3-4 Cows

We meant to post this on our last evening at Tongabezi in Zambia, but the internet connection was down - then we had no connection in Botswana and Blogger was down in Johannesburg last night.

This post was originally composed on 1/4, so I'm posting it there. Instead of the general play-by-play, I'll cut to a synopsis of our experiences at Tongabezi in Zambia and some general musings for the day ;) Our next post will catch you up on Botswana . . .

EXPERIENCES

• Game Drive (1/4/07 AM): Fabulous. We saw 2 white rhinos , as well as many impala, giraffes, baboons, buffalo, wildebeest, vervet monkies, zebras and even a bush baby and a giant monitor lizard at the Mosi-Oa-Tunya game park near Victoria Falls. We were led by Godfrey. Apparently, at Tongabezi, the staff take British names - most of which are generally reminiscent of an English butler's name, like Jeeves. There's Aston, Knox, Given and Godfrey to name a few. The all have fabulous tales that I'll share below. For now, suffice it to say that Knox is my favorite, and I want to bring him home. Not only is he physically beautiful (hubba, hubba – Ashlee, you must come to Africa), but he's fantastically interesting in his insights about his country. More on him later. Interestingly, though, white rhinos are not white - it's a mispronunciation of "wide" - which they are. All rhinos - black and white - are actually gray. Godfrey called the male giraffes "cheeky boys" and said that they fight or "neck" all day long. Actually, on giraffes, you can tell the males from the females by their antlers because the males have no dark fur on them because of all the fighting they do. A guest named Sidney, an American marketing consultant who lives in London, frequents Club Meds, applies too much fake tanner, and is a raving Democrat (yeah!) accompanied us on our drive in the open-air Land Rover.


• Indian Head Massage (1/4/07 PM): Just before we had lunch on the veranda, Sanjay and I each got scalp and face massages from Brigette. Not fabulous, but nothing to sneeze at either. (No, this is not where Sanjay lost his pants ;)


• Zambezi Canoeing (1/4/07 PM): What a beautiful trip. The water was like glass, and we could hear the Falls although they're about 15.5km away. It was on this excursion that we met Scott, the producer of The Color Purple on Broadway and his boyfriend/partner Brad, an addictions interventionist who hilariously interjected a bar from "In the Jungle" every time a topic of conversation grew too controversial or boring. They are wonderfully entertaining and have made our stay here immensely more enjoyable. Again, more about them later. Brian was our guide – he too was pretty fun, although he seemed to want to feed us to the hippos and the crocs. Sanjay was hilarious at first. At the back of the boat, he was our driver, and we kept going in circles. He is not really “at one” with the water. That said, by the end, he was a paddle master.


• Sunset Cruise (1/4/07 PM): First off, as we stepped on to the boat my new nemesis Allan remarked casually “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.” I wanted to throttle him. I wanted to scream: “They’re cleaning your room, cooking your meals, and driving your fucking boat. Asshole.” I refrained. Dinner would be another story – but we’ll get to that later. As we left shore, Chris, the driver of our boat, hit a crocodile and blew out the motor of our boat. I still believe that it was hippo, but he wanted to spare us feeling any unnecessary sympathy. (To them hippos are nuisances, though, so I doubt he would have cared. Baboons too.) We transferred boats, and while I sipped water, Sanjay drank a few Zambian beers with Bill, a Coke executive who runs their Burger King arm in Europe and the Middle East, while Alan and his lovely (please note the irony) wife Claudia (pronounced by Alan, in an irritating British accent, Cloud-ia - we've placed a pic below so you can all more fully share in our loathing) drank Chardonnay with Jay, a pharmaceutical salesman who sells hepatitis C drugs at a profit margin of 32% per $50,000 prescription regimen. Yes, everyone seems filthy rich – except us. Those for whom money is their passion are not nearly as interesting as those who just made it accidentally on the way to pursuing some other passion. We sat on a beach on the Zambezi, where there was white sand that squeaked as we walked, and we watched perhaps the most memorable sunset of my life.



