Leaving, and understanding 'TIA'

Cheers,

and....TIA

This Is Africa.

This is a saying that must fully be adopted by even the transient such as myself.  Things NEVER go according to plan.  You wait.  You wait for everything from electricity to transport to arrive.  You think you will be somewhere at 2...well, better not expect to be there by 7.

TIA.

You thought this...and that happened.

Americans need to find patience.  Before leaving I was even aware of that.  From my home in Stanhope NJ I have four 24-hour Dunkin Donuts within five square miles.  You must also add in three CVS's, a Walgreen, a 24-hour Shoprite, and a Super Walmart.  Not to mention the internet gives me movies, music, and communication on demand.  There is NOTHING to wait for in NJ.

Hense you see people freak out day in and day out of the stupidest shit ever.  It makes you wonder what exactly burrowed into our asses to make a 2 minute cue at a check-out counter absolutely intolerable.  I'm as culpable as the next.  More than 1 minute line at an ATM and we are off running to another.  God forbid there is an old lady at the Supermarket checkout struggling to write out a check (that vestige of the ice age)...us Americans might just beat her down.  It's terrible.

But, TIA as taught me a great deal.

It involves removing yourself from the center of the universe.  Things like the elements, sickness, and death get in the way of expediacy every day.

Where are we going anyway?  I don't know where I'm going so, cheers, and thank you Africa for making that ok, because if that's the case I won't be such a jerk in getting there.  I'll just have to kick back and relax and let things happen as best as they are capable of unfolding.  Can't alter reality to suit you.  Just enjoy it as best as you can.

TIA

Highveld vs Lowveld

I’ve had a difficult time wrapping my mind around certain numbers and the corresponding relationships. 

For example, there are 1 millions Swazi’s total.  Last I heard we had over 20 million New Yorkers alone.  Swaziland is an independent nation, yet it’s square mileage is approximately the same as New Jersey. 

But this doesn’t make it any less diverse.  (And, similarly, I believe it’s time to acknowledge how diverse just New Jersey is, not to mention the other 49 states.  After all, in terms of size NJ is, what, 6^th smallest?)

And I guess just as we have the Appalachians of High Point we also have the low laying Pine Barrens of all those Southern Counties of Western NJ.  (The whole Jersey shore, though being a North to South completion, is it’s own entity together, we all know)

Lowveld

I’ve spent most of my time in the Lowveld of Swaziland, watching the sun pound the clay dirt so hard dust rises. 

Here there is a rolling, lulling landscape punctuated by compact homesteads boosting between 3-6 huts in the closest proximity.  The property consists of some poor quality farmland that as been turned over to chickens, goats, and cattle, for the most part.  It is not the most fertile place on the planet.  Rusting tractors from the 30’s and 40’s disintegrate into nothingness in the most conspicuous of spaces.  As if after the colonial powers packed up they just left their agriculture there, it too costly to move.  And without overhead capital, farming is a demanding and terribly unproductive enterprise here in Swaziland. 

Gnarled trees dot the landscape, somehow getting past the stage of being mere bushes, the far more prominent of vegetation.  There light purples and azure blue flowerings erupt before you as the eye is only accustomed to different shades of clay, bark, and the green of aloe trees after awhile. 

Dirt roads hardly make their presence known amidst the dirt savannah.  What might at first seem a road on the horizon just might be a dried streambed.  Near my home there was a damn constructed as a means of modernization.  As far as I could gather, it’s been an absolute failure.  Now cattle are now just walked farther and farther to be watered.     

Shade is always sought in summer.  A dozen men will stay stationed all day at pool tables position under the corrugated awnings next to bottle shop.  The scores of vendors (all selling same thing) hold umbrellas for the day’s entirety.  (Anecdotally, I’ve been told that Swazis don’t possess a word for ‘imagination’ in their vocabulary.  It is not just being mean.  It speaks to how 10 vendors will line a street all selling only mangos, the same mangos, in the same size bag.  The logic being that if one person can make a living doing it, and I have mangos, I better copy them.  It will take only one brilliant Swazi to open a burrito stand and the history of the country will forever be different.)

