Ethiopia is Weird

I blinked and tried not to look too shocked. “What do you mean?” I asked the woman across the breakfast table from me.

“They're just six hours off!” she explained. “When it's really six o'clock am, they say it's noon. And when it's seven, they say it's one! So crazy!” She was a 39-year old Chicago social worker, in town to visit an Ethiopian baby that she was adopting. I thought hard about trying to explain to her the way time zones worked, but thought better of it.

It's a good thing, because she was actually right. Ethiopia is just different. They have noon in the morning, when the sun rises. It makes sense, I guess. They also have rejected the pan-African diet of maize meal and tasteless relish in favor of a splendid, flavorful national cuisine. This also makes sense.

They also spent twenty years as a communist dictatorship in the finest Soviet tradition, which I suppose makes less sense. Those years, after the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie by a certain Colonel Mengistu laid the foundation for Ethiopia to become one of Africa's poorest and most backward states, despite it's rich cultural traditions and splendidly proud people.

Ethiopia emerged into something resembling a modern democracy in 1991, but the capital, Addis Ababa, from where I write this, is still a mess. It has none of the modicrum of order that most sub-Saharan cities have held over from their colonial eras, and none of the entrepreneurial bustle of West Africa. It does have a tremendous number of people, probably close to 8 million. The roads are in dismal condition, but packed with blue-and-white Toyota Hiace minibuses and remarkably well preserved Soviet Lada taxicabs.

Ethiopia is in what I call the “crappy-mall” stage of development. I spent the day in one such taxi, navigating the traffic between the underwhelming tourist attractions. By lunchtime, I had covered them all, and was ready to indulge in what I often like to do in bearded third-world countries: get a shave. I did so in what my guide (actually the manager of the restaurant I ate in last night) called the best shopping center in Addis. The Sunshine center, pictured here, was four floors of 10-20m2 shops, most of which specialized in what I would call “general trading”, selling just about anything. This sort of retail is a step up from the “open market” stage of development, but far, far behind the other African capitals I saw on this trip, which are into the “branded supermarket” stage, and decades behind the “luxury mall” states of the Arabian Gulf, just across the Red Sea from here. The mall reminded me most of Suntec City, the disused mall in Kuala Lumpor converted to a bootleg DVD market. I used to frequent it while working there.

About four pm the heavens opened, and as the Lada's windshield wipers were not working, we were sidelined and headed into drug den. I'm referring, of course, to a high-end qat parlor – a dispensary of the Horn of Africa's national narcotic. Qat is a leaf of some sort which, when chewed, releases a mild stimulant into the user's body. The effect is so mild as to be difficult to describe, but in small doses it appears to facilitate conversation and alertness. Strictly empirical observation suggests that in larger doses it makes you stoned – or at least that's what I could gather from the scores of shop boys and drivers I saw lazying behind counters and steering wheels, slack-jawed, unresponsive, and red-eyed.

My self-appointed guide for the day was Negash, the 25 year-old manager of the restaurant in the hotel I stayed in. I met him at dinner last night, and we chatted a bit. He is a former tourist guide, putting himself through business college so that he might capitalize upon what he sees as Ethiopia's coming tourist boom. He correctly points out that while there exists all the requirements for a vibrant tourism industry (the aforementioned excellent international flight connections chief among them), the extant infrastructure is miserable. Case in point: King's Hotel where he works, despite being Addis' 3rd best hotel and the primary crashpad for the neighboring African Union (AU) headquarters, is terrible. The room I stayed in was literally crumbling, and smelled of socks (though, to be fair, so did St George Cathedral). The most telling evidence of Ethiopia's backwardness is the essentially total absence of Internet cafes. There was one photocopy shop which had a few terminals, but there was a long line and I didn't bother. It is exactly as Lusaka, Zambia was in 1998 during my first visit.

The Chinese are rapidly re-building Addis' road network, and of course, it's soccer stadium (the Chinese have built a soccer stadium in every African capital I have visited, including Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso). A Five-star hotel, paid for by Gulf investors, is being built across the street, to serve the needs of the AU dignitaries. It's possible that Negash is right, and if he is I will certainly come back to see the many sites that he describes in Ethiopia's hinterland.