• Dinner (1/4/07 PM): Ah yes, dinner was a festive affair. We sat at the group table which included (besides Stacey and myself), Allan and Cloud-ia, Scott and Brad, Bill, Jay, and Sidney. It started off lovely, with our cauliflower soup appetizers and tomato basil salads, and then it quickly turned into a bloody feud between Republicans and Democrats. After I'd introduced myself as a consultant, but said I'd eventually like to go into children's theater, Sidney said "well there's no money in that." I replied that I believe that if I pursue something I really love, the money will come. At this point, Scott started to share the fascinating story of his nearly 10-year endeavor to bring Alice Walker's The Color Purple to Broadway, despite its somewhat depressing themes and its unlikely success. (For those of you who don't know, Oprah Winfrey later got involved in the production and it has been a major Broadway success. He was actually in Africa to participate in the opening of Winfrey's new girls school in Johannesburg.) Well, somehow this very inspiring story was interrupted by Alan. (Note that I could care less how his name is actually spelled.) I'm not certain how, but he moved the topic to politics. He and Cloud-ia (proud pseudo-libertarians/republicans from Newport Beach, O.C.) were right-wing conservatives who supported our fearless leader, George W. Needless to say, it got very heated, especially between Allan and Stacey who clearly despised each other. (At one point, he said, "obviously people like 'her' -meaning me - have to focus on the argument on George Bush rather than Barack's accomplishments," which he insisted were non-existent. I - politely - reminded him of my name and insisted that Obama's ability to unite and inspire people was a qualification that superseded any possible resume entry for a potential president.) It was quite funny because we were all arguing and took quick timeouts as the staff came to sing a few songs in Zambian for us at dinner and then resumed our fight between songs and then afterwards. The next day at breakfast, Alan & Cloud-ia "forgot" to say "Good Morning!"


• Sunrise Cruise (1/5/07 AM): We likely could have skipped this, as it left at 5:45am, and we’d just been on the Sunset Cruise. (Also, as our valet, Given, personally wakes us up and puts us to bed every night, this required him to wake up extra early, so we felt bad.) I’m VERY glad we went, though. Generally, I think both Sanjay and I feel, in Thoreau’s words, like we want to “suck the marrow” from every moment of our trip. I think our comparative lack of wealth has made us very appreciative of every possible experience. As for the cruise – we were the lone boat on the Zambezi, and it was only Sanjay, me and the driver in the boat. It was still and quiet and beautiful and a glorious beginning to our day.


• Victoria Falls (1/5/07 AM): Today, Godfrey took us, with Scott and Brad, to see the Falls from the Zambia side. (Read my last post for more details about the view from Zimbabwe.) From both sides, the Falls are breathtaking, although I think Zimbabwe currently has a better view. My double rainbow appeared again. At the end, we briefly visited a crafts market, where the salespeople asked to barter our socks and clothes for their wares.


• Gorge Swing (1/5/07 PM): Brad and I went on a contraption called a gorge swing in which you jump off of a cliff and swing to the other side of the gorge at a full freefall. It was amazing!!! The initial freefall is sheer terror; you actually think that you are going to just fall to the bottom (about 100m down). Sanjay is insane - and as he jumped Lionel Richie music from the 1980s was blaring in the background.
  
• Simonga Village (1/5/07 PM): Before lunch, Sanjay and I took a tour to Simonga Village, a small traditional village of about 3,000 residents, mostly peasant farmers who work their own small plot for the food they use to live.
  Words cannot describe the poverty. Aston, our guide, kindly led us around, sharing stories and diligently answering any question we asked. We started by meeting the village elder, Elizabeth, who's pictured with me to the left. She has total authority in the village, and her power was inherited from her father, the previous elder. She makes certain all the village children attend school, settles legal disputes, allocates land parcels, etc. My conversation with her was brief but fascinating; she shared that all three of her children had died, and I palpably sensed from her a profound sadness about their loss. She now raises her two grandchildren.
  There are 112 orphans in the Village. They are counted by the Village Guide who led our tour – his other duties are to look over the town and allocate the general funds (which are received, it seems, primarily from tourist donations) for care of the sick or orphaned that he identifies. Generally, orphans are taken in by neighbors. He said most of their parents died of malaria and other local diseases. I wonder to what degree they are affected by HIV. The children (orphaned and not) played with toy trucks they made themselves from fence wire. (That’s right – rusted fence wire that formerly surrounded old train tracks.) They followed us around happily waiting to have their pictures taken, singing songs and dancing for us. The babies had soiled diapers and crawled on the dirt - happily.
  Aston explained that the village homes are made of mud and sticks with a thatch roof. The mud is replaced annually after the rains, and the roof every 7 years. We asked about religion: there are seven churches in the village, all Christian. The churches are mud, and the pews are made from old railroad tracks. We took a picture of the Catholic one (my alma mater would be proud). Aston shared briefly about the rules of marriage, and stated that while asking permission and paying a dowry of 3-4 cows (over time, on credit – everyone recognizes that no one has so much at one time) is traditional, new rules allow for “wife stealing” without punishment. When a young couple is truly in love, the man may steal his young bride (about 18 years old), but must pay a tariff of 1-2 additional cows, for a total of 5-6 cows. (Yes, cows.)
  There were small businesses throughout the village, where many make their money. There were small bars, a vegetable stand, a blacksmith and two carpenters who made furniture. Some villagers work for other local businesses, like the lodge where we’re staying. We learned later that they make as little as the equivalent of $40/month working full-time in the tourism industry here. For the sake of comparison, we’re paying $800 each per night to stay in this lodge. The owner, though he lives in Zambia, is a very wealthy foreigner.
  Our guide said he loves his village – that he was born there and that he will happily die there. Zimbabwe is probably 2-3 miles away, and he’s never been out of his own country. I don’t know what to make of it. Two of the staff I talked to – Knox and Godfrey – both echoed a common theme. They said, for them it is normal – it’s fine – it’s not so bad. They smile all day; they never complain. Unlike us . . . all the time . . . with all we have . . .
  When we spoke to Godfrey on the way back, we asked him briefly about the differences between the education provided at the school established by the owners of our lodge and the government school in Simonga Village. He said that the gap was enormous. While every child from the Tongabezi school passed their National exams, not a single one from the village school did so. He said that the teachers are so poorly paid by the government that while they are supposed to be teaching, most run second businesses during school hours.
  [As an aside, Sanjay tells me that I’m too verbose, but it’s difficult to self-censor when I’m tired, I don’t have the patience to edit and sometimes, like today’s visit to the Village, I feel I simply must provide complete descriptions and not leave anything out. I’m not certain if I’m doing that for me or for you, but in either case, I’m trying to capture each moment as completely as I can. It’s all so, well, foreign and fascinating. That said, do let me know if my blog becomes like a boring slide show of Allan & Cloud-ia’s last Mediterranean cruise. I’ll try to spice it up. Trust me, from where I sit, it’s anything but boring.]
  
