Africa 2001, The Last Week (or so): Bungee jumping, Robben Island, and a morning mugging

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I started my first day without Tim by taking his spot on a tour of the Cape, feeling mildly guilty that I benefitted from his departure, and severely exhausted from the night before. We visited a seal colony, a penguin colony, a winery, the gorgeous Kirstenbosch gardens, and the tip of the Cape of Good Hope (it's not the southernmost point in Africa no matter what you were taught in high school).

All day, our guide Peter filled us with tidbits of history, geology, biology, politics, and economics. To sensitive American ears his commentary was somewhere between pleasantly unguarded and totally offensive.

Africa 2001, Week 5 (or so): Cape Town health clinics, Gay Goth Night, and Tim's sudden goodbye

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Cape Town was the reason we went to South Africa in the first place. Tim had gone to Wharton for grad school and he signed up to join alumni and students of their healthcare management program for a volunteer stint at the city's medical clinics. We built the trip around that. Only later did we learn people call Cape Town the best city on earth.

I’m not sure what all the fuss is about. At the risk of sounding jaded or elitist, what I saw was a hybrid of places I’d already been. Table Mountain, looming over the city like a blockade against the rest of Africa, is like Anchorage’s Flat Top. The gargantuan mall at Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is New York’s South Street Seaport with more escalators. Long Street, the heart of the famed night life, is a bunch of anycity, anywhere bars. They’ve even got seals in the harbor, just like San Francisco. We ate Mexican food, went to a Scottish pub, watched American movies.

Of course, that makes it the best city in Africa.

Africa 2001: Week 4 - Matthew's Smile and the Cintsa Violin

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Biltong is South African jerky. It's available in beef, boar, and many more wild game options. As we drove south in a rental car from Hluhluwe toward Cape Town, Tim and I basically lived on it. Pringles, too.

We stuck mostly to the N2, the major southern highway, mastering the art of the South African highway pass. If you’re being overtaken, you pull halfway on to the shoulder. When the other driver gets by, he flicks on the hazards. You flash the brights. Thank you. You’re welcome. Polite at 90 mph. You gotta love it.

Mile after mile we listened to CDs we’d heard too often or radio stations whose geographical range far exceeded their musical one. You can’t get away from them and they don’t play anything you want to hear.

Once, we hopped on a smaller road to see the countryside. Chickens, goats, cows, impossibly full taxis, and ubiquitous brush fires made the driving high stress. People were everywhere – commuters sitting in the brush waiting for a ride, shoeless children running home from school, fat ladies with babies on their backs and bundles of sticks balanced on their heads walking back to their grass-roofed huts. We were rushing through a land that hurries for no one.

Through the better part of a week our only stop of consequence was in a town called Cintsa. We spent two nights at Buccaneer's Backpackers.

In the morning Tim and I paddled a hostel canoe up the nearby river until it was too shallow to continue, then drifted back at the water’s own pace. Big black and white kingfishers and tiny bright blue and orange ones yelled at us and skimmed along the banks, always staying a few trees ahead. Two birds with bright red heads and green bodies ate invisible fruit deep inside a tree. Cormorants lined the shores of the river mouth.

As soon as we returned from the two hour canoe ride, I left Tim and went with a bunch of other guests to a local school for a concert. In true African style, all eight of us squeezed into one open-top jeep. My head was two feet above the roll bar and my feet were inside the frame of an old seat. I really didn't expect a violin to cut me to the core that day.

After about twenty minutes our driver, a hostel employee named Mike, pulled into the parking lot of a local school. No kickball field, no basketball hoop, no cars, and no sign of a nearby town. There were three teachers, two older women who looked like nuns in civvies and a man named Matthew.

The students, who ranged in age from five to fourteen, flashed excited, shy smiles while we squeezed into their tiny desks, our knees folded high above our hips. They welcomed us with the national anthem: "United we shall stand/Let us live and strive for freedom/In South Africa our land." The song echoed off the damp, posterless walls and empty bookshelves.

All the girls wore dresses. Some had colorful dots on their face that looked tribal but might have been some sort of global teeny-bopper fad. Several boys wore cut-off indigo coveralls, hand-me-downs of the African workingman's uniform. A few were shirtless. Many were bare foot.

