Aus Berlin

Ok travel from Africa to Europe.  I visited the Zimbabwe side of the falls the morning of my departure.  It was an incredible time.  I wanted to get a few souvenirs and presents as well so was on the lookout for my street seller friends.  The guys we had talked to before weren't there, in fact there was only one guy on the hustle at 7:30 in the morning. 

You see I was up quite early to maximize my falls time before 10:30 when I had to go to the airport.  I had it all worked out great, the taxi who was picking me up was getting me again and keeping my stuff in the interim.  It was bison again. 

Ok so I haggled across the bridge, got some stuff I was happy with, and then crossed the border.  Smooth, though I found some locals that crossed into Zimbabwe just to do their grocery shopping.  Cheaper prices see. 

I cut into the falls and saw the whole side, Jes and I had cut the ends a bit, so from the first vista where you watch the water tumble over from behind to the last view of the bridge with double rainbow. 

I broke my previous rainbow record of 15 with 19 total rainbows sighted.  As before it was so full there were some vistas you couldn't actually see for the mist.  But the turbo insanity of the Zimbabwe side where you see the whole fall and the horseshoe bit and you have to get at an angle to see the whole thing. 

And I was soaked from the spray in my bathing suit.  All in the plans but then I arrive at the airport some adventures later soaked to the skin.  I checked in and changed and caught my flight no problem.

I was feeling weak after the first 2 hour flight chilling in my 4 hour layover.  I was really tired, feeling over it, whatever but aware there was a 9 hour flight, another 4 hour layover and then a 6 hour flight.  I did not feel ready.  But God did me a big solid and the next flight was half empty, and my seat mate had taken my seat, so I kindly went and took over a row of three for me.  It took me three tries and some embarrassment, but plane takes off I lie down and determinedly sleep til plane lands.  Srsly.  So then it felt like nothing after that and I got to Berlin feeling positively human. 

Checked in with the nicest German I've ever met.  I was here for 6 nights so everything came out of the bag and I spent a couple of hours on it.  Went down to a local spot for veggie burger and double cocktails, showered, slept.  Not even a thang.

Next day was my solo day in Berlin, so I walked to the Kathe Kollwitz museum.  I am a genius of serendipity, so the museum was walking distance from my hotel and saw the cool Wilhelm gedenkenskirche which was the bombed church restored with beauty with the new awesome twilight themed chapel I wrote my last blog post at.  Kathe Kollwitz rules.  They had like all her work, lots of engravings and woodcuts and they had gotten permission to recast small her entire sculpture ouvre.  I savored it seeing everything twice. 

Beer pub and long wander back via some other spots. 

J arrived at 8:30 am the next day, I met him at the airport and we caught up some and then kept him up by a walk to the story of Berlin museum which was a little cheesy but fun and involved a tour of a nuclear bunker. 

Between the walking and museum and finding more German food, we kept him up til like 6pm.  Good work.  The next day we wanted to be big so we did checkpoint Charlie and walked all the way there, via the gedenkenskirche and the tiergarten (like central park v pretty and tons of songbirds)  and some bits of the wall and memorial stuff.  And we did the museum, which I remembered as better than I found it this time.  And then we went to the topography of terror museum which I found full of good info but very reliant on historical photos and text.  The best bit for me was listening in on the tours.  My memory of Berlin was very don't talk about the war but listening to these kids talking was very much like taking responsibility and respecting history.  I wonder if I'm seeing different things or if there has been a generational culture shift. 

Next day we struck out to monuments Brandenburg gate Reichstag Holocaust memorial all in a row on the other side of the tiergarten so another long walk. Then we continued to the afternoon Brecht walking tour, his grave, house, library (in house), theater and square with memorial.  The theater apparently still performs him often and keeps to his principals, even has some old timers who date from his time.  Oh for knowing German.  I had done the house and grave before but enjoyed them just as much this time.  The guide did many cute anecdotes. And it's a beautiful house and a beautiful graveyard.  Made me think how much our mothers would respectively love it.  And the theater filled me with feels. 

We trained home footbroken and spent our last day planning and scheming through Krakow.  Plus watching Netflix and chilling.

