the lost chapters - creepy crawlies

If there are any benefits to being stranded just north of pleasant climates, it’s that the persistent chill keeps bug life to a minimum. Like any other country, they flourish mainly in the gentler seasons – so we are blessed that we spend so much time outside the company of pain-in-the-butt, pint-sized pests.

South of the equator was a different story. Our house was a surrogate home to any number of creepy, crawly, atomic-sized insects. The freakiest were the giant black centipedes whose jet black bodies measured 6-8 inches long and were a centimeter wide. They slunk along on thousands of ruby red tentacles, and contracted into a tight spiraled package the moment they were knocked off their path. We have them in Canada, but they’re 1/100 of the size and not nearly as spine-tinglingly peculiar.

My run-ins with cockroaches, mosquitoes, ants, and centipedes (not to mention more mobile game like rats and lizards) became as routine my morning coffee, and at some point I dropped my Western standards of hygiene and started looking the other way. This was especially the case when the bugs got between me and whatever I needed – like the sugar in my tea. Ants invaded the sugar tins. They swarmed the shelves in the pantry and it was next to impossible keep them out or avoid scooping up a straggler or two when dipping in for a teaspoon of sweetener. My strategy was to dodge as many as I could, and then carefully eye the stream as I poured the grains into my tea. They also loved to run up the legs and along the surface of the dining room table. There was a bottle of exterminating spray, but the particles would hang in the air after spraying, making it difficult to enjoy your food while choking down mouthfuls of disinfectant.

The same went for my daily layering of mosquito spray, but it was hardly something I could avoid. None of the bedrooms in the house had mosquito nets. It wasn’t much of a problem for the locals, but my blood was like the nectar of the gods to the little biters and they swarmed in through the screen-less window in my room whose shutter had fallen off it’s hinge and wouldn’t fit back into the frame. There were several make-shift attempts to resolve the problem, but in the end, bathing in insect repellent, cranking the AC and sleeping with my head under the covers was the most effective solution – my apologies to global warming.

the lost chapters

They say that everyone has a story. I’ve been a bit of a bookworm since the holidays, and the more I delve into the secret histories of others, the more I’m floored by the incredible, intricate, and inspiring lives that unfold on the stark white pages of a bound 2-inch paperback. It seems so extraordinary that 40 years can be redacted down to 200 pages.

This blog began as a disjointed attempt to communicate with the outside when I was stuck in what felt like a technology-deprived vacuum. My world in Dar es Salaam relied on a strict routine that had me walking 5 miles at dawn, working ten hours, running an hour or more on the treadmill, and falling asleep to the drone of the airconditioner churning through the thick, humid air. My airconditioner was always on at night (so long as the electricity was working). It was selfish, but I would wrap myself in my warmest clothes, crank the knob to maximum, and crawl beneath my blanket, curled up in a ball, making sure all my extremities were covered so that mosquitoes wouldn’t get me. The Tanzanian mosquitoes loved me.

The longer I spend at home, the more I reminisce about the four-ish months I spent on the Eastern Coast of the continent. A time when I would struggle for stories to write home about; now I realize that just about everything, however commonplace in my Tanzanian routine, was a story worth telling. I never wrote about the people – like Maria, the housekeeper with five children and a grandchild, Enoki, the carpenter nicknamed “the captain” because of his tendencies to drown himself in the bottle, or Mario, the ex-militia overnight guard who washed the dishes and did the ironing (when he wasn’t carrying around his bow and quiver of arrows). I never wrote about the bats that awoke at everyday at dusk and took over the skies – peppering the landscape and ridding the heavens of high-flying insects. I forgot to mention my daily run-ins with lizards, mice, and cockroaches, because the shock of sharing your home with these tiny refugees wore off before I thought to start writing. My journalism professor would be appalled by the moments I let slip through my fingers. Hopefully, it’s not too late.

the best policy

New Year's resolutions are a lot like those glam, pointy-toed, precariously high-heeled shoes stashed in the back of your closet. They're gloriously chic, classic, they match every outfit, and on the 31st of December, you pull them out of the pile wondering why you ever retired these beauties in the first place. Six days later, youre hobbling across your room on raw toes, sore arches, and blistered heels, to cast those decade-defining shoes back into the void.