With Matthew's guidance, all forty children performed traditional African songs I'd never heard before and Christian classics barely recognizable through the thick accents. Kumbaya sounded like it always does.

They foot-stomped, heal-slapped, and finger-snapped to rival the best of off-Broadway. One brave girl took the stage alone and serenaded a ceramic frog. Her schoolmates came barging back into the room for the frog prince's royal wedding.

A ceremonial stick-fight degenerated into a playful stab-fest.

Older children laughed when the little ones didn't know the words, the rhythms, or the dances. A happy-eyed child of about 5 repeatedly jumped into the fray only to be knocked around like a pinball, disappear amid the sea of legs, and come crawling back out all teeth and joy.

Children who weren't performing sat coyly among the tourists.

Matthew translated lyrics, introduced acts, and shepherded his disorganized flock with amateur magnificence. He was the first to clap and the last to stop. The show was his gift to us because we cared to show up.

At the end, he asked all of us to point out our home country on a map that two of the older boys held above their heads (the walls were too damp and fragile for tape or tacks). USA, Germany, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, France - the names alone made the students' world a little bigger.

An English woman introduced herself and explained that she had been teaching violin to street children in Soweto, near Johannesburg, for the past several weeks. She asked to play and Matthew agreed.

He gasped and choked back tears when she opened the case. "I've never seen one in person before…maybe once or twice on TV."

She raised her bow. The room was still. And then she played. Classical music filled the room. The notes floated from grin to silent grin. Matthew was frozen, his smile so big it seemed like his face got wider to accommodate it.

When she offered him the violin, nobody breathed. He placed the pad on his neck, peeked at his audience and with one self-conscious stroke shattered the air with a cat-skinning screech. The room erupted. African children squealed. American and Europeans clapped, hooted, and howled. The nun-like teachers stamped their feet and jiggled in their seats, laughing without a sound.

Matthew enjoyed the ineptitude more than anyone. After a little guidance he played two of the most beautiful notes I've ever heard. Glowing with pleasure, he handed back the violin. The woman put it in its case.

Before we left, Mike the driver took up a collection to pay for basic school supplies and much-needed building repairs.
I forked over 50 Rand (about $6.50) and headed for the jeep, taking care not to step on the schoolyard chicken. The children were singing inside as we pulled away.

At dinner that night, a little voice in my head kept saying, “$6.50? 6 freakin 50!” I found Mike the driver and gave him the $50 that Hidde had rescued from Tofo. He promised to bring it to Matthew, who's probably smiling still.


After an overnight stop in the sleepy town of Swellendam, Tim and I arrived in Cape Town to do some volunteer work.

(note: The Christian Science Monitor originally published a big chunk of this installment)

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Africa 2001: Week 3 - Maputo, Gildo and a night we won't forget

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When Gareth called off our final dives in Tofo, Tim and I joined Nicky, Marti, and Anna in a scramble for the morning bus from Inhambane back to Maputo. The others had already left for it. If we got there in time we could travel again with our happy 9.

Sprint up the beach to Bamboozi, settle tabs, shower, change, corral our stuff, run back to town with packs on our backs. From there, Gareth gave us a ride to what passes for a major intersection so we could get a taxi. Instead, we got a ride from another dive guide. With time to spare we caught up with the others boarding the pleasantly empty bus. We were back in Maputo by nightfall.

In the morning, many left. Tim and I stayed with Nicky, Marti, and Anna. Why leave three fun, witty, eye-catching, 21 year old British girls? We went to see the city, five beaming white faces in a sea of thousands of black ones. We wandered around dirty gray streets amid fading architecture that was stooped and faded like a once-handsome old man. We found a market full of fruit, nuts (ever had a REALLY good cashew?), crafts, fish, and sundries. We haggled, stared, bought little and had fun. We checked out an old fort. From there we walked to a ferry to Catembe, a small village across the water (what water I cannot say).

Someone had told we absolutely had to have a drink at a restaurant there with an amazing view of the city. We never found it. Instead, we found a down-trodden African stereotype kind of place with chickens and goats roaming the streets. There was only one place that looked like it might have beer.

The waiter greeted us with a halting, "Good Afternoon, would you require some service?"

“Yes, please.”

