hit the stalls directly. The shillings would probably be tossed under the door faster than he could keep up with. Frustrated at my matatu situation but humored by the toilet tissue broker.

I arrived to Samburu needing to decompress and recalibrate. None of this miraa or solicitation behavior by the matatu conductor surprised me, especially on a weekend. Nonetheless, I was feeling cynical as I considered that this is the type of behavior that kids see day in and day out. It’s how many of them understand you’re supposed to act in adulthood. 

Later that evening I had a discussion about malaria and diabetes with some of the usual people around the camp area that I’ve known for awhile now. The day before I was in Nairobi to attend a college fair with two students that are supported by our Samburu Youth Education Fund, and a Dutch doctor and her husband staying at the same guest house joined us at the dinner table. They were living in Mozambique, and she talked about how difficult her work is sometimes because of some age-old beliefs such as eating too much fruit causes diabetes or malaria can be caused by cold weather. I’ve heard similar statements in Samburu. 

A few of them questioned if the doctor knew what she was talking about, and one stated that what’s true for mzungus isn’t true for Africans, to the nods of a few others. I asserted that science had this stuff figured out well beyond a reasonable doubt, but their unwillingness to consider new information persisted and instead they hung onto these beliefs that have been passed down for generations. The stubbornness, also something to which I have grown accustomed here, deflated me as I recalculated the odds unfavorably that substantive change could occur here.  It’s an unsettling feeling when I have these moments, a mix of feeling naïve and honestly, a little bit stupid, for thinking that my efforts, and the efforts of those that have joined me, would actually matter. 

Benedict rescued my hope-for-the-world freefall.  One of the most hard-working and thoughtful young men I’ve met in Samburu if not in my life, and one of our scholarship recipients from Samburu Youth Education Fund, he walked out with a full bowl of guacamole and a plate full of sliced pineapple.   He knows I love both, and Benedict, god bless him, goes to excruciating and mind-boggling efforts to keep me comfortable here.  I woke up once, walked outside from my hut, and he was cleaning out the inside of the airvents of my vehicle with an old toothbrush.  He once offered to clean my toe nails.  One time I gave him the equivalent of $25 after a visit of a few weeks in which he worked tirelessly, and he walked up to the nearby women’s village and gave it to them. 

One avocado in Kenya makes about enough guacamole to cater a Cinco de Mayo party in El Paso, so the tension of the discussion about what causes diabetes or malaria was mitigated by us filling our mouths. I love the freshness and simplicity of the ingredients.  I was still frustrated with the discussion but satiated by the half-gallon of guacamole I consumed.  

The next day I went to a local primary school to meet with one of our advisors for Samburu Youth Education Fund, Mr. Isigi.  I wasn’t sure what was on the agenda; he asked last minute if I would come talk about “something important.”  I arrived and in his office sat two women. One woman I knew from a local village, Rose.  She introduced the other woman, Monica, and told us the reason for our meeting was to request a scholarship for Monica to attend secondary school.

Monica was a tall and slender 21-year old with a simple elegance.  She wore clothes that were crisp and pressed, as though they were purchased brand new for this occasion. New clothes don’t exist around here, so it’s noticeable and impressive when someone is dressed sharply. Monica was far better dressed than me. Given the last minute request, I just went as I was, though schools are more formal environments than what my clothes on this day would suggest. The second-hand t-shirt I wore, which I recently picked up from a roadside vendor because I mistakenly left a few shirts behind earlier in my travels, read “Reclaim the Dance Floor” and was on its third consecutive day of use though I have failed to reclaim any dance floor in Samburu or anywhere else.

Monica was formal and proper in the conversation, referring to us as “Mr. Brett” and “Mr. Isigi.” Her English was proficient, an indication that she had probably done well while in primary school.  She spoke softly but confidently and started by explaining her previous five years.

She looked down as she started to talk.

In 2008, she finished 8^th grade at age 15, and intended to enroll in secondary school as her father had promised. Instead, her father arranged for her to marry a man much older than her, someone she described as one of her father’s friends.  

“He’s my father, so I consented.”  

This man, her husband, refused to allow her to enroll in secondary school.

“He was my husband, so I had to consent to him also.”

She looked down further, squarely looking at the floor by this point, feeling embarrassed or shameful, but maintaining confidence as she spoke.

“This year I got a divorce.  I want to go to secondary school now. I have arranged for how my son will be taken care of while I’m in classes. I want to be a lawyer.  I want my story to be one of the last stories like it.” 

Her head was starting to lift up again.  

A lump formed in my throat while she talked.  Stories of arranged marriages and other terrible violations of women’s rights are not unusual or new to me in Samburu, but I don’t recall ever hearing a story first-hand, from someone so young, and in English. The words I heard were exactly hers; nothing was lost in translation.

Whatever might have been going on in the school yard by the hundreds of children there, or even by others in the room where we met, I have no idea.  I was entirely focused on and taken by her presentation and her resilience.  The sorrow, self-doubt and despair Monica had undoubtedly suffered in her past was slowly but increasingly that: in her past.