And today we enacted one of our schemes to great delight.   We are training to Prague and took a 6 hour stopover in Dresden, to which I have never been.  I did not think it would be so beautiful because you know the bombing.  But it's apparently a miracle of restoration, so we spent about 2 hours walking around seeing awesome buildings.  We spent another 2 having a lingering Italian lunch overlooking the Elbe.  And the last 2?  Well it turns out that the annual Dixieland blues and jazz festival of Dresden was on today, so pretzels and beer on tap big crowds of enthusiastic listeners and about 7 jazz bands proliferated helpfully starting right at the train station and continuing to old town.  Thanks God!  Way to do your job of making the world awesome!

So we meandered through that on the way out and back.  And there was much rejoicing.  And I found out Prague is playing Madame butterfly and don Giovanni while I'm there.  But tonight napful.  I'm so sleepy for having lazed all day yesterday.  This train is actually fun.  And going through the Elbe valley so pretty. 

As I looked at the beautiful world

So John Green was saying this thing about how he was arguing with someone about religion and  they were saying how there's all these contradictions in the Bible and therefore you can't believe in God and he was like um well I still do.

And then I was thinking about covering my hair in Zanzibar and how jes said it was like cultural appropriation and for me it's like the respect of tourism, like being extra polite in Asia, and how I try to cross myself in front of the alters in Catholic places.

And then I was thinking about why I feel respect for religion when I pretty actively antibelieve in it. 

So there's this part in mister Pip, I went back to try to find the passage but it doesn't exist in the book as much as in my head.  Spoiler alert.

The jaundiced and jaded corporal sends her mother off behind her, and then he turns her around.  And she describes how beautiful the world is, she lives on a tropical island.  And she talks about every sunbeam glittering off the waves, and the verdant jungle glimmering before her. 

And she hears him suck on his cigarette, and other noises behind her and later she finds out that her mother is being macheted to death.  And this is what happened as I looked at the beautiful world. 

And I think why that scene affected me so much is that it seems like a metaphor for what life is like.  I can't shake the belief that the world is a good and beautiful place.  But everything I know seems to argue against this, what with the wars rapes genocides etc.  But no amount of knowledge of how terrible the world is seems to be able to shake from me the truth that is evidently screaming at all my senses from every blade of grass and every rock.  And maybe that's what it's like for people who believe in God too, the same way, that you can't know enough to countermand what you see and more than see, what suffuses your being everywhere.  The world is good.  It just is.  And terrible things happen here but...

Maybe feeling this way is a luxury of privilege,  but I don't think so.  They know it in Malawi too I think. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking on a chilly Monday. 

I had a lovely rush of loving feelings for the northern hemisphere when I rode into Berlin.  Cornicing! Wisteria vines! Clouds! I can't even imagine anyone putting the first piece of litter on these pristine tree lined work of art streets.  Today I'm more remembering why the south Pacific is just better.  I'm wearing everything I own and shivering with a dripping nose.  It's May, people.  Adorable African guys on the plane had a similar reaction when we landed in Jo'burg in the fall rain.  "Is this Africa?" They said rubbing their shoulders vigorously.  Preach on brothers. 

Malawi

So we stayed at lake Malawi, a huge freshwater lake which consumes a third of the country.  We were near a village.  The most profound thing about Malawi was the people.  When you left the resort compound the kids would flock to you, and try to hold your hand.  They wanted to be picked up, and they had little songs they would all sing.  You could hold hands and sing with them and even when you weren't doing anything with them they would show up just to watch you.

We did a tourist sell thing where we did a painting with a local craftsman, who was like a lot better than his life.  He was a quiet thoughtful man with a delicate brush stroke.  But his only decent brush he had made by cannibalizing other brushes, and his paints were shitty primary school acrylics you had to take a 4 hour trip to get at the big market in Lusaka.  And he functionally only did one painting BC it was for tourists.  We asked him how many he could do in a day, and he said 15 but he couldn't sell that many, so he just did them as they sold.  He took a lot of patience with us. 

His nephew was one of the beach sellers, seen as a nuisance and kind of one, but very friendly and the only viable job in town and what all the young men were doing.  Independent but not cutthroat there were some accepted cultures about talking to one tourist at a time so they didn't get too inundated.  They held a bonfire party on the beach, I guess to lure tourists off the compound because they were still a bit on the clock but they also had the fire and the kids came out and danced and they taught us local games and invited us to the local bar. 

I later met a guy in Johannesburg who told us that when he was a kid in apartheid he used to think white people were like gods and he wanted to touch them to see if they were real, but your parents would beat you if you tried it.  This reminded us uncomfortably of the kids in Malawi. 