But for now, I will merely enjoy his food. I'm in the restaurant now, listening to a large sequined woman belt out a truly awful rendition of "If Loving You is Wrong." I'm about to close my laptop and call him over to see about ordering one last Ethiopian meal before I head to the airport to catch my Addis-Bangkok shuttle. There are two flights on that route each day. Can't wait to see who's on it.

(Note to anyone headed to Ethiopia: call Negash on +251 911 14 21 03 or +251 913 30 6 35 and he will sort you out. Tell him Mr. Ben sent you.)

Arrival in Addis

I did the most extraordinary thing today. I arrived in Addis Ababa. I flew here on Ethiopian Airlines from Lusaka, on a serviceable 757 which had originated in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. The flight was about three-quarters full, and already on boarding I had noticed that the passengers were a splendidly globalized mix of dark-skinned Bantu Africans, fair skinned North Africans and Middle Easterners, Europeans on business and pleasure, plenty of Indian families and a handful of Chinese headed east. One Chinese girl was seen off with a bouqet by her boyfriend – I guess she was visiting her beau at his place of business in Zambia (Was he a merchant? A road builder? A restaurateur? It was hard to tell.) I did notice a dearth of Ethiopians and their distinctive copper skin and noble foreheads.

Now, the reason why it was extraordinary that I arrived here was not because it is an extraordinary place (true), or because I have no real reason to be here (likewise), but because I was the only one on that plane to arrive in Addis – the rest were all transiting onwards. Allow me to repeat: of the 200-odd passengers on that 757 to Addis Ababa, I WAS THE ONLY ONE COMING TO ADDIS ABABA.


The plane had landed and then sat for 45 minutes on the tarmac waiting for a pea-soup fog to lift. I then deplaned, paid $20 for a “Visa on Arrival”, wandered through immigration, went to the toilet, then looked about the baggage hall for my number. I found the baggage carousel, but it was rotating emptily. I asked a nearby woman in uniform where the bags for Ethiopian flight 806 from Lusaka were, and she looked down at a clipboard in her hand, looked up and asked “Mr. Maritz?” I asked how she knew. “She said that I was the only passenger on that plane arriving in Addis, and that mine was the only bag, and that it would be there shortly. It came a minute later.


I need to investigate more, but it appears that Ethiopian has cornered a large slice of the Africa-to-the-East traffic, ferrying passengers from the various capitals of Africa to Asia and beyond. The airline is a tremendous source of national pride. There are billboards for it all over the capital, despite the fact that 99% of Ethiopians could never afford a ticket. I even passed a restaurant shaped like a Ethiopian airliner. Seriously.


Theirs is a gritty business, with many of their routes having to call on several cities before they can muster enough passengers (Lilongwe-Luska-Addis, for example). They must need to price quite competitively to be able to take traffic from the major airlines and the various flag carriers (where they exist). It was clearly a working-class, no-nonsense bunch on the plane, not expecting any frills. Indeed, despite the mere $200 premium for business class on the 14 hours of flying between Lusaka and Bangkok (my next destination), the front cabin where I sat was more than half empty. (Sorry Abba)


I'm now in my hotel room in Addis, which smells like socks. I did have my first tasty Ethiopian meal in the restaurant downstairs. So far, the Ethiopian joints in Seattle remain competitive with the genuine article. Both are excellent.

Back to Pioneer Camp, Lusaka

Back to the beginning. The moon is a fine, slender crescent, the same as how I saw it a month ago when I first arrived in Africa for this trip. Back at Pioneer Camp, on the outskirts of Lusaka, waiting for a flight out of Zambia. This is something I seem to do once every five years or so. Alfred, still the barman here after more than a decade and a change in ownership, has seem me arrive here fresh-faced as an 18-year old, taking two weeks off to join my father on a holiday. He saw me come back as a 23-year old World Bank drop out here for an extended stay, vainly investigating the possibility of empowering the African schools with the Internet. And now I am back, having a a beer with Alfred again, as a 28-year old... a 28-year old MBA management consultant.

Pioneer is exactly the same as how I left it. There is now mobile phone service here, but it doesn't work on my cell phone, so it doesn't bother me. Alfred told me that they have wireless Internet (“this is a hot spot!”, he told me, gesturing around the bar), but it doesn't work on my laptop so I'm spared. When I first arrived, 10 years ago, the drive here from Lusaka was a meander along some grassy fields and past some agricultural buildings. Now, it appears to be an almost unbroken string of filling stations, shopping centers, and Chinese restaurants.