“I know I can make you proud, Mr. Brett and Mr. Isigi.”

She had convinced me of that long before she articulated it.

She had made her case, and done it well.  A brief period of silence followed as we all processed her story and request. The tone and emotions of the moment were simultaneously inspiring and heart-breaking, and then comically interrupted by three or four small goats that entered the office, took a few steps in, then turned around and exited as though they realized they were interrupting something important.  During one of the heaviest of moments I can recall in Kenya from my many experiences, the country still managed to make me smile with its odd combination of occurrences. Goats interrupting a young woman as she talks about her arranged marriage? Of course.

Mr. Isigi raised some questions to consider about the divorce. Was it recognized by the government? Did she have the written proof of the divorce? Otherwise, he noted, the Samburu Youth Education Fund could be liable for going against the wishes of her ex-husband. 

What? I was confused. A million questions raced to mind. How could the ex-husband sue?  What on Earth was written in Kenyan or Samburu law that a girl going to secondary school would violate? On what grounds was there any viable potential for an organization to be sued? I was dumbfounded and thought the question was a little bit absurd, but I was the outsider because everyone else in the room acknowledged it as something to look into further.  My emotions raced from empathy for Monica to contempt to the ex-husband and Kenya’s judicial system.  If the ex-husband walked into the room at that moment, I surely would have violated a suite of Kenyan laws and ethics, and a few of my own as well.

Our half-hour meeting with Monica ended with a commitment to place her at the top of the list for consideration on the next round of scholarships.  Starting school at this point in the year, we all agreed, would be setting her up to struggle as the school year is more than half completed.  Come January 2014, we intend to see Monica fully outfitted in a school uniform and on her way to class.  By 2025, I hope I’m reading about her as an advocate and defender of women’s rights.  There’s something about her that makes me believe that’s not a far-fetched possibility.

I returned to the camp with a mix of emotions while Linda Ronstadt and Lionel Richie expressed their endless love for each other on someone’s transistor radio nearby.  Earlier in the day I had promised a group of kids a game drive if they completed lessons in their workbooks during the afternoon. The teachers are on strike and if local kids want to hang around the camp, the deal is we have ad-hoc independent study with occasional breaks for diabetes-causing fruit and fun-causing Frisbee.  A few take me up on it and unsurprisingly, they didn’t disappoint. I’ve been introduced to some of the most hard-working, diligent and knowledge-hungry 10-12 year olds that I could ever imagine.  The five of them plus four older teenagers that have grown up before me here for the past six to seven years joined us, along with one of our local research assistants.  If you’re keeping count, that’s 11 people in my five-seat bush car, and it makes for a whole lotta fun as we bounce along slowly on the corrugated roads of Samburu National Reserve from a car with extraordinarily poor shock absorption. It’s like experiencing a safari from a running washing machine. The laughter over the next two hours was nearly nonstop from the tomfoolery of a group of young people, and one adult (that's me) who allows for and occasionally contributes to it.  The car has a large hatch in the roof over the backseat so passengers can stand up for better safari-viewing, which means there was laughter coming from above me, as well as behind and beside me.  It was only interrupted when we saw the peaceful march of a herd of elephants, a pair of gerenuk in full sprint for reasons we could not identify, or some other wonderfully similar moment that occurred during the backdrop of brilliant orange colors that make up an African sky at sunset.

Two of the silly kids that steal my heart every day here.

After dinner that night, my face was buried in my laptop to complete a few things, mostly emails. Teku, an 11-year old boy with a wide smile and kind heart, tapped me on the shoulder, and then pulled on my arm to take me out from under the lights to watch the moon rise which was just starting from behind a small mountain off in the distance. Last night we all watched “supermoon” rise, and I figured that Teku didn’t realize it was a one-time event and taking time to watch moon rises wasn't part of a new nightly routine at the camp. Teku is mostly deaf and we usually struggle to communicate verbally, but he knew enough from lip reading my poorly spoken Swahili and my body language to interpret what I was saying, refused to agree to it, and said, “twende” (come).  So I did, because you can’t resist Teku’s smile. We sat riverside as the water peacefully flowed by and watched the moon emerge off in the distance for maybe five minutes during which time I doubt Teku ever broke his smile. I want to believe that somehow, he knew that the moonrise was what I needed to put the finishing touch on again feeling at peace and hopeful for this area, and maybe when he's older, he'll realize the role he had in all of it as well. My purpose seems to be here in this place at this point in my life, as ridiculous as that seems to me sometimes....

Oh Kenya, you make me laugh when you dont intend to...