It’s hard to admit that they’ll stay lost for the next 18 months. It’s harder when you substitute stroppy fashion with the exercise bootcamp, healthy menu, and dry behaviour that you promised yourself in the spirit of a new decade. It’s hard to be honest.

But with age, I find that admitting the truth can save you a lot of hassles. It can be hurtful, it can be embarrassing, and god knows it can be uncomfortable, but a little pain now usually saves a mess of trouble and emotion later on.

But I’m just a globetrotting post-grad with high opinions and a devastatingly low account balance - fessing-up to the little things in my life doesn’t typically involve public scrutiny or international attention. But it’s in these arenas that a certain frankness matters most. Enter my latest read, The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani. She’s a journalist turned epidemiologist (fancy word for disease hunter) and she’s spent the last twenty years chasing HIV, predicting its outbreaks and shaping prevention strategies for countries across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. AIDS is a scary word, one that Westerners struggle to internalize, especially when bombarded with devastating figures like more than 2 in 5 adults in Swaziland are infected with the disease. In Canada and America the numbers are nowhere near as high, and there is a growing call for understanding and acceptance of a disease that was once tagged as the plague of “social misfits.” But how do we stop it?

My travels have taken me to some of these “at risk” places – places where AIDS is the main cause of death for people ages 24-49. I never encountered it personally, but every month someone, whether it was the company driver or the project stonemason, would take the day off to attend the funeral of a cousin, or an in-law, who had succumbed to the disease. It seems like an impossible situation, one that has been injected with billions of dollars without enough major success. And what’s most shameful, is that when the numbers add up, the most effective strategies, proven to reverse the spread of HIV, are ones that congressmen and heads of state refuse to fund because of social stigmas.

It’s probably too simple to say that investing in promoting safe sex and needle exchange programs would solve the pandemic – but the spread of HIV has all but been stopped and sometimes reversed in places like Indonesia, Cambodia, and Thailand, where the focus is on the people most at risk (sex workers and junkies). Providing condoms and clean needles to those most likely to contract and subsequently transmit the disease has been proven to drastically decrease the number of new HIV infections among the general population. But in the eyes of the public, who wants to dole out the cash to make a prostitute’s job a little safer? Even the UN is guilty of promoting smokescreen images of the problem, saying HIV spreads because of “poverty” and “gender inequality” (polite terms that veil the blunt reality that drugs, prostitution, and other dirty business propel the disease in most cases). And the United States (the biggest single contributor to the international fight against AIDS) refuses to support programs that don’t line up with their political agendas (because the programs like the Purity Ring work – except for the 72% of pledges who did have sex before marriage). And if you can’t convince the average hormone-driven American teenager to stay pure, then what are you chances of persuading someone who’s livelihood depends on sex to abstain? It’s frustrating to say the least.

So if I have any hope for the future, it’s that 2010 will be a decade where people have the courage to be honest. It may be painful, scary, and awkward, but if I can admit that my promise to run five miles a day isn’t as realistic or effective as a commitment to exercise a few times a week and eat right, then maybe Washington, Parliament, and the other heavy hitters will have the guts to make the “immoral” or “deplorable” decisions that just may change the world.

99 days of suburban living

I grew up on the West side of the capital. It's your typical dying suburb: a relatively unknown patch of the former Nepean, that connects the local mall to more important parts of the city. It's basically a through-way - a single four lane strip of pavement lined with banks, fast food, and a few name-brand gas station. It's packed during rush hour, but empty the other 22 hours of the day.

I don't know any people who stayed here post highschool graduation. I escaped at 19, and coming home at 21 was like being delivered into a nightmare. I lived in a town within a town, and my neighbourhood lacked the most basic spirit that defines a city, a community - there were no people. There are plenty of cars, double-door garages, and parking lots packed with row upon row of minivans. But the sidewalks were bare, and the only time I saw a body was as it was staggering from store to 4x4.

