Friday, March 11, 2011

Pat Came

I’ve been in Zambia over a year. My existence here has become normalized in my mind. I guess you could say I’ve found my niche in this country and constructed a comfort zone which tends to make one less in awe of the goings on around them or at least of their absurdity. Riding my bike through rural Africa, arguing in kikaonde over a $0.05 price difference for tomatoes with a women along a wooded dirt path, or trying to avoid a zebra that’s grazing on the fairway of the 9th hole of the mine golf club don’t seem quite so novel these days and thus harder to get myself amped up enough in order to write about them. However, as my mom pointed out the other day, she is still immensely interested in my life here. So am I, and if for no other reason than to please my mom and to personally reflect on my current life situation, here is the 12th installment of the blog. I’m averaging almost a post a month…. Not bad in my opinion.
I had a visitor. His name is Pat, ch ch—A good friend and former house mate from college. Pat is currently teaching English in Korea at a robot high school. His visit happened to correlate with a music festival happening on the island of Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania. I hitched down to Lusaka, to pick Pat up, on the back of a truck carrying an estimated 5,000 avocados. You might be thinking to yourself that riding on top of avocados for 13 hours sounds tasty, it was. You also might be thinking it would be a bad idea for the avocados to have people on top of them, it is. There were bags of ripe avocados and bags of green ones. People were being instructed as to which bags were suitable for sitting. However about 4 hours outside Lusaka, the skies opened up and an old, stinky, oily tarp was pulled out and stretched across us passengers in the back. Through the ordeal, my friend Katherine, whom I was traveling with ended up on a comfortable soft bed of ripe avocados and had effectively made a lot of guacamole by the time we reached Lusaka. We managed to get to a guest house without having to purchase 200 avocados, but it was slightly awkward and guilt inducing, however putting people on top of avocados in order to make extra cash comes with its hazards I guess.
Pat reached Lusaka the next day and following a couple days in Lusaka where I was trying to finish and submit a grant proposal, we were off to Tanzania. We hitched a couple free rides up to Kapiri where there is another peace corps office/bunkhouse and then caught the train from there to Dar es Salem the next day. The train took a bit over two days to reach, but was a pretty luxurious way to travel. For about $25 we got first class tickets which got us our own compartment and bed. The train went through a large game reserve after crossing the border into Tanzania. Pat got to see giraffes, elephants, wildebeests and a hyena, which helped to alleviate my guilt for not taking him on a safari. The music festival on Zanzibar was held in an old fort in Stone Town and was a lot of fun. Unfortunately my camera is broken, otherwise I’d post some pictures of white sandy beaches and fort packed full of concert goers to make you all jealous.
Due to my poor reading and planning skills, Pat only was able to spend one night in my village. I wish it could have been longer as I was planning of putting him in charge of the literacy club for a bit, but travel is often measured in days and weeks here as oppose to hours and minutes and thus I think we spent about half of Pat’s time in Africa on some sort of transport—an experience in it’s self.
I’m back in the village now, trying to get my gumption up to bike into town. I told the forestry department I’d come meet them today. I wanted to finish this blog before I left so I could post it. I guess it’s done when I say it is. Done.

2 comments:

  1. Another fascinating post, Taylor. Your posts are at the top of my priority when it comes to reading; never really can have enough!

    A coworker friend of mine and I have been talking about coming out to Africa in more detail... She has a friend down in South Africa, so we might travel down together. What started the discussion was her discovery of the two African travel guides I had delivered at work.

    Thought you'd like to know that the plans are still active and in the works.

    See you soon! In the meantime, super happy to read your updates!

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  2. Taylor, please count me among the people who are still immensely interested in reading about your life.

    Take care,
    Kali

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