I’ve been back in Kenya since the end of May, co-teaching a field course for 14 undergraduates from our college at Colorado State University who are learning about ecological and social research methods (the intended content) as well as their respective breaking points or abilities to cope with the same group of people for two consecutive weeks (secondary content that presents itself. No facilitation needed).  It’s one part classroom, one part adventure, one part profound challenges to one’s worldview, and just a hint of middle school.  College students, overall, crack me up. As I get older, I increasingly feel like they are aliens that I share a planet with but not much else. They’ve never heard of the movie Out of Africa but can talk and debate ad nauseum about whether Taylor Swift is actually a country singer or not. These sort of crystal clear moments of generation gap are more frequent in my life with each passing year.  Earlier this year a student remarked that it'd be cool if I married his mom so that I could be his step-dad. 

Kenya never fails to amuse me when I least expect it, which means I rarely have a camera handy when those moments occur.  These moments are some blend of a translation-gone-bad, unfortunate typo or mistake, creative ingenuity, and in some cases, I have no idea what the thinking or mishap might have been.  Here is my laundry list of examples from my current and recent trips.

Yesterday while traveling up to Nairobi from the heart of the Rift Valley we passed a vehicle that had absolutely no windows.  I don’t just mean it lacked side windows. There was also no rear window and no windshield.  Instead of insects hitting his windshield, some undoubtedly were hitting him in the face. This car was similar to what I’ve seen at the conclusion of the Stearns County demolition derby in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. 

Last Thursday there was 20km walk in Samburu to raise awareness about the impacts of poaching. It was a peaceful march that included old and young, girls and boys, highly education and less educated.  Many had something to carry, such as a sign with a message about an intolerance to poaching.  Others carried large posters of photos with elephants, a beautiful animal indeed.  Those that ran out of time or failed to plan ahead held magazine covers with elephants on the front.  And some took the magazine cue to carry, well, just any magazine.  One person carried a magazine high above his head, with a cover story about the former prime minister’s wife titled “Balancing the High Life with Being a Woman.”   I love these instances in which someone has essentially imported an idea from elsewhere but wasn’t able to decipher all of the important details and took it primarily at face value.  In this scenario, I assume the person thought “it’s a peaceful protest, and you have to carry something.”  

Most secondary schools have a motto; that’s pretty customary here.  The motto is usually a mix of borrowed positive words and phrases centered around achievement, discipline and high expectations.  Many times these mottos use words that may sound correct in a phonetic sense but are a letter or two from accurate.  A few days ago we drove past a school with its name painted along a cinder block wall, and underneath was the motto “Starving for Pefection.” And yes, “Perfection” was misspelled, as though they needed to provide evidence of their motto.  It’s also possible they meant “Striving for Perfection.”  This sign may have been completed by the same painter who designed the nearby shop sign for “Buttery Charging." Another school had a motto suited for those aspiring for mediocrity, as it claims to be "A Place for Reasonable Education."

We drove past a sign for a bank that included a message of “We won’t lose your money.”  I usually assume such a thing by virtue of being a bank, but I suppose it’s nice to have that commitment stated explicitly.  I also appreciated a butchery that proudly announced on its sign “Our meat isn’t old, especially the goat meat.”  I'm not sure if maybe that ends up calling the quality of the goat meat into question afterall, or everything they sell that isn’t goat meat.  But something in that name makes me suspicious.  And just today I passed a small pick-up with an enclosed topper and the word/question "Meat?" written on it in big block letters.  

My all-time favorite billboard which extended over the entire side of a 8-10 story building was "It's a great day for sausages," written below a 3-story high picture of a sausage on a fork. I'm not sure what characteristics of a day make it great for meat products exactly, but if you trust the sign, today is a great day for it. 

I recently drove by a church, and following the name on its sign was the phrase "Because Jesus was a winner." We all like a winner, afterall.

Another reliable source of entertainment on a long drive is reading names of the the many little shops ("dukas") and roadside cafes that we pass while en route.  I started writing down the more humorous ones during my last two trips.  This includes the “Gender Equity Restaurant,” “Small but Cool Kiosk,” and the “Free to Leave Anytime” restaurant. I appreciate the honesty of the "Slow but Sure Cafe,” though I have learned over the years never to assume that a local Kenyan restaurant has your first three choices, or to plan on waiting while someone from the cafe leaves to go buy the products necessary to make the meal you just ordered. 

 A few additional laughs can be had by the seemingly insensible combination of products or services provided by a single business. I have passed “Karibu Beauty Salon and Butchery” which works out well for the busy patron who needs both a haircut and a few kilos of goat meat.  Another roadside vendor didn’t have a sign but its two primary products were wooden coffins and wheelbarrows, which makes some good business sense if you think about it for a moment.  Another shop sold school uniforms and cement; I can’t come up with a scenario where those two products are logically connected in any sort of ethical way.  

At JK Bookstore, you can, of course, buy a cow (look closely).

And older Kenyans seeking to hone their driving skills can pick up some miracle chicken while waiting, and after their lesson is over they can pick up a propane tank from the Driving School. Incidentally, yesterday I saw a massive truck (called a "lorry" around here) with the "Senior Driving" sign on it, and everything about the vehicle's waywardness supported that it was being driven by someone new to the world of operating a vehicle, and a truck in particular.  Picture your grandmother learning to drive for the first time in the biggest U-Haul truck available for rent.  Now you've got the picture. 