Without people, this place seemed cold and soulless. It was as though nothing beyond the Tim Horton's frachises survived, and it was depressing to notice how the people aspect of community had been swallowed by big box grocers and coffee conglomerates. I don't bear any ill-will towards my hometown, but it's a place where the (non-childbearing) under 30s flounder. My defense has always been to stay indoors, but that habit is becoming dangerously comfortable as the winter winds approach. Hopefully, in the sweet by-and-by, something good will come.

joie de vivre

I'm not from Montreal. Born and raised in the Ottawa burbs, my life has been lacking the cultural edge that french canada has honed over the past hundred decades or so. I've spent snippets of time abroad, been introduced to the relics and cobblestone streets of a few European cities, but sitting at the window of my sister's corner unit, I can't help but notice how the people here just seem to belong. Apartment doors are painted bold enough to match the fluorescent patterns of street shoes, and the spiral staircases echo the delicate brown curls of the girl patiently standing at the bus stop. The harmony of objects is seducing me. Wine, anyone?

french lessons

three englishmen in montreal. french language, beware.

how andy feels about vegan lunch

a little italian coffee

on top of the world

jumping for jesus

la vie a montreal

It's morning and I'm sitting on the pavement outside my sister's first floor walk up. I'm surrounded by piles of beaten-up shoes, and laundry baskets overflowing with a few decades worth of Value Village finds. It's a civic holiday in Montreal, and like in all rustic cities, the pedestrian quarters have descended into giant flea markets. The street-corners are piled with slightly bruised pieces of furniture and girls in APC selling yesterday's trends to latte-wielding passerby's. It's a scavenger's paradise - pretty different from the hollow cement channels swamped with the suit-and-tie bureaucrats of Ottawa. This city pulses. Tattooed couples in jean shorts and summer dresses march hand in hand, best friends cross the streets munching through thick slices of cheesy pizza, and gray-haired women in floral vests eye the racks of musty smelling garments. Everyone seems to know it's probably the last weekend of summer. With the chilly bite of fall creeping in with the sunset, jackets and scarves are selling fast.

keeping the peace

Our night watchman keeps guard with a bow and arrow. He sits up all night, perched on one of those cheap, electric-blue plastic patio chairs, armed with a bow and about nine arrows. actually.

to ottawa, with love

Monday mornings hurt. Squinting sleepy eyes, alarm clocks, and breakfast on the fly. It’s a rude transition from the tranquility of the weekend. The same sun, the same sky, but strangely not as friendly.
There’s a BA flight that departs Monday mornings. Mondays and Wednesdays, and every week feels like a missed chance. I lay on the hard foam mattress, crushing my eyelids closed, and holding my breath trying not to think about my heart flying away.

These are things I look forward to

value village (cyrville)

electric nights on bank st

hand-me-downs

meet me at trudeau

The truth: my heart’s not in it. It started as a tense and loveless relationship, and I’ve concluded that it’s better to be selfish than break myself trying to make things work in Africa. In one deep breath, I’m looking forward to coming home.
It wasn’t the city so much as the circumstances. With no separation between work and play, a home office, living/working/socializing with the 40+ crowd, it was hard not to see myself fading away. The bi-monthly beach parties and marathon treadmill runs got me through the first three months, but at the cost of my sanity (not to mention the blisters). It’s hard not to feel defeated, but I know I can do a lot more good in a city where archaic thinking isn’t so entrenched in personalities and social practices.
There was no contract, there was no security, and I fell face-first into an opportunity to cut ties and ran with it. The bitterness is mutual, but tensions have eased in the seven days since D-day and it’s not completely unbearable to be at the sitting at the same table with a person you feel has wronged you, and who is more than happy to play the victim. I’m hoping to fly out as soon as some last minute papers go through, hopefully the first week of June. I won’t hold grudges – but it’s time to go home.

au clair de la lune,

There’s a certain romance to cities after dark, when the soft glowing streetlamps burn up the deserted avenues. Whether you’re strolling down the boulevards in Montreal, traipsing through muddy streets in London, or riding atop the handlebars of a rickety red bicycle through the stony footpaths in Ljubljana, you can’t help but take notice how busy quarters transform into hollow jungles at sundown – places where only the shadows dance and twist with the haunting movements of late-night commuters.