With a clap and a smile he blurted, “What can I getcha?” Within minutes we learned his name was Gildo, he'd recently worked on the crew for Will Smith's "Ali" (filmed in Mozambique), and learned English in Secaucus, NJ, when his Mom worked at the UN High Commission for Refugees. He said she won the Nobel Peace Prize. He loved the States but went back to Africa because New Jersey was too rough. Plus, he felt an obligation to give his own country a shot.

Over the course of a few hours we had a couple of rounds and sampled everything on the menu -- both the prawns and the clams. When we boarded the ferry back, Gildo was there. I admit to a brief twinge of alarm. Stories I'd heard about the dark side of Mozambique and the dangers of exotic travel crept into my mind. Was he following us? Was his presence really a coincidence?

In any case, he came in handy when the ferry man refused our tickets. Gildo explained to us that the two ferries that go back and forth all day on the same route using the same docks are not affiliated. Our round trip tickets were for the other boat. We paid 50 cents each and kept chatting with Gildo.

Back in Maputo, he asked where we were going. We said, "Africa bar." He said, "Me, too. My buddies are picking me up." His friends Papa Joe and Thomas offered us a ride. As we piled into their van, I wondered if this was the start of an amazing night or a decision I'd regret until my (possibly imminent) death. When we didn't stop at a police checkpoint, I got even more anxious. "They have no reason to stop us," said Papa Joe.

But it's true that the Mozambique police were notoriously corrupt. Inside the bar, Gildo introduced us to John Paul, who had been to San Francisco once; Tony, who looked local but was Australian; and hordes of others who spoke varying degrees of English but were always happy to meet us. The band kicked in with a strange local mix of African beats and Latin sounds.

I swam merrily in a sea of laughter, carefree conversation, high-fives, hand shakes, and back slaps. The ladies draped their arms around Tim and me. Nicky showed the world an unexpected tongue stud. The lead singer in the band, with thick glasses, missing teeth, and a cheap red baseball hat, sang his heart out in what must have been Portuguese. He backed off the mike, put down his guitar, and did a little old man shuffle that set the crowd roaring. Our cheeks hurt from smiling so much. Tim beamed, "You know that feeling when there is nowhere else on earth you'd rather be?"

In a quiet moment, I asked Gildo if there was any message he wanted us to take home. What was it the world needed to know?

Africa is not what you think, he answered. It is sad, poor, messy, and bogged down in its own history, yes. But there is a new generation, a generation of Gildos and Papa Joes and others. They thank the older generation for all they have done, and want to give them comfy seats in retirement. The Africa Gildo envisions won’t be Europe or America. It will be Africa, always. It will succeed because sorrow, poverty, and strife do not demand pessimism. If the Africans, like Gildo, who'd been able to get out come home with their skills, brains, and optimism, they can build a better life for themselves, their families, and their countries. Together they can break the cycles that hold Africa back.

Then he saw a friend across the crowd and dashed off for another warm hello.

I had just read Kerouac's On the Road and there I was in a city I'd never even heard of before in a bar filled with different colors, tongues, and creeds, with one of my closest buddies making new friends, feeling good, and sharing pints with Gildo and the hope of all of Africa. The night washed over us. Tim danced through the room quoting Dean Moriarty: Blow Man Blow!

Several hours and another bar or two later, our new friend Tony gave us a ride home.

I don't know if Gildo’s vision has a shot. He may end up another shattered African dreamer. I hope not.

We rode the high of our night with Gildo through the next day.

To add to the joy, stuff that Tim and I had left in Tofo made it back to us. I had forgotten my jacket, with $50 in the pocket, in Gareth the dive instructor's truck. Not a big deal, really, since I hadn’t brought anything I wasn’t willing to lose or spend. Tim was a little more desparate. He had left his toiletry kit, complete with his glasses and additional contacts.

The host at our Maputo hostel told us our best shot was a woman named Alexandra who would be coming from Tofo in the next couple of days. We sent a fax to Gareth using a number he'd given me that was actually for a fax machine at another dive shop, since Gareth himself had no phone line at all. We wrote up some elaborate instructions on where to find my jacket, Steve's stuff, and the mystery woman named Alexandra, as well as how to find us in Maputo. Failing that, we suggested he mail it to the hotel in Cape Town where we’d be in a few weeks. He could use my money for postage and “his troubles.” We faxed it off, full of low expectations.