• Fishing (1/5/07 PM): We caught a rock, we caught a plant, and Sanjay even caught a tree. Our guide, Aston, actually climbed the tree on the bank to retrieve his lure to avoid our incurring a fee. But we caught no fish. We did see a mama-jama crocodile, and our guide threw beef at it to make it jump in our direction. Not as much fun as you might think and slightly terrifying as it was about three feet from me.

GENERAL MUSINGS

• Up With People: I can’t stop singing Up with People songs now. Before we visited the village, Scott joked that he wanted me to gather the villagers and choreograph a few Up with People numbers before I returned to the lodge. Thanks, Mom, for playing their album about 1.2 jillion times while I was growing up. You’ll be glad to know I can still sing every word to Up with People, Let the River Flow and Robbie Robot and the Tran-Sisters. (Yes, Tran-Sisters.)


• The King of the Countries: So far, everyone I’ve asked where they would like to travel most has said the US, except for Godfrey; he said Europe. The other day, too, one of our cab drivers, when he heard where we were from said, “Ah . . . the king of the countries.” He was insistent. I’m not certain how that makes me feel . . . it kind of frightens me if we are some sort of blueprint for which to strive for developing nations. There simply has to be a better model - or at least one that honors their heritage rather than ours. Speaking of which, there is brand new strip mall in Zambia, complete with a Subway sandwich shop. Let the Americanization begin.


• A Christian Nation: At least 4 local people have mentioned to me that Zambia has been “a Christian nation” since the 1950s.


• Happiness: Poor Sanjay. I kept him up late last night musing about something Knox said. He said people here always smile and never complain, even with what little they have. Meanwhile, many of the American and European tourists with whom he interacts complain incessantly. Sanjay and I talked until he grew bored and tired (as you probably are now of this blog) and we wondered how happiness should truly be measured – in happiness, wealth, freedom, knowledge? Is more happiness better? More choices? I just don’t know . . . (By the way, the academic studies say Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania are some of the least happy on earth. Check out http://www.happyplanetindex.org/map.htm)


• Teeth: I’m not sure what this is about, but all the staff here have beautiful, perfectly white smiles. They don’t seem to eat many sweets. On the flip side, most of the European tourists we’ve met have gaping maws filled with crooked fangs. Frightening.


• Fort Knox: Speaking of beautiful teeth, I come back to Knox. As I mentioned before, he’s handsome, charming and strikingly intelligent. He loves American movies, and wants to go to film school. He used to own his own import business that went bankrupt after two of his trucks were hijacked in South Africa while transporting cars and computers between there and the Congo. Thus, he’s back to Tongabezi, his former employer before he went into business for himself. He also used to be a competitive swimmer, and got a swimming scholarship to a college in Florida that he could not accept because it required him to find his own sponsorship to enter the US. He's already written us an email to let us know that he's nominated us his "guests of the year". He even called us ",joyful, easy-going, understanding and fun to be with." Such a nice guy. If anyone knows someone in film school admissions - this guy is awesome. We'd love to help him out!


• Mango: There’s a cat in the lobby of the lodge named Mango. She follows Sanjay around and she mysteriously drools. It’s slightly disturbing. Oh, Mom, just so you know, they had dogs for pets in the village as well.


• Squeaky: My plague has now simmered to a squeaky agitating voice that I hope people don’t mistake for the real thing. That said, I feel almost 100% better ;)

Question of the Day: How do you think Sanjay really lost his pants?

Good night – and again, tomorrow, when I’m less tired, I’ll be a much better writer ;)