Travel with a Good Book

There is a magnetic draw to the Middle East, where history is so powerful that people completely lose themselves. It is the home of three of the worlds largest monotheistic religions, all born of a single father, reading from a common book. And I love a good book. Immersing myself in the fiction and wrapping myself in the prose.

The Torah is comprised of the four books of Moses, the old testament contains these same chapters and Islam builds on these origins, referring to Christians and Jews as people of the book and telling of Moses in the Qu'ran. The book is bigger than any one single book and the story I found myself wrapped up in was that of Moses.

I flipped pages up and down the Nile, thumbing thru the tombs, lingering in the temples. It is an adventure story of double identity along the banks of the desert river. An orphaned boy sent adrift in a peasants basket to be raised in a pharaohs court, from pauper to prince, then back again, as a young man re-identifying with his people, driven to murderer, and forced into exile a fugitive.

In the Sinai we drank beer and dove the reefs for two weeks along the Red Sea a hundred kilometers from Mount Sinai, where in exile Moses found love by the well, purpose through a burning bush, and guidance in the ten commandments. Along the way we met Mary and Jesus, two Californians studying in France, with whom we climbed the mountain and drank beer. Sure, its a different story, but you can't deny the profound irony of it.

Entering Jordan we came to the last chapters. His brother, Aaron, was laid to rest in Petra and he himself by Mount Nebo, from where he first saw his peoples Holy Land. Refreshed from a swim in the Dead Sea, we also looked out from atop Mount Nebo, over the valley of Jericho, the Jordan River, and on to Jerusalem and the Holy Land which Moses would never know as it was divine will that he never set foot in the promised land.

These may have been Moses's chapters, but the story is not so simply contained. It is just a footprint for a much larger mystery. For in the north of Ethiopia, hidden away in a simple church's dark interior, is said to rest the Ark of the Covenant, brought to Ethiopia by King Solomons lineage thru the Egyptian Queen Sheba. It is guarded by one man, for life, seeing no other visitors but him on one day a year. Or perhaps it was the Knights Templar who found and moved it from David's Temple in Jerusalem. It is these questions that are best left to scholars like Dan Brown and Indiana Jones. Or, just maybe the two brave Nastansky women who raid tombs professionally, if you know how to find them and are willing to pay the price.

The Street Boys

Mark Twain delights us with the wonders of boyhood. Skinned knees and bare feet, wild with imagination and thirst for adventure. Jirata, Dameka, and Lalise would fit brilliantly into these pages. I can see these three scamps racing the red clay roads to the staduim on Saturday mornings to watch futbol, striking taekwondo poses, and nabbing mangoes along the way. Later, they’d hang out by the foosball tables on the side of the tarmac, a road that cuts thru Gimbie on it’s way to Addis Ababa or Sudan, depending on your direction. It was by these tables on my walks home that they adopted me, taking turns teaching and quizzing me on Amharic, or Oromifa. I could never tell which was which.

These boys are like all little boys and they’ll steal your heart and take your hand. Except they have no hands to guide them, they are on their own. These are the street boys, living together as a family, sleeping under trucks and in doorways, begging or charming their dinners from the townspeople and restaurants.

One little urchin with lazy eyes and a peaceful smile followed us into a restaurant for dinner. We were with our friend Mark and by the time we washed and sat down, David was sitting right beside us, beaming. I thought he was with you, oh, I thought he was with you. He sat patient, a perfect little gentleman and the clever little guy won us over. When the communal plate of injera came we bought him a soda and feasted. After the meal, clutching his prized soda, he rocked with lightness of laughter as Darlene mimicked an exploding belly.

I had already been working with the street boys for a couple weeks when we came upon Jirata, exhausted and sitting on the curb, in front of his favorite mango stand. I saw his tiny figure rise and turn to us with his signature stare, bloodshot eyes, and exhausted posture. Darlene, who’d never met him, recognized him instantly from my photos. His anticipation was overwhelming and his tiny hand found mine. I knelt to bump shoulders, as is the ethiopian greeting, and took the whole of his filth, from head to toe, into a warm embrace. I have never seen dirtier children.

Everyone had been looking for him, the boys told us he was sick and skipping school. Only nine years old, he’s HIV positive and both parents have been taken by the disease. He has no one looking after him aside from his best friends, who during previous hospital stays held vigil by his side.

No words were exchanged and his grip tightened and we walked to the hospital. This attracted attention. Ethiopians are not accustomed to foreigners embracing filthy street kids, let alone walking off with them. He could barely eat and he was so dehydrated his lips were sore. He managed half a banana and held a mango for later. He was admitted to the hospital.