On your way to Nanyuki, you can stop at "Mama's Dress Shop" where a promise on the door is made to "Make you look like a movie star" and when you're done, you can step outside and buy a headstone.

On a stop on my way back to Nairobi earlier in the week, I was solicited by a vendor to the vehicle and asked to buy a bunch of bananas which she held in her hand. I declined, and then she reached into her dress, pulled out a set of AAs (batteries, not breasts), and asked if I would like to buy batteries. Again, I declined. She reached down to the ground, grabbed a chicken, held it by its neck as she put her arm into my car, and insisted I at least buy her poultry that was now dangling above my lap.

A Kenyan bread company advertises on its bread bag that the bread is a great source of protein, and that eating a loaf – an entire loaf! – is good for your muscles.  A fastfood pizza company extols the merits of its product as “One half pizza provides the fat you need in a day.”  I’m sure that’s an accurate statement, though probably more accurate to say “exceeds” rather than “provides.” 

Yesterday while waiting outside a market, I leaned up against a wall that I soon discovered had been very recently painted. The entire now-white right side of my jacket is proof.  No sign. No warning.  Just a large white stripe now on my black jacket. The painter, who was further down the wall, smiled innocently and said it looked like a zebra.   

That’s the latest, albeit brief, blog of the entertaining moments while again traveling in Kenya. 

Jordan in the morning!

I went to Jordan on 12 hours’ notice, for which I am proud as I’m not someone who has the luxury of living spontaneously very often. The best laid plans fell apart around 8pm yesterday. I had planned to join my brother on his flight from Dubai to Sri Lanka, and stay for a few days while he shuttled back and forth between Dubai and Sri Lanka a few times over four days for work. We bounced around the idea of me going along weeks beforehand when he got his schedule.  But in a moment of double-checking details, my brother discovered that just 10 days prior, Sri Lanka changed their visa rules to require Americans to attain a visa in advance instead of upon entry.  Lest I be relegated to five days of trying to avoid the heat of Dubai without it involving shopping malls – a nearly impossible task -- my brother and I looked at flights with open seats and no longer than three to four hours, and with the likelihood of some English speaking; with only five days, I wouldn't have a lot of time to allocate to long misunderstandings about where the toilet is or making it clear that I’m not interested in a prostitute. Though on my first off-the-beaten track adventure in 1995 in English-speaking Belize, I somehow inadvertently arranged for a prostitute to show up to my room, which proved momentarily handy when I needed help re-hanging the shower rod that had collapsed earlier in the day, but then got awkward when I then realized that we were both now standing in the shower.

My brother’s friend and fellow airline employee Omar was visiting when we discovered the Sri Lanka visa issue, and to my good fortune, he had been playing around with the idea of going to Jordan during an upcoming 4-5 day stretch of days off, and unloaded all of his intellectual Jordan trip-planning property on me.  Within about an hour I had a rental car reserved and my first night’s stay figured out.  I’d figure out the rest on a day by day basis.

My flight put me in Jordan’s capital, Amman, by mid-morning and I was in my rental car shortly thereafter. The rental car agent, an older and jolly man, remarked that on the day of my return, it would be his birthday and he would working because he always works, even on his birthday, which was Monday, the day that I would be sure to see him because I was returning the car that day. He wanted to be really sure I knew.

In anticipation of some squirrely driving norms I read about on the internet, I had reserved a mid-sized car under the urban legend that a slightly bigger car with slightly more metal will protect me in a slightly large collision. The car I received was no where near the size of the mid-sized car in the photo that I reserved on the internet, and I’m pretty sure that no matter what I reserved or what I paid for, I would have been given the same crappy car that was delivered to me.  It had the comfort, handling and size of a Radio Flyer wagon, and at a speed of around 100 km/hour (roughly 60 mph) it felt like parts of the car – inside and out – were falling off. Indeed, I think I returned the car with one less hubcap than what I started with but the apathetic guy working the check-in either failed to notice or didn’t care.

I drove south for about 150 miles, wondering often if I had just missed the turn to my initial destination, Petra. I was told at the airport that the road signs in Jordan were abundant.  Indeed, the road signs were abundant. Abundantly written in Arabic. Or, a destination would be written in English but followed by words in Arabic. When you see your intended destination written on a sign it often means some upcoming course of action is needed. My only resources were Bedouin people who somehow live in this barren, hot and desolate landscape, and on my one attempt in asking a Bedouin for clarification about the way to Petra, he pointed to one of his sheep. He could see the confusion in my eyes, and to clarify his initial response, he pointed to another sheep.