It would be strange and wonderful to be somewhere like that long enough that you became unexceptional, that you could interact with these amazing people a bit more like a person yourself. 

I went snorkeling with the super cool snorkeling guy who was living this dream along with the cool girl who was doing biodiversity research.  We motored out to the island and floated around seeing awesome fish. 

The fish color and diversity was great, the most diversity of species of a certain kind of fish  in the world.   There were these rocks from which the island was built and in the cracks in between those you could see the fish more readily, who his in their sheltered harbors. 

The downside of this is you have the waves from the wind crashing against the rocks.  And where I come from you don't hang out face first against crashing waverocks.  Jes gave up pretty quickly in the face of this and a dodgy fin, I continued around the island but as I came around to the windward side it got more and more intense and then I lost my mask and in the process of retrieving it lost a fin and in the process of dealing with all that washed up on shore.  I took this opportunity and the shakiness accompanying it to explore the island with Jes and hang out on warm rocks and then I went to complete my circuit around the island.  I did make it, and got some more awesome fish views, and then we motored back, a pretty great day all around. 

The night before we partied hard and late, at the bar then the bonfire, then when we got back there was dancing on the bar.  And the afternoon was the painter and then this local meal with dancing and singing with the kids. 

Serengeti, Ngorongoro,South Luagwe, Safari Part 3: The Family

Elephants

I expected to see elephants. What I did not expect was again the proximity and variety. In Serengeti, we saw the newborns. We peeled off to this road all alone and there was a huge family group of them grazing in the acacia trees. The small babies seem like their skin is not fully formed, deflated trunks and bony heads. They can fit under their mothers entirely. There were also the one and two year olds, who seem more like smaller versions of the adults.  They were fully tranquil here, grazing and moving slowly in large matriarchal groups. 

Elephants live to about 70 and what kills them, if nothing else does, is that they run out of teeth. An elephant has 7 sets of teeth and when they run out, they can't chew their food and then they die of starvation. When they get this old they go to Ngorongoro, because the grass is softer in the protected crater than on the open savannas so they can eat longer. Elephants discovered Ngorongoro, the first people followed the elephant trails, and it is known as the elephant graveyard, because they go there to die.

Because Luangwe is wetter, the river and all, we got to see more drinking, and generally messing around with the trunk. And an elephant got startled by some of his fellows running behind us and half charged with an almost trumpet. He just whipped his ears and took two steps, but our driver revved the car and prepared to take off. 

Hyenas

In Ngorongoro two hyenas were fighting over something. Kisamo said it was the placenta of a newborn calf. He said if you looked over there you could see the mother. And a wildebeast was turning circles confused, as though looking for something. 

The hyenas in Serengeti weren't afraid, and were happy to hang out in the ditches near the cars, like stray dogs. They were always in small groups and I'm pretty sure I saw a pregnant one. 

Hippos

Luangwe was the most hippo infested stretch of river in Africa. You could hear the hippos say and night, grunting like hogs. See their little ears submerge and surface from our front deck. One ate weeds like hungry hungry hippos, mouth full open. And at night, they come out of the water and we saw them, pink and startled on their improbably stubby legs. 

Giraffes

Giraffes never stop being interesting looking somehow, you can become inured to the zebras maybe, but the giraffes you keep wanting to figure them out. 

Beyond that. they love the acacia, which have inch long spines but they have the world's toughest and very long tongue, so they can basically graze on these thorn bushes. They vary a lot in color, much lighter or darker. 

We got to see one acacia grove where they were so close by the verge of the road, 2 metres maybe for the close ones, every part of their mouths, eyes, legs was visible. 

We saw one run, crossing the road startled by the car in front of us. A giraffe running is strangely magestic. Their stride length is so long and they are so ungainly that it appears to be happening in slow motion. 

And unbelievably, we saw them fight. It was far away. I would never have known but our guide spotted it. An activity I did not know existed until Norah and I watched that documentary, which I thought was stupendous on TV, I got to watch in life. 

Birds

Some of my favourites were some of the most common. 

The spectacular starlings who had plumage like a blend of a peacock and the sky. 

The weaver birds who made intricate nests, like christmas balls hung from the trees, who you could watch coming in and out. 

Small kingfishers, one of whom I spotted killing a frog in Luangwe. We stopped to watch it dash out its brains, just like a kookaburra killing a snake. 