The next morning, I set out to visit him. A little girl living on the hospital grounds knew where his bed was and brought me into the ward to see him. I had drawn a little cartoon on a makeshift card, but when we arrived, his bed was empty. The nurse said he woke, pulled out his IV, and left.

A few days earlier, I happened upon a crowd gathered on the curb not far from the hospital. Two of the boys were in the middle so I pushed my way in and found another boy lying on the ground. I’d never seen him before, but he was wearing one of the yellow t-shirts that were given to a handful of the boys six months earlier. One man spoke broken english so I grabbed Moti by the shoulder and pulled him over to relay the story. The man translated, but would never have considered asking Moti himself. The crowd dispersed but the boys remained together, I know they would not have left him alone. I picked him up and carried him to the hospital. Half way he insisted on walking, though he had to hold me with all his might, his strength all but gone. In the emergency room I found a nurse and they laid him down to rest. I learned later that he was epileptic and had had a seizure. He was discharged that afternoon and I never saw him again. The Children’s Medical Fund paid the bill.

Today, Jirata and four other boys are living in a small rented house in Gimbie. A program called the Street Boys pays for the accommodation. A sister project, The Ark, offers economic opportunity for unwed mothers and employed one of them to live in the house and watch the boys.

I created the following video about the Children’s Medical Fund, which provides health care for children in need under the age of eighteen, including the Street Boys.

Finding Jinsse

In order to do anything in Africa, you have to take full control. Then, as you’re just about to take full control you are boldly reminded that this is Africa. You have no control.

I had an assignment from the States to follow up on two hospital patients and document their progress in photographs. Jinsse and Tarike, two women admitted in February and now home with their families. Binyam, a young Ethiopian working tirelessly with the hospitals community outreach programs instructed me to find their fathers names and the kebeles in which they lived.

I started with the hospital registers and quickly learned that in juggling english, amharic, and oromifa, no one spells a name the same way twice. Translating from amharic script, vowels are often doubled in an attempt to spell things phonetically for the ferengi. One name is spelled differently on each incarnation of the register, patient charts, lab cards, and prescriptions. Sometimes the name includes the fathers name, sometimes it doesn’t. No one keeps their cards, so a new one is made each time. If someone asks you to find someone by the name Jinsse, you might be looking for Jisse, Jinsse, or Jinsee and chances are the people wont know her name, only her fathers.

In the end, it was the nursing students who remembered the patients and I closed the useless register. Jinsse was too far, a three hours walk and no vehicles would make it. Finding Jinsse would be impossible. Tarike, on the other hand, was close, just one kebele over. You can practically see her house from here.

Africa lulls you into an acceptance of waiting. You actually believe things could be straight forward, that it will come together, as planned. Never, never, never fall for this. Let me assure you it is most certainly will not. Africa reveals itself slowly. Rushing one thing will inevitably complicate something else.

In the two weeks we spent living in the hospital compound we accomplished a lot. Darlene was exhausted at the end of each day seeing patients and I was accruing video for my projects. But those accomplishments came with the price of waiting. Time, patience, trust and a lot of faith are complicit with unwritten schedules, vague complications, cultural under-communication, and over ambitious goodwill. There is a refusal to admit defeat and you rely on motorcycles that almost work but might need a part. When you are in Africa and you’re on a tight schedule, you miss a lot, because Africa rewards the patient traveler. However, if you surrender to Africa, you suddenly find yourself as I did, on my last day and still waiting. It was Friday morning and our flight would leave on Saturday just after midnight. We were an eight hour drive from the airport.

In the end, it was cold hard cash that broke the wait. I hired a truck and invited Monica to join me and disperse shoes to the village children through one of her many outreach programs. We’d drive thru Tarike’s village, do a meet and greet, and then head over the hills and deliver shoes to children in the vicinity of Jinsse’s village and hope we might find someone that knows her family.

I may have bought off the wait, but Africa was firm in it’s resolve. Tarike was not on the way. We couldn’t see her house, the village officers were not available to help us, and the bribes we’d have to pay did not inspire confidence. We’d need to see the village officers, but not today. It would be impossible for her to live in the village and the officers not know about it, I was assured. Deflated, I was now forced into a decision. Would we stay another day? I would have to give up our seats in the land cruiser and instead take local transport to Addis, making the trip ten hours, instead of the eight.