My further complication was the signs depicting upcoming roads and turns reminded me of Chutes and Ladders. They resembled shapes consistent with what a 2 year old comes up with when given a crayon.  I’ve never seen such options to drive in shapes that resembled question marks and EKG results. And there’s massive roundabouts  fed by an insensible number of roads. No reasonable  person designs a round-about that is fed by 11 roads, the maximum I counted in one instance which took me three laps to count and one additional lap to confirm, which was how I passed the time while acknowledging my complete uncertainty about where to go, and after completing an oral cursing of the Jordanian department of transportation.

I have a mixed history with roundabouts. In Mexico City about six or seven years ago, I went on an early morning run, and made a mental note of the roundabout near my hotel that included a statue of Jesus in the middle of it. It would be my landmark to insure a successful return to my hotel.  And then I promptly got lost for two to three hours and gained a greater appreciation for the devotion of Mexico’s 85% Catholic population to Him as the overseer of traffic, as He presided over many roundabouts in the vicinity of my hotel.  By the time I returned – in a taxi – my colleague had called the police, we missed our departing flight, and later that morning I dropped a 20 litre glass water container at the feet of Mexico's national park service administrative leadership team. 

Back to today, though. Eventually I made it to Petra, home of the ancient civilization that was carved out of rock more than 2,000 years ago by an industrious and extinct Arabic group called the Nabataean. It reminded me of cultural resources protected in places such as Mesa Verde in Colorado or Tikal in Guatemala.  At Petra there are massive mausoleums, facades, a theater, all carved meticulously from the surrounding stone with impressive size and flare.  There’s a few miles’ worth of walking to see it all.

It’s easy to feel impressed with Petra the civilization, but difficult to feel impressed by Petra the tourist destination. I have mixed feelings about my time there.  Approximately every hundred meters along the trail there is a vendor selling tea, soda, water, magnets, figurines and a variety of trinkets that are labeled to be “real Bedouin” including the snow globes. Sadly, nearly all of these vendors are Bedouins who don’t just sell the wares at these stands but also live and sleep in their canvas-covered shops overnight.  Bedouins are a historically nomadic and herding population that comprise about a third of Jordan’s population, but the herding tradition has waned over the years and left many Bedouins without a clear livelihood, and many have taken up tourism as an alternative.  I struggle between empathy for their situation, respect for their need to make a living like the rest of us, and quite honestly, the impact on my experience as I’m offered and sometimes demanded to buy a cup of Bedouin tea or buy a bracelet. When I declined, it was sometimes followed by a guilt-laden comment in broken English. The only way to avoid this situation, as I saw it, would be to purchase a cup of tea at every request and I didn’t have the appetite for 800 cups of tea.

I got an early start at Petra so I could see sunrise from its highest point, which overlooks the same Rift Valley in Kenya that I have visited so many times 2500 miles to the south.  At the final saddle of the trail there’s a number of options to ascend a higher point for a view of the valley, and I absolutely loved that two signs, side by side, made identical claims of “best view of the valley” with arrows pointed in exactly opposite directions.  I wondered if they were also designed by the Jordan department of transportation. I wanted to determine for myself which had the best view, but in both cases was denied because access to the best view required a purchases from the vendor along that respective summit trail.

I reached the furthest point at Petra by mid morning, and then returned upstream against a wanderlust and frighteningly large current of tourists. The crowds became larger as I approached the trailhead, and just beyond the trailhead was a cluster of buses jockeying for parking spots and struggling to turn around in confined spaces. I marveled that such insanity existed at a World Heritage Site. I stood and watched this circus act for a few minutes while lamenting that my camera battery had died, preventing me from taking a video. 

Most tourists walked with their heads facing upwards to look at Petra’s various structures which means the tourist scene in Petra is more like a cacophony of stumbling tourists on Petra’s uneven trails. Many had some kind of branding on their person required by their tour company to insure no one accidentally gets mixed up with the wrong group.  Individuals in one group were given bandanas in a hunter orange color and obviously told to wear them around their arms; a World Heritage Site gang, if you will. Another group wore large, bright yellow visors, and I wondered how adult-aged paying clients were willing to go along with this. And some people just don't have the right hair for visors.

I left Petra with some uncertainty about what to make of my experience and headed for the Red Sea, about 80 miles south, with Aqaba as my intended destination. Aqaba is Jordan’s only port city, and it sits a few miles north of the border with Saudi Arabia and directly adjacent to the border with Israel.  Overall Jordan shares a border with these two countries as well as Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and if you’re keeping tally, most of those countries are engaged in or on the precipice of or recent recovery from high levels of civil unrest. Saudi Arabia is the exception though it is a country that beheads people in public for non-violent crimes, cuts of hands of shoplifters, and whose most recent breakthrough in women’s rights is allowing girls to play sports within their girls-only schools. 

My hotel was just south of Aqaba, or so I thought.  The hotel I booked, as it turned out, was located in Egypt. Both countries have a “Tala Bay” and I booked a hotel with the word “Tala Bay” in the name and located on the Red Sea without reading all of the important details, such as whether or not the hotel was located in the same country where I was visiting.   On my way to the incorrect Tala Bay hotel, just outside of the town, I missed the turn and ended up at Saudi border, and wondered which part of my body would be dismembered for a U-turn.