Highveld

My last days were spend in what I feel is the most scenic part of Swaziland.  As you drive in from South Africa there are suddenly pine (or at least some similar coniferous tree) forests that are logged into oblivion.  Luckily there is still enough there to proffer up a monkey sitting at the roadside and to give the rising mountains a texture not unlike The Northeast, only slightly less fierce in gradient.  I sometimes I felt like I was in a rolling, rural Virginia or even some of the hilly country I cycled outside Tampa.

After crossing the boarder there is an explosion beneath you and you climb winding roads of steep grade that make most cars wheeze and sputtered as drivers scramble for the right gearing.  Little adobe-esque houses and huts are built into the side of mountains.  Not mountains like we think of them on the East Coast but that undulating, curvature of elevated Earth that composes so much of California around San Francisco.  Here the rainy season brings about one million shades of green, all of which we have at home, but each hue as a different character…something, well, African. 

Huge amalgamations of granite boulders dot all the hills.  I was unable to garner from locals if these were remains of passed glaciers.  Whatever the case they stack upon each other to great heights on top and from the sides of mountains.  Here rivers will see flowing over hard rock beds, slowly bring valleys into existence.  It’s just as hot here but people seem to have a bit more energy.  They seem to complain about the heat and battle through while Lowvelders just understand it and surrender to it.

Some of these pictures were taken at a private residence that boasted amazing views and caves in the granite.  I’m very grateful to Jason at Bombaso’s for taking me there along with the Finnish constituency that was currently in residence.

As you leave this area, most notable for the capital Mbabane, and start moving towards Manzini, you plummet down hills and watch the temperature rise.

A Pain in the Ass

Watch where you sit in Swaziland. 

I don’t know who, but someone walking by must have been treated to the sight me with my pants down and Kate utilizing her tweezers to remove a half inch thorn that was burrowed deep in my ass cheek.

Hope they’ve recovered themselves by now.

Portrait of a Gogo

A Gogo is an old woman.  But not just any ordinary elderly lady.  To be a Gogo you must be over 1,000 years old.  950 won’t cut it.  At least 1,000 and you must look every day of it.  (The ability to be 1000 is easier than you think, there being virtually know records of birth in Swaziland.  Everyone’s birthday, officially, is January 1^st because that’s what he or she filled out on the forms on the rare chance that they sought documentation of any kind).

I spotted my first Gogo on the roadside as our khumbi pulled up.  She had two backs, one on her head, of course.  And she finished a conversation with someone and hustled to the car.  She almost ran.  Well, it looked like she was running, for at 1000 if you are not going backwards, you are flying ahead.  She popped into the khumbi and immediately started cracking jokes (I’m sure they were dirty too) with everyone.  She pinched Kate a bunch of times and I’m sure would have done something suggestive to me if I wasn’t crammed in the back with three especially voluptuous and fertile women with there children.  (Note:  my only proposal for marriage came from a near Gogo, but not Gogo proper.)

Gogo’s continually pop up in the paper.  (No, not in the obituaries.)

I got The Times of Swaziland everyday I could to see what was happening.  There was some seriously big deal politics going down. 

For example, there was a e5000 lawsuit (maybe $900) regarding a failed exorcism of demons from a hut by a reputable witchdoctor.  Litigation is still be processed, but, hell, if those people still have demons haunting their hut, that is surely a case of doctor mal practice if I’ve ever seen one!

And Swazis sometimes get rowdy.  Usually involving alcohol.  Unfortunately, large bush knifes are in great abundance.  No one is shot (unless by a police officer).  But there are stabbings daily.  For example a girlfriend went all Bobbitt on a fellow for some infidelities.  And fights over money are common enough. 

It is when these conflicts occur on the homestead is when Gogo plays a part.  Once or twice a week a bush knife wield Gogo chases someone off or shuts up a belligerent family member by offering to filet them.