The shoe project went much better. We bumped along weathered dirt tracks rising over farmland hills and thru the heart of village life. We parked by a lone tree and unloaded two duffels of shoes while children ran across fields as word spread. Binyam fitted shoes to young girls offering their toes, their dresses worn and dirty, their waists wrapped in ropes which bound them to a future of heavy loads they would carry to support their families. But it was a beautiful afternoon full of goodwill and cheer. In fact, the goodwill was so overwhelming that one man, whose daughters were fitted with free, brand new shoes, was so pleased he charged only a small fee to lead us to Jinsse.

After two weeks of hearing how far she was, how impossible to find, how remote, we actually found her standing on the side of the road in front of a relatives house. She practically had a sign over her head. I was so pleased with accomplishing the impossible that I decided we’d stay and find Tarike. I would give up our seats on the land cruiser and set out with Binyam, first thing in the morning.

By noon the next day the motorbike still wouldn’t start and I spent the morning waiting. I was getting nervous and hungry, and Binyam was feeling pressure, so I took him out for kitfo, grabbing a sparkplug en route. Kitfo, is raw meat with a hot green chili paste eaten on injera. Ethiopians are mad for it and it cheered him up considerably. I had my kitfo fried up to be on the safe side. I bought him a hen on the way home, a good egg-layer.

The spark plug didn’t solve the problem. He worked thru the afternoon, it was three o’clock and no one at Air Egypt or Ethiopia Airlines would answer the well-published phone numbers on the world wide web. Changing our flights was out of the question, the search would end at sundown and I began to believe if I waited one more day, our luck would change. But that was impossible. Not Africa impossible, but real impossible.

Unable to delay my departure, defeated, we decide to walk to her village. As we passed the Adventist Church, we notice an unused motorbike parked out front. With a little fast talking and the mandatory African waiting period, we procured the bike. Tarike was once again, right next door. I could almost see her smile.

The race was on and skidding into the kebele we greeted the village officers. Tarike? Never heard of her. What?! Maybe you should try the next village over. My heart sank but the bike bounced along and we called out the village name as villagers pointed us in one direction or another.

The road split several times and we took the wrong fork with each division. The day was coming to an end and we eventually ran into a group of Hararbe’s, muslims who had been airlifted from the Somali side of the country to the Sudanese side and set up in a makeshift village camp, like refugees. They only spoke arabic and so we could no longer communicate. We turned around, defeated and bumped our way back toward Gimbie in silence. And then, out in those hills in the earliest hours of dusk, Africa relented and we came across a group of women returning to their village on foot. Yes, said one, Tarike is my neighbor.

Tarike cannot walk. Whatever she suffers, the womans own daughter suffers the same. Two months ago, the village carried Tarike to the hospital for care, and she was admitted, but nothing could be done for her. She is now home, an hours walk from where our bike idled. The bike would not make it, a bridge was out. It was late in the day. I looked at all the faces around me. Hardened by the earth, each carried a heavy load wearing battered shoes and beautifully patterned, but stained and filthy dresses. The future of the girls I saw yesterday.

Tarike would have to stay where she was, they would not carry her again, unless they believed in the treatments she would receive. This was their story, but like the spelling of names, no two stories in Africa are the same.

Binyam looked at me. He would return tomorrow, he was also stung from being so close but not having found her. He would make the hike and get her picture. No, I shook my head. In the middle of that forest, surrounded by the villagers faces looking at me, what was I really going to do? I could almost read it in their faces. Why was I there for Tarike, was this ferengi on the back of a motorbike really going to help?

I had nothing to offer these women but I felt Africa wrap a brotherly arm around me as if proud for bringing me here. There was no doubt that I would be shown more if I stayed longer, but this is what I would see for now. Knowing I had a rocky ride home to survive, we turned the bike and headed out, white knuckles on the gear rack. Africa always surprises when you surrender to it and what you are seeking is not the reward you eventually find.

As for our return to Addis, I received a call late in the evening. Minivan seats were available for us. We just needed to meet a boy named Howie at 4:30 in the morning under a street lamp across from the bus station. This did not impress Darlene and our ten hour, twenty hour ride to Addis is a whole other story that will need to wait.

Podoconiosis

In a land where water can be scarce or remote and is always heavy to carry, hygiene is not always the first consideration. In a land where the body is pushed to exhaustion simply to put food on the table, shoes aren’t necessarily in the budget. Education can be a luxury and even then teachers might not be available. This is a film about taking nothing for granted.