The next day we happened upon Hidde, the Dutchman from Bamboozi, crossing the street. “Tim. J.J. I have your stuff,” he said with a wave, seemingly oblivious to how unlikely it was that the fax went through, they found the jacket and dop kit, the buses ran, and he bumped into us in the middle of a city almost 500 miles away from where we’d last seen him. In fact, all he knew was that someone gave him our stuff and told him to look for us at the hostel in Maputo. When we asked what he would have done had he missed us, he gave the only reasonable answer: “Spent your fifty bucks.”

Anthea and SarahJane were with him. We spent the day together, fending off the street vendors who sell everything from sunglasses and CDs to Vick's Vapor Rub and cigarettes. Anthea put on quite a show dealing with them: “How much for the tiger balm?...What have you got there?.... Ahh, no, I’m grand, thanks!... Ooooh handbags! Now why would I want a handbag when I already have 2 rucksacks and three other bags.” I bought carved monkeys – Speak, See, Hear and the lesser-known Think No Evil – from a talented young artist named Tosh. He gave me a small carved bird as a gift “for his friend” (I lost it later). He wanted me to stay. I told him I had to go back to America to see my Mom. He understood.

We ate dinner in a fish market outside town where you could buy fresh food by the kilo, give it to the restaurants out back to cook as they see fit, eat a delicious meal, and then wait interminably for a taxi.

The next morning we left Mozambique on the “luxury coach.” It had a toilet and nobody had to sit in the aisles. At the Swaziland border a patrolman kept street urchins out of his country by chasing them with a whip. Swaziland is small and soon we were back in South Africa.

Tim and I were off to Hluhluwe, a national park on the far east coast of South Africa. The girls, now our friends, were off to Lesotho. It was a sad departure made easier by being quick. The bus made a special stop for Tim and me on the shoulder of a major highway at the bottom of an exit ramp. As it pulled away we waved goodbye to Anna – the easy-going, always game, calmly pretty centerpiece of the trio; Nicky – the modest babe in blend-with-the-crowd clothes who told me, “A beard suits you, but probably because it covers the fact that you’re butt ugly;” and Marti – athletic, quick with a room-filling smile, and never ashamed to admit when Montezuma was knocking on her colon. We would miss them.

The next few days passed in a flash. Ivan, the owner of Hluhluwe Backpackers, had been a professional hunter in Botswana. Once they started stocking private farms with big game and charging millionaires thousands to shoot captive animals, he retired. He'd been to Ohio once. Twelve Zulu men and women worked on his staff. In the previous 6 months, 9 had lost a family member to AIDS.

Our first day in the area, Tim and I walked for 12 miles around False Bay, seeing only a few warthogs and a solitary hiker. We moved south to the town of St Lucia and saw some hippos and crocs. In the woods by the river, we found a troop of vervet monkeys. They stared at us, too. We hung out together for twenty minutes or so, just yards apart.

Everywhere we went there were birds – red heads, orange bellies, stunning green wings, long white necks and bright yellow feet, humble little brown guys flitting among thick bushes. Each one new to me.

In 4 days we had to be in Cape Town. By car, it’s at least 24 hours of driving. We hopped the Bazzbus for an uneventful ride to an uneventful night in uneventful Durban.

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Africa 2001: Week 2 - Long cab rides, beautiful beaches, and a dead man

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The next morning in Swaziland, we were all surprised to discover that Mozambique still sounded like a good idea. Bob, our hostel host, explained what we'd need to do to get there, gave us a makeshift map, and took Ellen, Emma, Mark, Josh, Marti, Nicky, Anna, Tim, and I to the fruit market.

His instructions played out as follows: From the fruit market, we took a taxi to Mozambique's embassy in Mbabane, Swaziland's capital. We filled out paperwork for the visa, and got passport pictures from a guy running an instant-photo business in the shade of a tree across the street. We then killed time in a cafe at a mall in the center of town, sitting and watching Africa at work: people shopping, chatting, wandering, loitering, laughing and staring back - amazingly mundane. Back at the embassy 5 hours hours later, we picked up our visas with no headaches, hassles or mistakes. Then it was another taxi to the KFC parking lot in the center of Manzini to get a long-distance taxi. A haggle here, a misunderstanding there, and the nine of us piled into a minivan with a cartoon of fornicating bunnies on the rear windshield. We agreed to pay double to get the ride to ourselves.