So let this be a lesson to American, pushing aside our aged parents.  I say all senior citizens should get their pensions, social security, and machetes to enforce their wisdom.

Names

It is an chicken and egg situation:  do great people become apparent because of their great names, or are certain people given names because they are sensed to be great. 

For example, I’m going to write a young adult book entitled The Amazing Adventures of October and Jason in Swaziland:  Tales of a Khumbi Driver and His Conductor. 

After standing in the dark with only a headlamp for 20 minutes, the darkness of Africa complete, you hear the rumbling of a VW 15 passenger bus maneuver its way around and often through deep crevasse in the dirt road.  Somehow they can do it at 60 km/h too.  And there from the driver seen flashes the broadest smile rich with enthusiasm I’ve ever encountered.  He jokes constantly as you rubble to town at break neck speed.  (I got out of the khumbi once expecting to see high performance tires with thick tread – possibly like a dirt bike.  I found only bald rubber).  When he laughs it is a full body movement:  he leans forward and strikes the dashboard, he bends in half and erupts to full posture unleashing howls and exasperated disbelieve. 

If there is a bodhisattva still roaming, if Buddha as been reincarnated, he is driving a Khumbi in the distant bush of Swaziland and his name is October.  And in fiction I will be the conductor:  they guy collecting money from the people piled in the back of the khumbi.  And we will have many adventures helping people while we find ourselves in dire danger and hilarious situations.

I’ve met other characters notable names.  Doctor was an inquisitive taxi driver who would reciprocate his inquisitiveness with answer any question you can answer.  Like, his favorite sport was Karate.  Go figure.

Mad props go out to G.E.R. (Genetically Engineered Rapper) who explained to me how the Freemasons run the whole world, and all it’s monetary, political, sporting, artistic, and religious institutions.  Whatever your beliefs, story telling is wonderful we should all listen attentively and not dismissively despite our ‘erudition’. 

From him I learned that theories persist about World here that I’ve never even heard of.  The best thing to do is to listen with open mind and heart.  That’s what I’ve decided.  I mean, how crazy do you think people felt certain story tellers were as they told a story of a virgin in the Middle East giving birth to the Lord of the Whole Universe (well, Son…but the same, but somehow different, but the same as the Holy Ghost, which is like the Son, too, and Father, but different, but the same, but though omnipotent, still died…) 

We need narratives in which to understand life.  And narratives have characters and I feel blessed by all the characters I’ve met as of late.

Arrived: New Rythms

Today is my first day surviving on my own.  Kate left me in her village unsupervised.  Before you worry:  she explained that if I were to happen across a pack of giraffes  (or other gregarious African pacifist) I was not to shed my clothes and run free through the deep mountain valleys that surround us.  (Packs?  What do giraffes run in anyway? Pods?)

On Tuesdays Kate teaches yoga classes at the gym in the metropolis of Manzini   (metroplis used liberely here – think Hackettstown on a Friday night, only with brighter, whiter smiles).  Manzini is about 3-4 hours away which, by my calculations, translates into about 100km.  For here irregular and pocked dirt roads are traveled by ‘kumbis’: fleets of ailing VW vans stenciled with their assigned routes.  On steep gradients they strain under the weight of crammed passengers and their luggage, the engine lugging and wanting to downshift while pedestrians start to pass.  But no one complains, it beats walking in the heat which can register up to 110F. 

Or does it?  Culteral note:  Swazis can stand having open windows in a moving vehical.  Regardless as to if there are 26 people sitting on 12 seats and you are secured between one man’s armpit and a bag of mangos on a woman’s lap.  There is to be no moving air!  None!  If you have a window seat you will be forced to wage war for a blip of fresh oxygen, every other passenger taking a turn at reaching over you and closing the window you just opened moments before. 