This is the first of two videos I was tasked with making and the imagery contains pictures of terribly disfigured feet due to an ailment called podoconiosis. If you do not like medical imagery, consider this before watching the video or viewing the gallery. The video was made to support the work of Gimbie Adventist Hospital in Ethiopia and I would especially like to thank Monica Barlow, who among many other things, is the compassionate narrator.

Mount Meru

We climbed ten thousand feet in less than forty eight hours, camping twice along the way. Five minutes before sunrise, Darlene and I gained the summit and Marco joined us as the sun rose over Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. We were the first to summit that day just ahead of a massive group of Slovenians, who just missed the sunrise but immediately commandeered the tiny peak, ill-tempered.

Upon touchdown in Tanzania three months prior, we really believed we would climb Kilimanjaro, bag Africa’s highest peak, bask in the bragging rights and, coupled with the Serengeti, we’d do Tanzania right. We did do Serengeti, though we kinda went in the backdoor. But we never thought we’d be on the summit of the other mountain, staring across at the snows in Hemingway’s yarns.

Then again, nothing in Tanzania went the way we expected. And it was all for the best.

After three months in Tanzania we’d learned that the more you planned, the less you saw. Preconceived notions will prove you a fool and only by walking slowly with eyes wide open do you start to really see Africa.

Our climb was cheaper, more aesthetic, and less crowded unless you count the giraffe and buffalo. Our traveling companion surprised us with a rare form of HAD, high altitude diarrhea, “guys, I had to use rocks.” Our mandatory armed ranger came down with malaria and had to be evacuated, leaving us to follow the fresh buffalo tracks on our own. These were circumstances out of our control, but our social faux pas came in the process of tipping, an extravagant affair in full documented view of our entire staff, which consisted of a main guide, an assistant guide, six porters, a cook, and our aforementioned armed guard. A ridiculous affair but so full of inexplicable decision making that one can only describe it as consistent.

Thats Africa. Consistently unexpected, except in expecting the unexpected for all sorts of reasons that we’d never come up with on our own but ultimately boil down to flawed simplicity. And in the end, I smile knowing that no other country I’ve ever visited has challenged my place in the world quite like this east African nation.

Grace Palmer Oct. 1, 1920 – Jan. 20, 20

My grandmothers house was immaculate and full of treats, but not too many, just always the right amount. The lawn was always mowed and we tore divots playing outdoors on summer afternoons. There were bedrooms for me and my sister and beds made up snug and tight without so much as a wrinkle. She kept us well fed and polite and the carpets were always clean for us to lay and play games on. At my grandmothers house, I felt safe, clean, and at peace.

In the room I stayed was a desk so full of stationary that I thought I won the Hallmark lottery. There were so many different sizes and colors and pens for every occasion and under her watch I drew to my hearts content. I received many letters and cards on that stationary, always assured by her pen that she loved me, heart and soul.

Experiencing peacefulness is a gift from my grandmother and a cornerstone of who I am. In this calamitous world full of uncertainty, one truth I could count on was that my grandmother loved me, heart and soul.

When I would see my grandmother over the last couple years, she always held my hand and recharged our bond. As I travel this world, I find peace imagining I am holding her hand and experiencing it with her. Finding her a postcard or composing little notes or even going somewhere on her behalf. In the Vatican City, standing in Saint Peters Cathedral, it was by thinking of my grandmother that made the experience more valuable. I believed she would appreciate walking those halls and that made me cherish it more. I looked more closely on her behalf and I felt peace.

In the forested hills outside Istanbul stands a modest home where Mary, mother of Jesus, was brought and looked after by one of the disciples of her slain son. Years ago, on a particularly warm autumn afternoon, I found myself with a rare moment alone in the room in which she prayed. In that magical context of history, as one is encouraged to do, I found myself speaking aloud to Mary. Hi Mary, I’m Jay, you probably don’t know me, I live really far away and have been a bit busy lately, but… but what I found myself settling into was a word or two about my grandmother and how it was for her that I made the trip to these hills and this home and that I thought Mary should really hear about her because I love her heart and soul.

I think my grandmother and I have different views on heaven, but I am sure she has found hers and I hope that Mary remembers my visit. As for me, I will continue to travel this world, carrying memories of loved ones with me, carrying her memory with me. I believe the soul is the memory of someone you love. And so I will recall her memory and let it enrich my experiences as it remains with me, her soul, in my heaven.

Serengeti Dreams

Five minutes into the park we saw a young lioness tearing apart a Buffalo. If you have never seen a grown lioness stretch and flex her massive figure, let me just note they are sculpted power. It left an impression.