The hotel was understanding about my mistake and gave me a room at the same rate as I had booked at their sister hotel in Egypt. In the period of confusion about my reservation in which four additional employees were enlisted, no one came up with the suggestion that I was booked at the hotel with the exact same name in two different countries and situated on opposite shores of the Red Sea.  Whether it was true or not, I felt like I was the first person in their history to make the mistake, and it seems like this would happen more often.  But maybe it doesn't and so instead I just felt stupid.

I swam and snorkeled in the Red Sea but in hindsight would have stayed closer to town where I would have had easier access to walk around to get a feel for the vibe of the place and its people. There was a pleasant boardwalk in town with families, fishermen, couples and other walks of life enjoying it, vendors selling apricots, pistachios and oranges from the backs of trucks, and groups of teenagers on break from school and engaging in the universal teenage behavior of "hanging out", the only verb I know of that doesn't actually imply doing anything.

The next day I ventured north to the Dead Sea which was about 150 miles north on a highway that paralleled the border with Israel, of which I was reminded approximately every mile by either a lookout tower with multiple soldiers or signs announcing that any stopping of vehicles or photography was strictly prohibited and that soldiers had the right to “act accordingly” to any suspicious behavior.  It was a clear reminder that this part of the world is extremely tenuous, so much so that getting a flat tire along this highway could be interpreted as grounds for suspicion.  It’s a stressful part of the planet.

I arrived at the Dead Sea, which sits 1400 feet below sea level, got out of the car and was assaulted by a heat that I would not normally associate with something that can be experienced on Earth.  There’s a lot written in the Bible about this part of the world of course. For example, Moses and his entourage are said to have walked around this desert for 40 years. I barely tolerated the walk from my car to the hotel lobby.  If the story is true, Moses is the biggest bad ass to have ever existed.

I did the requisite Dead Sea activities of smothering my body in its muddy soil which is said to have therapeutic age-defying properties. I did this twice and awaiting the amazing results as I type. I also did the standard lying on my back in the sea with a newspaper, which required no effort to maintain because of the added buoyancy provided by so much salt.  It was strange. I couldn't physically touch the bottom of the sea because of it, until I dove down really hard and then learned what water with super high levels of salt content feels like in your eyes.

The next day I experienced the highlight of my Jordanian adventure, a canyon hike in which trekkers walked upstream literally in the river. I have done similar treks  in the Narrows of Zion National Park in Utah, but this one felt more adventurous. We should have known something was peculiar when we were offered life jackets -- for a hike, remember -- at the trailhead and told to leave our cameras in the car because they would get ruined.  The canyon was narrow in places, and it was fed by dozens and dozens of waterfalls that entered from dozens and dozens of entry points far above us, often carrying a very high volume of water. We hiked in the warm air and the torrential waterfall downpour of warm rain.

In a few spots along the river, there were large boulders with cables or ropes to assist in climbing up and over them. Imagine climbing up a rock using only a cable and with no footholds while torrents of water spilled over the rock and directly into your face. It was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. This scenario repeated itself multiple times.  I made the remark at one juncture that “there’s no way this is the route up this section” but indeed it was the route up that section and every part of my body was given a good flushing while I proceeded through, up and over it. I hiked with a few Germans I had met in the parking lot, and we took turns with who went first when confronted with these obstacles, perhaps to spread around the risk of dying by being the first one up a section, though no one explicitly stated it. At one point, while climbing up a series of rocks in what was essentially a class 3-4 rapid, one of them turned to me and said “Das ist not intelligent.”

Overall, the hike was ridiculous amounts of fun.  Absolutely ridiculous amounts of fun. The Germans were staying at a super swanky Dead Sea resort and in yet another moment of good karma, earlier that day two people in their larger party had to leave the trip early on a moment’s notice, and they offered me their room which was paid for and for which they could not receive a refund due to the last minute cancellation.  It wasn’t a place where I would spend that kind of money in a million years for a night in a hotel because I would choose to pay my mortgage instead,  but they insisted that I take the room and maybe buy the group a round of drinks. Done.  And so I again had my soiree with the luxurious high life for a limited but entirely enjoyable gluttonous period of time. I’ve been riding this Good Karma Train for awhile now, and I can only figure the that journey must be coming to an end sometime soon, so start asking favors and requests because I need to replenish the tank.

How to describe Dubai....

How to describe Dubai to anyone who hasn’t been there is a challenge. Most of us have built parts of Dubai when we played around with piles of legos as a kid – tall towers erected one after the other, laid out in such a way that the functionality of our lego city would be challenging but not impossible.  Dubai is one part Vegas, one part Disneyland, and one part Gotham City, but without the trashy people, ungracious kids or Wonder Woman in a jet that was pointlessly invisible since she herself was not invisible so it would just look like a buxom woman moving in the air while in the sitting position, respectively.  Dubai’s urban planning was possibly completed on Sim City by a classroom of second graders who ate a box of Twinkies each beforehand.  It’s home to the world’s tallest building, world’s largest water fountain, world’s only indoor ski slope, world’s only housing development in the shape of the planet, and other “world’s only”-laden landmarks.  At some point, the “world’s only” designation is overkill.