We also saw ostriches, male and female, walking, and the bastard bird and secretary bird and the crested one who is the national bird of somewhere, much more giant and distinctly African. 

Ok I'm closing there. To talk about up to now, I have to talk about Lake Malawi some, and Victoria Falls and Afrikaburn. 

By way of catching up a bit, I can quickly say I've been in near hibernation in Cape Town, sleeping 12 hours a night, taking long baths, cooking my own food. It's pretty great, though sadly means I've seen little of an amazing city. My mom says I'm just saving it to do with Melinda when we come back ;). I did go up to Table mountain yesterday on the cable car, which had suitably awesome views and I could walk all around and you can see the city and Blaubergstrand where I'm staying and Robben island and both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the cape. 

From my hotel, where I have almost exclusively been, you can see the sea at all times, and the sunset, and table mountain and the city lights and robben island. So it has been a very good place to hibernate.  

Serengeti, Ngorongoro,South Luagwe, Safari Part 2: The Pride

1) Lions: probably the coolest thing we saw on safari was a bunch of out of control lion sightings and up close encounters.

In Serengeti: we peeled out at dawn and followed the spoor of the lions from our campsite (we camped in tents in the national park so you weren't allowed to leave your tent after bedtime or the lions might get you. This was extra scary to pee-ers like me and I dealt with it through combination dehydration and sleep deprivation.) to where they were all hanging out. Oh hello lions. and there was a male who was sitting around eating a carcass and this female kept coming up to try to get some and he chased her off and then dragged it away. And another couple was mating when we came up and then the female pranced out on the road and was like rolling over and flirting all cute like. And a couple more groups too, alertly looking at like the herds of elephants to think about their lives.

Finally, the post lion scene, which was hyenas knawing on the ribs of the wildebeasts, while vultures dove at another spot where they had dragged some bits off, and the content female who had brought the beast down sat on what is called like lionrocks and look like the thing on the Lion king, yeah so she's just surveying her domain from the top of this rock as the scavengers gnaw on the bones of her kill.

In Ngorongoro: It was so small so you could kind of see the whole prode behaviour one at a time. We came across a male chuffing in the dawn, Apparently they send out a scout for where the herds have moved and then communicate about where to go by this chuffing. Then we saw a female stalking along, probably the selfsame scout, just walking along the ridge scenting the air, she went by us for a long time.

And then we found a male who had gorged himself sleeping, breathing heavy with a distended belly, while the kill lay beside him.

But most of all, there were two females taking a NAP ON THE ROAD. I'm talking literally maybe a metre away, and we just pulled up next to them and sat there and there they were, like full technicolor. And they weren't doing anything, because they were kittens sleeping in the sun, but they would like turn their heads, or flex a paw, and we would be transfixed for the next indefinite time, they made us move on eventually, but to be petting distance from a lion is a bit crazy.

In Luagwe: This was the night drive, so we found three females stalking, looking for something to hunt, so they just walked along, and the driver pulled up so we were perpendicular to them, and they walked right to us in the night while the spotter tracked them with the lights, they had to turn a little to get around us, like full face.


2) Us: So the cars developed special bonds bc we stayed together for the awesoemest bits. And ours was the awesomest car, dubbed team Jambo for the song we sang in greeting and goodbye to each new place.

Jambo
Jambo bwana
Habarigani
Mzurisana
Wageni
Mwakaribishwa
Tanzania yetu
Hakuna Matata

Literally translated to
Hello
Hello mister
How are you?
I am really good.
Guest
A very warm welcome
Welcome to Tanzania
No worries, mate.

Note that the obsessive learning of this song also leads the yodelling yokel ot now have like 3 Swahili conversations with locals.
In addition our car contained-the baby germans, masters of the booty shake (Alina and Vanessa, there was also a team Germany with all the other Germans plus Sally)(and Vanessa also had the best zoom on my camera so when I post my photos someday they will really mostly be hers.), Elaura and Jaspar (the group children, who took all the best selfies and started all the best coordinated dance parties along with Corinne, from team 726 with Terra the numerology master)(Jaspar had also been in Tanzania for like another 3 months teaching schoolchildren, and therefore knew other rad swahili and was btw the only boy on the 20 person tour, and could do a mean accapella of the circle of life) and me and Jes. And Kisamo, our guide, who sent me rad swahili music vids afterwards and told us many cool stories and had no fear of speed limits off road and let us hang out of the roof nonstop cheering, singing and generally making nuisances of ourselves and not believing wild animals can be startled. Which really they weren't.