Tim and I were on our way to a country we’d never even thought about visiting before with a bunch of people we’d just met in a van driven by a guy who didn't speak English. We cracked into a case of Castle lager, toasts went up, conversation exploded, and we blasted through the sunburnt countryside, past grass huts, rolling hills, and brush fires. By 8pm we were in Maputo, Mozambique and out of beer. The ride cost each of us about four dollars. Our trip had become a journey.

We had to find dinner before town closed. Ellen tried using her Spanish to gather information from Portuguese-speaking locals. It didn’t work very well. Soon we found ourselves in an all but empty restaurant where the waiter spoke no English. After a lot of pointing by us and head shaking by the waiter -- the menu listed far more than the kitchen offered -- we managed to get two appetizers without a clue what we ordered. As I was biting into my second mouthful, Nicky, a vet in training, simply said, “I think that’s cow stomach. The honeycomb bit is the reticulum.” The meal wasn’t good to start with. It didn’t get better with that comment. The other dish turned out to be spicy chicken liver. Foul.

Portuguese. New friends. Dollar an hour cab rides. Cow stomach. We were high on the adventure of it all, but had to get to bed early. I tossed through a sleepless night of others snoring as antimalarial pills messed with my head. We rose at 5 and purged the previous night’s dinner. The toilets were behind saloon-style swinging doors along the main hallway. We all heard, in great detail, Tim's intestinal war (privacy and pride were the first casualties of African travel). After about ten minutes of outrageous gurgling, grunting, and gas, he stepped out and said, "Good morning everyone. Ready?"

We were, and booked it to the bus station for an eight hour ride to a place called Inhambane.

Commotion and exhaustion as con artist baggage handlers fleeced me to get my luggage aboard. People hustled around selling food, cigarettes, and just about anything else you might want on a bus. We happy, confused, tired 9, full of Immodium, knew not to eat until we reached the other end of the ride. And we were off.

A woman sat in the aisle breast-feeding. Mark, Josh, and I shared three seats barely wide enough for two butts. Every time the bus stopped along its lengthy route women and boys swarmed the vehicle to sell soda, roots, fish on sticks, even bows and arrows (an odd choice in a land where the police don’t allow pocket knives). To buy, you leaned out the window, pointed, haggled, took and paid. We stopped for gas and a toilet so filthy it scared your waste right back into your abdomen. The bus hummed along. Tiny towns flit past. Women with infants strapped to their back worked the dirt, as they have for centuries. Children played. Men were rare, perhaps claimed by the long civil war. Nearly everyone was barefoot.

Their rickety homes were made of palms. Water came from small wells. Utility poles had no wires, presumably because it was taken down during the wars or stolen and sold as scrap metal. Land mine clearance crews were visible here and there. As dangerous jobs go, it used to be easier but massive rains in 2000 scattered the mines around and now nobody knows where they are. Staring out the window, I couldn’t help wondering how many tilling women or playing children explode everyday. Mark deadpanned, “When the floods came through here and devastated the entire country, it must have taken them weeks to rebuild.”

We cruised right through it all. From Inhmabane, we got in the back of a pick up doubling as a taxi and half an hour later the road ended in Tofo, on the edge of the Indian Ocean. Packs on our backs, we took off our shoes and began the 1.5 km walk up the beach to Bamboozi Backpackers. Palm trees whispered with the cool breeze. Fine white sand tickled our feet and skittered past our legs. Up the coast there was nothing but beach. My photos say it was cloudy, but you could feel the sun bouncing on the blue waves. I yelled through giddy laughter, “This is the coolest place I’ve ever been!”

It never got worse.

The night we arrived Des, Bamboozi’s white South African owner, was dangerously drunk. After threatening to kick my ass for reasons nobody understood, he did a conversational u-turn and exhorted me not to “buy into that first world bullshit, man. You got to Realize!” Then he stared across the moonlit ocean, said, “Magic,” and shook my hand.