There is no schedule to khumbi travel.  The vehicals depart go whenever they fill up.  So if you are first at the stop for your particular Khumbi, you might have to wait over an hour or three for other passengers to arrive.  Maybe then the driver will relent and forego his cost benefit equations and burn the requisite gas on 75% capacity – instead of the customary 175%.

            There was very little in the way of transition time afforded me from the thriving urban streets of Jo-burg (as Johannesburg is called here) and the concrete, beetle strewn floor of my hut in a remote village.  Two days in fact. But I’m doing pretty well.  I have always felt I’ve done better with less than most, and here there is no shortage of shortage.  We have quite an abundance of it, in fact.

            Wake up time is around 4.30am (though I am not sure, since I’ve already dispensed with clocks or watches).  That is wake up time/get out of bed time, mind you, not your wake up call time.  The roosters here suck at the whole sunrise affair!  Throughout the night you can hear them.  Sometimes a light will reflect off the curragated metal of a hut or shed and trick the loud bastards into doing their yelling thing.  Then a salvo is launched between homesteads.  Another rooster hears the sunrise impaired one and says:  oh snap I must have missed it, better get to cock o doodle doo-ing.  Full throated cock vocalilizing (yes  I just wrote that) reverberate against the your head throughout the night.  Don’t even get me started about the amorous donkeys.  Did you know that they sex while running?

            Getting up so early is certainly no a burden when you were fast asleep at 7 or 8 pm – there is very little to do during daylight and consequently there is nothing doing once it gets dark.  I sleep extremely well here.  And I sleep a great deal.  Yesterday the temperature cracked 111 F, and I slept through three hours of the afternoon’s oppressive heat on the concrete floor of the hut in my underwear.  Thank God I have inherited my Father’s ability to sleep on picnic tables.  I never knew that peculiarty of his would be so useful.

            Today is actually cold, believe it or not.  There is thunder on the horizon and the sun has not broken through.  The weather here is schizophrenic.  A schizophrenic on acid.  I’ve already been made privy to the fierceness of a Swazi storm – if that’s a strong enough of a word, I was waiting for The Four Horsemen to arrive and sow devastation.  Lightening is actually a grave threat here.  Forget the scorpions and Black Mambas. 

My first storm happened while I was staying at a backpackers in Mbabane.  Day two.  After the hail and rain tried to eradicate all forms of life outside one of the hostel’s employees came back to the drinking table with his underwear in hand.  They were struck by lightening while hanging on a clothesline.  The charge burned a hole through the image of Che Chevera printed on the guy’s red boxers. 

            Things are nice and quiet now as the storm is still only on the periphery.  The cattle have been herded down the dirt road and the children have finished their 8-kilometer walk to school.  The goats, chickens, fist sized insects have already faded into invisible background noise. 

            Life is pretty easy when there is not much to choose from or distract you.  Yesterday Katie and I walked the .5km to fetch water with a wheelbarrow and two 25-liter jugs.  That is our drinking and washing water.  It has provided me with a very nourishing breakfast, however – lots of coffee, buttermilk squash soup, and peanut butter sandwiches.  Our main staples here are fresh eggs, porridge, and rice and beans.  And that’s about it.  We can get Coke, Sprite, and Fresh Fruit Juice from the little ‘store’ on the corner.  The treat we eat from there is “Emafatti”.  Think of donuts without the sugar.  They just fry up some flower balls.  They are delicious!  The kids here are actually provided with money to travel by khumbi to school but they’d rather pocket the 1 Rand (20 cents) and walk so that they can buy some Emafatti later during lunch break.

            So it’s maybe 9am now and I’ve been up for hours.  I don’t wear a watch; just watch the sun trying to gauge time.  I will be reading a great deal today and writing some.  I might sit on the stoop under the straw thatching of the hut and watch the goats play.  I could walk a bit in the bush and see some amazing sights of undisturbed wilderness.  It’s strange.  Often I see a crazy insect I could never imagine and then I realize that it may be an ‘undiscovered’ species, undocumented, and I might be the ‘discoverer’.  Yesterday I found this crazy caterpillar that armored itself with pieces of sticks, making a shell that it could retreat into when disturbed.  Lots of lizards too.  They fall from the straw ceiling, which is high, maybe 5 meters, and whack against the ground before they run away dazed.  We call the suicide bombers.  They are cute:  very similar to Thor, my old dear friend, the newt.