Much much more could be written about this tour group, which was btw the coolest ever and full of awesome friend groups and dancing and getting off the hook in every bar every night. These kids may have forced me to like a Beiber song.  We danced more than once on a bar. There was various leaping and throwing in pools. Everyone was too drunk a lot. Serenading occured. Our work crew (me Jes Sally and Jaspar) had a playlist carefully constructed by Jaspar himself. Cutthroat games of scattergories were played. Tarot angels were read. It was really really cool.

Serengeti, Ngorongoro,South Luagwe, Safari Part 1: The Herds

I have waited a long time and I don't think I will become wiser in the way of being able to say how I feel, so here goes.

Note that Serengeti is the giant national park over the savannah, in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. Ngorongoro is the magic land before time crater that the elephants discovered the pathways to which is the animal paradise, small but full. South Luangwe is in Zambia, on the Luangwe river on the most hippo infested stretch of river in Africa. Together they were everywhere we did game drives.

I will try to go through it by animal, to try to say what was there.

Wildebeasts: We came in the middle of the wildebeast migration. The migration starts at the southern tip of the national park, where we were. It works its way up to Masai Mara, crossing the famous river at some point on the way, then looping back down. If it's a circle, Kisamo said, why do we say it starts here?  It is because life starts here, this is where they come to breed, and then begin again.  It was not technically a game drive, but we saw so much going in, zebras and antelopes grazing on the side, buffalo and elephants in the distance, giraffes strolling across the plains, following each other's leads, the eponymous wildebeasts, and of course your friendly neighborhood road baboons, that it felt like a game drive. Then as we were cruising through the late afternoon, deep in the national park now, the migration crossed the road. Right in front of us, and we saw the head of the herd break across the open ground. Then of course the herd followed, each beast follows the one in front of it, mindless in their millions. You could see the S bend of their progression far back, and the great mass of them in the distance. They did not start running except in turn. and when their turn came they ran in a group. They had calves with them, more easily startled, rushing to keep up, because this is where the circle starts, at birth. We watched and watched and then the car in front of us revved through and the progression bent then broke. And then we watched more until we did the same, the millions still coming but now the beginning of the herd as unknowable as the end.

We were passed by the migration again on the second day. Here they encircled us entirely, in their confusion we split the herd, and they ran back and around and then continued and we could watch them on all sides.

Wildebeasts are not on their own lovely or impressive, they are a dumb herd animal, a glorified cow, but to see them run on their spindly legs at an impossible angle, and then to see the hundreds, thousands more thousands scatter and kick up the dust, convinced with the power of groupthink of the rightness of their actions, was a magnificent thing.


Antelope:  We saw a number of different species of antelope and gazelles, Grant's gazelles and thompson's and kudus, and the tiny dikdiks, waterbucks I will not remember all of them, but I will remember.

The dikdik was the size of a large cat and moved its nose in a circle, scenting the confusing odors of us. It had frozen to become invisible in plain sight.

Mostly the gazelles hung out together in mixed grazing herds, the more common ones proliferating. The Grants can go mostly without water by getting their water from the grass. They move like deer but smaller on average and more delicate.

The gazelles have a social group literally called a harem, a group of females and children, one male who mates with whoever there. They were most interesting in South Luangwe. By the trick of moving through space and time, it was mating season when we got there. The antelope were therefore going nuts, head butting the ditches in the road and the bushes. At this critical time, a male rarely remains with the herd for a week, so there are constant contests and constant attempts to prove themselves. My overriding impression of them was the urge to watch them move, leap, act out, the certainty of their ability to create delicate magic.


Zebras: While talking about South Luangwe, I should mention it was also mating season there for zebras, and we saw two fight, in a one on one wrestling match that sent one skittering away in the end, and graduated to a bit of rearing and biting.

Zebras like the others I have talked about so far, are incredibly populous, on the roadside to the extent of mostly driving by them as they grazed calmly. In Serengeti they shied from the cars, but in Ngorongoro, they didn't bother.

Up north in those two it was no longer mating season, in fact there were foals, who would position themselves behind their mothers.

Each zebra has its own stripes, like a fingerprint, and you believe this watching them, their patternings each worth looking at as an individual beauty. And they have the beauty of horses, and their frisking energy. You would come upon them grazing mostly, but also jogging to and fro, or rolling in the dust. or resting.