Six days snuck by as we lounged at the hostel, lounged on the beach, lounged at a restaurant, lounged at the other restaurant and meandered the beaches for miles upon miles. Hours disappeared as we chatted with Hidde, a Dutchman who was out of money two months before his trip was to end; Anthea and SarahJane, who worked the bar for a week in exchange for free lodging; Jarrod, the young Irish tough who was really just the quiet young Irish guy; and too many others to count from countries galore. Friendships came quickly in Paradise. All you had to do was turn, face, and start talking to find a buddy for an hour, a day, or a lifetime. Breakfast was pancakes and fresh fruit. Dinner was seafood caught that afternoon. Managing it all was Des's main employee, a local named Alex who managed the books with stunning incompetence and spoke little English. He had a big heart and an apologetic smile.

Marti, Ellen, and I signed up for SCUBA certification courses at a local dive shop. On my first dive my air went to zero, scaring the instructor so badly her eyes nearly knocked off her mask. I remained calm because I could still breathe and incorrectly assumed the gauge was broken. Gareth, our instructor for all dives but the first, took great joy. He flashed an Eddie Haskell smile when he rocketed over the waves and sent people bouncing around our motorized raft. He admonished me to “Shine up” when I asked him to wait a second so I could go to the bathroom. We followed his blond dreadlocks through the coral as he pointed out angel fish, trumpet fish, rays, lobsters, and even snails having sex (when asked whether they were rare snails, he explained, “It’s rare to see them humping.”).

On the last day, he tried mightily to get us out for our final dive though the waves were ten feet tall. We slammed and jarred along in the raft, clinging for our life. Anna nearly went overboard, somehow holding on even as her head was almost in the water and her feet were almost in Gareth’s ear. After about 15 minutes, some important looking part of the raft broke loose and we turned back. Marti let Gareth know we appreciated his decision with a quick confession: “I was bricking myself just thinking about getting out of this boat.”

That same sea had killed a man just a few days earlier.

In many ways the dead define Africa. The dead of civil wars. The dead of poverty, AIDS, and crime. Dead economies, dead expectations, dead regimes, and dead ends. It was fitting, then, that in the midst of idyllic Tofo, a dead man disrupted our day. He had gone fishing south of town and slipped on the seaweed covered rocks. The ocean grabbed him, beat him against the bottom, placed him on the beach in front of our hostel, and went back about its business.

We were in town – the lone customers in a beachside restaurant called Concha – when Jarrod and a deaf bilingual German guy came running in from Bamboozi to find someone who could help them find someone who could help them do something about the body. A woman at the bar called the authorities. We went back to the hostel for curiosity, safety, and camaraderie.

A policeman, a priest, and a small crowd of locals came to identify him and give last rites. They pulled him out of the surf, told us that people would be by in a day or two to remove it, and left. The 20 of us in the hostel stayed in the bar at the top of the dunes, nervous and respectful.

I spent a lot of time that night wondering what to think. Wrapped in a hammock and palm leaves by some hostel employees, the corpse was bigger and darker than one skinny African man. The waves kept up their rhythm. Clouds drifted past the fluorescent moon. You could almost here nature saying, “Excuse me, you dropped this.” In the hostel, we listened to Santana, took our SCUBA lessons, ate our delicious meals of prawns, chicken, and crab, drank our 2M beers, and chatted quietly about what it would be like to live a life where you can die trying to catch dinner. We were welcome, but we were visitors.

The family came by the next day to sit with the body a while before carrying him off for burial.

It was time to move on. Two weeks down, and enough memories for a lifetime already.

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Africa 2001: Week 1 - Bewildered wildebeests are only the beginning

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From an airplane at 5AM, Lagos, Nigeria looked a lot like Newark, New Jersey: sprawling, bright, and vague. Once I cleared the jet lag out of my head long enough to think, I clamped down on one important difference: the lights, the people hidden in the quilt of buildings, the air I was breathing, they were all in Africa. It was July 2001 and I was a long way from home. Farther from home than I’d ever been, in more ways than one.

Ever since, the trip has come up in more conversations than I can count. Many people have asked why I haven't published a journal of some sort. I am one of those people, so here it goes. If you're interested, read on. I've left out a lot, and it's impossible to capture it all anyway.