           

            The most obvious lesson I’ve learned so far is that one doesn’t need much ‘stuff’ to be happy.  There are two little girls running back and forth in front of my hut pulling an old plastic tub with a string and having a blast.  Probably more fun than if they had huge doll sets or matchbox cars or whatever new and improved toy is being sold on TV.  People here are mostly concerned with not starving to death and being protected from the elements.  People walk very, very slow.  There is little to do and getting there is part of the thing to be done, so why rush it?  Watching the completely different way that people can live is an amazing experience and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to experience it in person.  I’m learning valuable life lessons by the minute.

   

            I’ve enjoyed the idea of not being rushed.  For example, who knows when this email will reach you all?  Could be a week, or maybe more.  But it doesn’t really matter or phase me.  Things get done when they get done, as best as one can do them – that is the philosophy here.  You can’t alter reality or impose your will upon circumstances beyond your control.

            I hope all is well with everyone!  I want no one to worry about me here.  Things are secure and I am safe.  The only thing I ask from you all is you ENJOY your luxuriously huge bathrooms.  Stretch your feet out and relax.  For here I have only what we call ‘the silver bullet’.  A 2-foot by 2-foot latrine made of shiny corrugated metal that goes straight up into the air.  My shoulders are way to broad!

Concourse E

If my suspicions are correct, I just imbibed my final draughts of Guinness for quite some time.  (I labored over that sentence because I didn’t want to have to make ‘Guinness” plural – for what would it be, Guinesses or Guin-eigh?  It surely can’t be Guinness’s because that is just an abomination of correct apostrophe use – thank you Lynne Truss!)

Such consternation is most likely the result of having four beers starting at noon; the consequences of a 7 hour layover.  Ce la vie.  Thankfully there was a fine wine bar in Concourse E that had a reasonable selections of beer on tap, as well as a pair of sweetheart bar tenders to help pass the time.  Mad props to that inherent amiability of Georgia and southern charm.  So what if I keep turning around expecting to see Larry The Cable Guy when a man speaks behind me.

Did I mention that I am in Atlanta?

For that matter, have I mentioned that I’m flying to South Africa?  Johannesburg will be my port of entry to Africa – where I will make my way into Swaziland in an effort to disappear off radar for a while.  (Consequently, who knows when I’ll be able to post a blog again.)?

This race season offered both its share of good and bad.  Most epiphanies are the result of failure and not success, and in that regard this season produced enlightenment.  Not finishing Ironman Kentucky was a difficult pill to swallow. 

I didn’t go down without a fight, at least.  If that’s what you call waking up in the back of an ambulance with an EKG reading that you are having a heart attack.  Going into the race with a hip fracture I knew my run would be limited, so I biked hard.  I mean HARD.  Too hard, obviously.  The day dissolved into discovering myself on the side of the road shivering, unable to sweat, and incoherent.  Wish someone hollered out that the day came with a 105 heat index attacked.  But that’s racing and my naivety.

Did I mention that I have a stress fracture in my hip?

Yes, I really did pound my body into submission this year.  Oh well, nothing time can’t fix.  Let’s hope, anyway.

Hence Swaziland is the perfect opportunity to recuperate; mentally as well as physically.  Twenty five percent of my luggage must be books.  In this part of the year they will be much better use than extra clean clothes.  It’s time to focus on my writing and compiling this year into a comprehensible narrative.

So here I am with the daunting proposition of an 18-hour flight and the even more challenging reality of having to survive the savannahs of southern Africa.  Luckily I fortified myself for both with a bit of Ireland.  (Incidentally, I have it on good authority from an Irishman that they like to drink Budweiser in the land of Leprechauns.  Go figure.)