Everything  in Dubai is so clean and often so luxurious. I went for a run and the sidewalk was adorned with tiles that reminded me of ones I recently ruled out for a flooring project because they were too expensive.  The government recently announced that they were purchasing police cars with a pricetag of more than $500,000 each. That wasn’t a typo. One Dubai police car is more than the value of everything I own, or more accurately stated, that my bank mostly owns but is willing to let me buy from them over the course of 30 years.

Actual photograph of one of many Dubai skylines, this one from 124 floors up

And it’s hot.  Hellish hot.  I went on my tile sidewalk runs around 5am because much later and the temperature becomes unbearable, and at that hour I also didn’t have to run by anyone else and wonder if running is what anyone else does in Dubai or if they figured I was an ex-pat just up to some insensible ex-pat activity in the heat because we need to retain our routine. As it was, I returned from these at-dawn runs as a sweaty mess, looking like at some point I fell into the nearby 30-acre manmade Lake Dubai that was constructed in front of the 5.4 million square foot Dubai Mall and in the shadows of the 163-story high Burj Karifa building. Unfortunately I couldn't cool down by swimming in Lake Dubai because it’s prohibited, I assume because of the danger of swimming in a lake with hundreds of underwater fixtures for the elaborate 275 meter fountain located in the lake. Further, the fountain is choreographed to a combination of more than 25 songs that includes Lionel Richie, Beyonce, Celine Deon, Andrea Bocelli and the national anthem of United Arab Emirates (UAE).  Something for everyone, except the Lionel Richie stuff because certainly no one has liked the music of Lionel Richie since 1991.

UAE is the country in which Dubai, one of seven emirates (think of an emirate as a state), is located. The country itself isn’t large; the entire north-south length can be driven within a few hours. Two of the emirates --  Dubai and Abu Dhabi --  – have the concentration of wealth in this country, and their respective leaders (called “sheikhs”) have essentially been engaged in an intra-country duel for at least a decade to out-build, out-glitz and generally out-do the other, which is why both Dubai and Abu Dhabi have their over-the-top images.

Dubai baffles me that it even exists.While its roots are in fishing and pearl harvesting, those industries were not so abundant that a country of nearly 8 million people and the 13^th highest per capita GDP in the world could emerge from a desert with essentially no nearby source of fresh water.  I associate most large cities in the world as having to pass through a blue-collar, industrial phase or be home to a massive seaport, on its way to significant post-industrial economic wealth. The U.S. and many European cities had their industrial revolutions.  Australia had its coal-driven heyday.  Dubai seems to have skipped that phase; it went straight to post-industrial.  

Of course there’s oil around here – UAE is a top 10 world producer -- but UAE and Dubai’s wealth doesn’t stem only from petrol. The country’s leaders had more foresight than to put all of their chickens in one oily basket.  Dubai is geographically situated in close proximity – relatively speaking – to Europe, Africa and Asia.  As the shift began to the global economy, particularly as the earliest signs emerged that India, China and the African continent were ripe for impressive economic growth, Dubai postured itself as THE place for companies to locate a branch, a division, a department of their organization.  Solicit, market and advertise that over a few decades, throw in a lot of tax-free incentives and the novelty of taking your kids on a camel ride in the desert, and voila, you have an influx of wealth, ex-pats and today’s Dubai.  Dubai’s airport and its government-run airline, Emirates, is an example of this “global hub” vision. A look at the Emirates departure screen at the airport is staggering. Nonstop flights to all of the world’s major cities on the globe; their vision is for anyone in any major world city to be one-stop away – Dubai – from any other major world city. Impressive.

The city has a weird vibe, or maybe it’s better to say it lacks a clear vibe, or a defined soul unless it can be defined by mega-malls, and I hope we don’t ever elevate malls to some kind of cultural iconic status. Here’s my analysis of this “soulless-ness”.  Dubai’s population is 80% ex-pats. That’s mind-boggling to me.  Most of them are here with similar plans to work for 5-10 years to make a much higher and mostly tax free income than they could at home, then return home and coast for awhile with your savings, or send that savings home each month so your kids can go to a university or your family can be more comfortable. There’s A LOT of sacrifice in Dubai of people working, particularly in the service industry, who live thousands of miles away from everything that is comfortable and familiar in order to send  money home for the well-being of their families. Then there’s the ones who are here more simply to get rich. Tolerate the heat for a decade and be rich in the end.  Why not? It’s not for everyone.  One of three people I keep in touch with from high school moved to Dubai at his suggestion with his wife and young child a few years ago, and they were back home in the U.S. months later, begging his wife to please talk to him again someday.