It is only possible to recap:

Week One
After our Lagos stopover, Tim* and I arrived in Johannesburg in early afternoon. I was on leave from work, Tim on leave from working. Our only concrete plan was to make the most of six weeks of freedom. In fact, we didn't even have a place to stay that night. After a few confusing phone calls we went to a hostel to do as the locals did – stay inside, away from the streets, behind cement walls topped with broken glass and razor wire. The danger outside was real, the stories were common. We ate pasta and talked to an easy-going Scandinavian girl named Nina. She told us all about her last six months traveling with a friend, every word sweetened by a mischievous accent and an energizing smile. She was gorgeous. She was nineteen. I was a very uncomfortable 31. It was time for bed. I slept fifteen hours.

Tim and I decided that our first significant act of tourism would be a guided trip to Soweto (Southwest Township). We piled into the sightseeing van with our guide, a local named Neo, and thought of Bono: “Living in a shantytown outside of Johannesburg.” Well the Soweto I was in isn’t so easy to categorize, mister!

We started with a walk through an area called Mandelaville, a name that was part tribute and part protest. Unemployment was 80%. Fresh water was rare, toilets shared. We went into one shack: a mother and son lived there in a shared bed. The wallpaper was soup labels, there was no electricity and the gas light made our eyes hurt.

The sorrow swung at us like a hammer but it all felt a little voyeuristic: “Oh look! Poor black people! Get the camera!” I mean, have you ever gone to a squalor-filled trailer park just to talk to welfare mothers and see how miserable life can be?

Neo was quick to point out that this misery was only part of the picture. In fact, that's why he gave tours. Soweto is three times the size of the city of which it is a “suburb”** and housed the full spectrum of humanity. There were shantytowns like Mandelaville, sure, but millionaires, too. It was home to one of the largest hospitals in the world, and one of the largest breweries, too. It had the only street in the world with two Nobel Peace Prize winners on it. That’s what CNN didn't say. It’s what Neo wanted the world to know.

We got back in the van to see more. Horns were going everywhere, polite and civil. It’s a conversation: “Go ahead. Thank you. Need a ride? Hey man, how’ve you been? Excuse me....” We passed stores that sold nothing but access to a phone. There were live chickens for sale on the corner. Guys with a wrench and a hammer called themselves mechanics and sat idle on the side of the road. Soon enough we were at Nelson Mandela’s old house. Bishop Tutu’s place is just up the way.

To understand the brutality of apartheid, all you need to know is that while Nelson was in jail his wife Winnie used to wave a broom out the front door before going out for the paper, some milk, or just some air. If government snipers shot at it, she stayed inside all day. This was long before she decided to steal from the ANC coffers, betray her husband’s dreams, and lose the respect of her entire nation.

Neo showed us the school where the Soweto Student Uprising went down. He was 11 at the time. The police killed his friend of the same age, sparking days of riots and launching the anti-apartheid struggle to new heights of violence and adamance. Neo later ran guns for the ANC. He didn't apologize for it.

The next morning we were up at dawn and into another van. After lots of stops at hostels (called "backpackers"), 16 of us were hurtling towards Kruger National Park. Wide highways surprised. Fast food breakfast disappointed. Lunch in the mall hurt.

Then we got to the park. Therein lies the Africa I had seen on TV. For three days the 16 of us -- Brits, Canadians, and Americans all -- did little more than stare out the van windows. Our driver and guide, Wim, didn’t speak much beyond telling us what we were looking at.

Just inside the gate, an impala! Over there, a giraffe: did you know they give birth standing up? Zebras, the females are white then black and the males black then white. Ahhh, tour guide humor. There’s a herd of impala. Elephants, bigger than you imagined, challenged the van with mock aggression. We hoped it was mocking, at least, as he walked towards us ears a-flapping. Rhino, kudu, badger, hyena, baboons, monkeys, even a cheetah. Oh man, not another impala. 150 cape buffalo blocked the road. Now to the water. Hippos! Faster than they look, they kill more people in South Africa than any other game. One tried to kill Wim once; he barely outran it. Nearby crocodiles were motionless. Wim said they can change the gender of their offspring by adding or removing sand on the nest to alter the temperature of their eggs. Not bad for a dinosaur brain.