DREAMER

It took me nearly three months to muster the courage to walk through Dar after dark. I let the labels (third world, crime, night) get the best of me.
But then, at nearly ten weeks in, (and thanks to some familiar faces camped out at the Econolodge in the downtown core) we decided it was time to make the effort.
It was 10pm on a Saturday, and we hailed a 3$ cab to take us to the corner of Morogoro road and Libya street. Stepping out on the dirt sidewalk, it took only moments to spot the sign for the hotel. It was a half-lit blue and white eyesore with a giant red arrow pointing towards the lobby (conveniently located at the far end of a Hitchcock-style dark and ominous alleyway – lovingly dubbed ‘crack-alley’ by the hotel guests).
It wasn’t a love-at-first-sight introduction. We stood, three jailbait tourists staring into the shadows, trying to work out how to get to the entrance without being attacked by a hooligan or radioactive rodent. But crack-alley was just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve wandered through a few moonlit cities, but the combination of dark and deserted has never been so startlingly complete. For two hours, there wasn’t a sign of life beyond a few sleepy-looking taxis that rolled through the abandoned streets, starved for fares in the twilight hours. From the high-rises office towers to the low-income apartments, every window was filled with the same blackness. We walked single file, following the lights of neon-tinted shop signs, to a late-night Lebanese café that served hot mint tea and shisha. After all the anticipation, it was a fairly sweet and underwhelming first impression – no violence, no debauchery, just a soft and settled sort of charm.

TGI SUNDAY

In a country where sixty hour work weeks are the norm, Sundays are the faint, but comforting light the horizon. One glorious morning to stay in bed until noon, eat a quiet breakfast on the terrace, or, on the more ambitious days, run away to one of the fantastically convenient islands that pepper the Dar es Salaam coast. For the bargain price of 18,000 shillings (16$ American), it’s a short ride on a ramshackle blue and white fishing boat (seaworthy, so long as you ignore the suspicious clouds of smoke that occasionally escape from the engine room) to an isolated stretch of unspoiled beach. It’s a chaperone-free haven where you can collapse underneath a grass-roofed hut and forget your frustrations (western standards, merciless schedules, and family politics aren’t allowed on the island).
It wasn’t a particularly sunny afternoon, but the tides were high and there’s always a fantastic collection of disposable treasures to be found washed up on shore. It’s strangely wholesome that the sea spits back everything that doesn’t belong – including Huggies wrappers and green bell peppers.
With marginally violent swells ripping up the shallows, we spent most of our afternoon sweating it out in the sand and frequenting the tiki-style, ant-infested canteen for drinks and fried food (they specialize in chips and freshly skewered and grilled seafood). It’s may not sound like the most thrilling way to pass a weekend, but the sun, sea, and a stereo, are good enough for me.

Next year’s Christmas decorations:

DISCLAIMER

It’s hard to avoid clichés when you write about being a westerner traveling in Africa. Sitting in front of my laptop, I can’t avoid running through the checklist of scenic things to write home about… giant palm trees, brilliant shorelines, and the fail-safe mustard-colored sunset. It’s easy to get lost in the bright and shiny world of island resorts and tourist plazas, and while I hate to undermine the hardships of third world society, I’ve always been inclined to stick to polite, PG-imagery, and reserve the disheartening realities for more intimate conversations.

But I read a lot about the ways the west has misunderstood this continent, and it seems hypocritical to count myself part of the informed public while simultaneously glossing over the more difficult truths in these journals. I’m sure these crisis of conscience moments plague most people who travel from first-class society to shoeless hamlets where people have never heard of i-pods or Obama. It’s a dilemma that won’t be resolved with a tirade about radically unsuccessful interventions and global apathy, but be warned, surviving Dar is a much dirtier business than the colorful snapshots make it out to be.

nine hours there, eight hours back

I was squished in the backseat, pinned against a dangerously unstable tower of luggage, as our SUV powered through the East African countryside. The unexpectedly well-paved highway was pleasantly deserted, save for a few lorries and the occasional free-wheeling bus driver.

I’ve always found something strangely comforting about long drives through open spaces, and once tunnel vision sets it, it’s easy to mistake the smooth pavement and waist-high grasses for rural America or backwater Quebec. But then your sightline slips, and just off the shoulder you discover the most curious collections of lush green vegetation – crooked trees, mangled bushes, and a deep rust-coloured earth – in Western terms, it’s the lion king come real (sidenote: you can learn Swahili via Disney. Simba is the word for lion, Rafiki is friend, and Asanta sana is thank you very much). I spent most of the journey with my nose pressed against the window, breathing in every detail and trying desperately to scribble down memories in my little black moleskine (I gave up when there road turned to dirt and we had an hour of listing back and forth as the car dodged potholes, wildlife and oncoming traffic).