Safari guides have a network of communication to inform each other of the animals presence, which is done entirely in swahili so as to surprise their clients. I learned all the swahili names for the animals in advance and it became a source of amusement between our guide and myself, because I knew that chui kwa mtoto was a leopard with baby and were were on our way to find one. I didn’t ruin the surprise for Darlene or our two swedish friends, Anna and Lina and the guide and I shared some laughs.

On the other hand, I also knew that the words simba, tembea, hapa, and sasa, when all used together in a single sentence meant lions were heading our way, toward camp, right now. It was getting dark. Our guide prepared to sleep in his land cruiser and the camp staff in a caged banda, but it was the clients that stayed in the little exposed vinyl tents. I should mention this safari was another “good deal” because we had a friend with a friend in the business.

Before crawling into our tents, a herd of six buffalo came grazing behind the banda. Everyone huddled inside until they were gone. The affable mzee, Daudi, explained that yes, as I had heard, there were three lions tracking these buffalo. He imitated a lions call so we would know it. No more then ten minutes later we heard this sound again, but this time he was pointing, hapo, there. If you hear the baboons, he said, imitating their calls, it means they are alarmed by lion. Then he demonstrated the hyenas cry, explaining that hyena follow lion. We started taking in all the sounds, registering them, and realizing that no sound was the best sound. Miraculously, we actually fall asleep.

Darlene woke at one thirty, do you hear that? No, I was asleep, mercifully. It’s getting closer, she said, and she also moved closer gripping my arm tighter. My attempts to fall back to sleep were denied. Clearly, she wanted to share this experience. All noises lead to lions, I reminded her, but she was way ahead of me on that one. Within ten minutes the baboons were howling and we could hear Anna and Lina’s anxiety in the neighboring tent. We never asked what to do if a lion starts sniffing at our door. The staff only advised no food in the tents, but hamna shida, the animals are accustomed to them and wont bother us.

That night, under the Serengeti sky in a little vinyl tent at the end of the road, we heard with absolute distinction, the rise and fall of hooves, the snorting of breath, and the cracking joints of six grazing african buffalo. We could hear grass from the patches between our tents, being gripped, torn, and eaten as we remained frozen solid in the dead center of our tent. Darlene categorically identified every sound, hyena, baboon, anxious swedes and the complete lack of aide coming from the staff. We remained wide awake until morning.

I was the first to venture out at the crack of dawn, luring our driver from his car, anxious to get the day started. Duadi pointed out the tracks of a lioness and a hyena that had passed thru our camp. Tracks also clearly showed that we had been smack dab in the middle of where the buffalo roam.

Before breakfast we set out in the land cruiser to take in the life of the early dawn. No more than a few hundred yards from our camp, we saw the six buffalo and three stalking lioness. We astutely noted that these three powerful ladies had no kill and must be a bit hungrier than yesterday. If we could have bought them a buffalo to curb their appetite, we would have and before we camped again that night, I dug out our headphones, though in retrospect those nights were full of sounds we will cherish forever.

Happy New Year

We took a dalla-dalla to Lake Manyara. A dalla-dalla is any form of vehicle, usually a minivan, into which they can cram about twenty people. That’s the legal number, but as they say in Tanzania, there’s always room for one more. And no, it’s not any different than any other minivan, it’s simply CRAMMED with people, they literally sit atop one another and hang out the sliding door, which is not often closed. But it’s cheap and gets one around. Usually. Actually, ours broke down halfway and after waiting at the side of the road for twenty minutes, we finally crawled into a smaller one and resumed our journey.

At the lake, we rented mountain bikes to tour the local village, Mto wa Mbu, which is literally translated as Mosquito river. It’s an unfortunate name as the area is beautiful with tribal culture and mosquito free in the heat of the day. We pedaled jeep road and single track thru banana plantations, sampled banana beer and capped it off with a ride thru the wide open grasslands bordering the lake.

We were surrounded by zebra and curious wildebeest. Gazelles sprinted around us in sport. There are giraffe, but we didn’t see any that day. At one point I stopped riding and watched in awe as four zebra galloped a half circle around me before they made their way off to the lake, which is so full of flamingos, it glows pink. The pool where the river meets the lake is so full of hippos one could not count them all. We kept a respectable distance, but were close enough to watch them emerge and wander the grounds. As a treat to ourselves, we took a bus home, splurging on the extra thousand shilling, or eighty cents. It was a fantastic way to finish up 2009 and we’re giddy with anticipation for 2010.