Between it all, on the giraffe’s side, the elephants back, the trees, the bushes, and the water, were the birds. Green white red amazing, huge small, loud quiet, darting gliding hiding soaring. Birds like you’ve never seen. Everywhere, even through mammal-free hours of "nothing."

On the night drive all that was still there, but all you could see were occasional eyes. You just tried to stay warm and enjoy the Zen trance of it all.

We drove, ate, slept, and repeated for three days, seeing only a tiny fraction of Kruger, which is about the size of Israel. 2000 kilometers of road only let you see 10% of the total acreage. Boredom never came. Neither did lions or leopards.

After Kruger we went to a private game reserve where the guides drove off-road and we were allowed to get out and walk freely. The animals were elsewhere. My intestines hung tough as the food got more African and the water more dodgy. Next we saw Blyde River Canyon (it’s deep but not quite Grand) before Wim left Tim and I at Nelspruit, the major town near the park, with four others -- Mark and Josh, and Ellen and Emma.

Familiar but not yet friendly, all of us were waiting for the BazBus, a van that does laps around the incredible network of South African backpackers and connects the entire country on the cheap. It was late because it runs on "Africa time."

When it came we sardined aboard with 20 others in what passed for 22 seats. Tim and I wedged ourselves into the front row next to a French couple who looked way too old for the crowd (they must have been all of 45). We couldn’t turn, couldn’t move our legs, couldn’t talk to anyone in English. We just read and read and eavesdropped on the conversations behind us. In joyous contrast to the silent safari van, the Bazbus was a rolling party of accents and adventurers swapping tales, tips, and jokes. Someone let the Brits control the stereo: Crap house music for everybody! The joint was jumping.

Five hours later, Swaziland.

That's when I learned Swaziland is a country. In fact it’s got one of the last powerful monarchies on earth. We checked into a backpackers inside Mlilwane National Park. Our gracious host Bob darted around the place keeping everyone happy. He burst into our dinner and told us to hurry if we wanted to see the dancing. What dancing!? Off I dashed. At a nearby hotel (same owners as the hostel, much better dressed clientele), Swazi people danced and sang and banged drums. The men wore fur skirts on their ankles and waists and danced to the wail of their own singing. The big move was a clap under a kicking leg, revealing the red Adidas under the animal skins. The women wore long dresses and sang along while passing the hat for donations. Overall, it was about as authentic as colonial villages I went to on elementary school field trips. The tourists, like me, ate it up.

As I waited in the van to get back to the backpackers, a pretty young Brit leaned across my legs, put an elbow and healthy breast on my thigh, and chatted with a bloke standing outside the sliding door. When she finally sat up she apologized and laughed a great happy laugh that said, “We’re all friends here.” Enter Marti.

Back at the hostel I met her friends, Nicky and Anna. Two Dutch guys they knew, Vincent and Roy, were knocking back beers. We discussed the dual English meanings of “dyke” and whatever else comes up when you’re in a bar full of strangers in Swaziland. Mark and Josh and Ellen and Emma were still around. The conversation turned to next destinations. Word had it that despite the 17 year civil war and floods and land mines and corrupt cops, Mozambique was a great place. Someone who’d been said we must go. Nine of us agreed.

Last call happened. then sleep, then morning. It was time for a mountain bike ride. The Dutch guys set the pace. We rifled up and down red dirt roads, pausing only to wait for our panting guide. Vincent was showing off his speed, missed a turn, and disappeared into the tall grass. He crawled out laughing harder than anyone. Antelopes ran alongside us, fear in their eyes. Birds took flight at our approach. Ostrich trotted away. Bewildered wildebeest didn’t know where to turn. Zebra fled. The hippos and crocs paid us no mind. Young black boys waved from the other side of the park fence. It was, simply put, the best bike ride of my life. Tim, Vincent, Roy, Anna, Marti and I joking, smiling, and sweating our way through the Africa I'd imagined. Who the heck were these people?

------

*To quote Mr. Martin, my high school English teacher, "Names have been changed to protect the guilty; the innocent don't need protection." If you know these people, or are one of them, you'll figure it out.

**Most facts like this are unverified. They are things people told me along the way that were accurate in spirit if not in the details.

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