We spent three days and four nights at a luxury resort on the south side of Mombasa. The hotel was over-run by Lions – the humanitarian type – but with members spending most of their days in meetings, we had VIP access to the four swimming pools, eight bars, and a very windy stretch of private beach. On the second to last day, we tore ourselves away from the sunbathing and buffet dining for a ferry ride into the city. We went to Mamba Village, a crocodile farm built inside an old quarry just outside the city centre. There, we were guided around giant pools of murky green water, teeming with iron-jawed beasts that lay terrifyingly still with rigid eyes and devilishly fat bellies. There was even one man-eating croc, incarcerated for terrorizing a rural village half a century ago (he took out five people before he was captured).He was 5-meters long, weighed 600 lbs, and had the unfortunate honour of being named Big Daddy.


He was also camera shy, so we made a human version of the twenty-foot monster.

The trip was a glorious escape from the daily grind, and I felt surprisingly at home in Kenya. It’s quite different than Tanzania, but foreign places always seem friendlier when they’re decked out in English. The trip was well worth the epic car journey and the twenty-five dollar entry visa.

Things I learned on the long road to Mombasa:
1. an ipod shuffle can pump out music for over 17-hours (without re-charging)
2. tree branches make good road flares
3. crocodiles have over 70 teeth (thanks William)

when it rains, it floods

I’ve never been one to complain about the weather. Come rain, or shine, or … I owe my resilience to the Ottawa valley – where the summers can be desperately hot and the winters unpredictably snowy. 20-odd years of conditioning to Canadian climates and I was convinced I could manage (revel in) a couple tours south of the equator. Coming direct from the great north I suspected that the heat might turn my personal thermostat on its head, but I had sunscreen (SPF 75) and bottled water, and a Silversteinian disposure to look for the silver lining.

And then the raining season broke out over the city. Hours of unrelenting pounding from an unforgiving sky quickly washed away my Western daydreams about Fred Astaire and April showers. Standing on the rooftop terrace, half-deaf from the thundering of raindrops on corrugated metal sheets and I couldn’t help but think some God’s fury is showering down around me. In a city without a proper drainage system, where the roads turn into lakes and people wade through the mess with their shoes thrown over their shoulders, I find myself in particularly foreign territory (forgive the pathetic puns) When the rains comes here, I’m staying the hell inside.

so why leave canada?

It’s the conversation starter I’ve stumbled through a million times since I broke the news that I was running away to Tanzania. I usually respond with a harebrained line about escaping the arctic, or saving the planet – but the truth is almost as stupidly simple. I’m a twenty-something Canadian with a shiny BA in my back-pocket and absolutely no desire to crash in suburbia and fight it out for an entry-level deskjob in a government town. Why stay?

happy africa

It’s been ten weeks since I stepped off the plane and into the dry heat of Dar es Salaam’s international airport. I had spent the better part of the nine hour flight mentally preparing myself for the transition from London to the third world (a therapeutic process involving a Lonely planet guide, a half-dozen mini bottles of alcohol and more than one WTF-am-I-thinking moments). In short, I was a haggard and hungover mess as I dragged myself through customs and wrestled by bags off the luggage carousel. Welcome to Africa.

I had planned to be the most wide-eyed, travel-smart, pickpocket-proof Westerner to ever walk through the arrivals terminal of Tanzania’s airport - but in all honesty, it was 7 am (23:00 in Ottawa, 04:00 in the UK), I was sweating through my levis, and all I could think was how do I say coffee in Swahili.

I know it’s an anticlimactic, desperately un-poetic, beginning to my great African adventure, but it’s a fitting introduction to my story (and this blog), since most of my experiences here have been as distinctly un-African as being born with blond hair and blue eyes. I can’t write about lions, or pygmies, or hungry-eyed orphans, because the Africa I see every day is far less fierce and frightening than what my mind (and the public services announcements) have made it out to be. I sincerely doubt that this continent will be the death of me, but for the friends, family, and passers-by frustrated by the distance and digital delays, here are the notes to my life on this distant continent.