There’s large communities of countries represented here.  Brits and Americans hold a lot of the skilled labor positions. Indians seem to have a significant portion of the small business market. Filipinos, Bangladeshis and people from many African countries appear to comprise much of the service sector. But since everyone is here temporarily, I didn’t get the feeling that many invest in establishing some kind of integrated celebrate-the-differences community. Sort of like middle school, people stick to their zones of familiarity and talk poorly about those outside of that group, until you’re forced to be on (warning: junior high memory coming up) a sacket ball team with Jennifer Freed and find out that actually, she’s not so bad.
    

Instead, people in Dubai seem to stay within the familiarity of their country groups and well, everyone just tolerates each other. They seem to stick to their own norms for how to drive, how to do business, how to communicate, how to behave at a Lionel Richie fountain show.  Those norms aren’t always compatible, as evidenced by the abundance of car honking and the number of times I hit shoulders with a passer-by on a crowded walkway or store and received a glare rather than anything that resembled “oops, sorry!”  

Within my brother’s social world, however, I didn’t meet another American or European among the lot, so there are exceptions to what I just wrote. It just has to happen with intention. My brother’s friend Khalid, a Moroccan, took over my brother’s kitchen for hours to make a traditional Moroccan meal, which is to say it used nearly every spice on the rack, and it was shared among the three of us, their Greek friend Anna, and their Emirati friend, Omar.  This is why I love food and cooking – it can be about so much more than caloric intake, and facilitate fellowship and camaraderie.

With my brother's friend Khalid, buying spices for a Moroccan meal.

My brother met Omar when Omar smashed into my brother’s vehicle. That's a surefire way to meet other people. Since my brother drives a vehicle that is roughly the size of a Burlington Northern locomotive, his vehicle didn’t sustain much damage but as it was told to me, Omar’s vehicle crumpled like an aluminum can. The process of accident reporting took hours, and feeling guilty for taking up so much of my brother’s time, Omar invited him to his family’s home for dinner.  I’m sure that seemed like an odd proposition by the person who just wrecked his car by smashing into yours, but Scott accepted, and they remain friends today. I'd have at least four more friends in my life if I took this approach.

My Dubai plans included some time and guiding by car-smashing Omar on a few occasions. With Omar, it was also an opportunity to talk to someone more poignantly about life in a predominantly Islamic country.  I have a few Muslim friends at home as well as in Kenya, though both are countries in which the Muslim faith is a significant minority to the presence of Christianity.  Omar and I got courageous with our questions with each other, and occasionally stumbled upon untruths we each held.  He was surprised to learn, for example, that it was legal for a U.S. president to be non-Christian, perhaps a mistruth he picked up at a tea party (subtle?).  I was surprised at how approving he was of his government that is ruled via an absolute monarchy.  “Our government gets things done,” he said. Valid point.  My current government, particularly at the federal level, would never be accused of being overly, or even sufficiently, okay, even marginally, productive.  

We paddled into some deeper waters on occasion, and I suppose the topics were fairly predictable for an American and a Emirati Muslim: U.S.-Arab nation relations, U.S. role in world matters, religious tolerance and freedoms, women’s rights, who has the bigger shopping malls, why skiing outdoors is better than in a place where you have a view of The Gap, and so on.  He was surprised at some of my remarks since they are often in contrast to my brother's perspectives. My brother and I don't have a lot of common ground on a lot of this stuff, probably because he is taller, dark hair, dark eyes and with a darker complexion, so why not let those differences carry over into our politics as well. It's not a problem so long as neither one of us actually talks to the other ever about anything. My mom swears we have the same biological parents.

In the end, Omar and ended up where these conversations have often gone with others around the globe with whom I’ve conversed, which is this: generally speaking, we’re all going about our days similarly. We wake up, we do things to meet our fundamental needs whether it be going to work, getting water, attending school, or whatever that means for our respective lives, and along the way we hope the days include moments that induce a feeling of happiness, fulfillment and maybe even laughter. How that shared vision for all seven billion lives on this planet gets lost amidst religious differences, wars, terrorism, violence, oppression and so on is the most colossal of failures. Now, I just over-simplified things there, and realize there are more layers of complexity to this stuff, or so I think. Though Omar commented that maybe it really was that simple. Maybe so. 

Dinner at a swanky Arabic restaurant in the desert. 

While in Dubai, I went on the world’s fastest roller coaster (three times), went to the 124^th floor of the world’s tallest building, bought a shirt in one of the world’s largest malls, had one of the world’s greatest buffets (my label) of Arabic food at a swanky resort in the Emirati desert, and visited a spectacularly beautiful mosque. I admire that my brother can live in a place that is so hot and so unclear about its identity aside from economic opportunity, and a bit jealous that he can have a meal with four people from four different continents after sending out a few text messages.  He goes to places like Bahrain and Sri Lanka on his days off, not to mention the places he stays for layovers as part of his pilot life.  And he’s a 10 minute walk to a Lionel Richie fountain show.