All of Lusaka seems prosperous, though I only saw it at night, from through the dirty windows of the public bus I had privately hired to drive my crew from Livingstone to the capital. It's a 5 hour drive, which took us about 9 hours to complete. In Africa, as elsewhere, distances are measured in units that bear the same name as those which we use for time, but do not necessarily relate to the amount of time required to drive those units.

Dawn comes, thought it's still a bit chilly. One of the staff is straightening the coffee cups laid out on a table here in the bar. Hopefully, she'll bring hot water for them next. I have three campers left, everyone else has left. They started dropping off in one's and two's over the last few days, and then early this morning five people, the main body, went off to the airport in the same blue bus that brought us to Lusaka. They're flying to Johannesburg, and then from there to points around the world.

At three pm today, I myself leave here, flying to Addis Ababa, back to traveling alone to new places.

She just brought the hot water.

Solving Zimbabwe's Problems

I read today in the Zambian paper that Jacob Zuma, South Africa's leader, while in Lusaka for a conference denounced the new US-EU sanctions against Zimbabwe, saying that “only Zimbabweans can solve Zimbabwe's problems. I thought back to the Zimbabweans I met over the course of my three day stay in their country, wondering which of them would it be who would become the problem solver? The gas station attendant, still standing by after years of having no gas to sell? Or one of the cheery receptionists at the Victoria Falls Hotel, heirs to a legacy of luxury, but owners of little more than ill-used old mansion (albeit in a stunning location). Or perhaps one of the army of souvenir sellers roaming the streets of Victoria Falls town, among the most desperate and persistent of any I have seen anywhere in the world.

If none of those, then perhaps it would be one of the school children I met at the Monali Basic Public School. We drove the 20km or so to the school to donate the remainder of my overland supplies to some worthy cause. As we unloaded our motley provisions (20L petrol, 5KG flour, some rope, a camping stove, half a jar of mustard, etc), the assistant head mistress told us of the fate of the Grade 7 students who were at that very moment taking their final exams. The girls would go on to be married, and the boys, most of them, would take up wood carving to join the fleet of souvenir sellers in town, hoping to earn some of the pittance of foreign exchange which comes into their country. They were aged 12, and as essentially none of them would go to Secondary School, their lives were basically over. I have heard quite a few songs of woe from Africans over the years, but none moved me quite as much as this. After we finished unloading our supplies, I furtively handed the headmistress some cash and wished her well. We hugged.

Victoria Falls is one massive curio market. The small town, only a few years ago a major tourist hub, would be a ghost town were not it for the hordes of curio sellers and touts who stand idly in the parks and on the street corners, waiting for a white person to emerge from the guarded gates of one of the few operational hotels. A few touts carried the odd knick-knack for sale, but the most persistent merely attached themselves and accompanied to us until we made our inevitable swing by the curio market. The market itself was massive, consisting of perhaps 200 small stalls selling a similar assortment of carved elephants, masks, drums, iron animals, soap dishes and so on. All of the shopkeepers say that their wares are produced by their family members, and my visit to the primary school made me believe it.

The shopkeepers mostly followed the time honored tourist market tradition of naming absurdly high opening prices, then “reluctantly” coming fast down to earth. In this market, however, signs of desperation emerged – as I passed one stall selling small carved animals, the shopkeeper said to me as I approached “please, take any 20 for $20. I need $20 to feed my family.” I'm no stranger to such pleas, having heard them in South America, Asia, and elsewhere in Africa, but this man's tone, combined with his cut-rate price, somehow made me believe him.

At Vic Falls, Zimbabweans can eke out a living from the tourists – if they make a few dollars, they can cross the border into Zambia and pick up viticules at any of the many fully stocked markets. In the interior of the country, most have been reduced to subsistence agriculture, or relying on remittances of food from family members abroad. It's a great irony that the Ndebele people who live in the region of Victoria Falls speak a language similar to the Zulu spoken in South Africa and are thus easier able to find work there. The Ndebele are the traditional rival's of Mugabe's Shona, and Mugabe spent several of the early years of his rule trying to subdue them through manufactured famines and other brutal means.

The people on the streets of Victoria Falls, all Ndeble, passionately disapproved of Mugabe and his policies. More than a few sported T-shirts supporting the opposition MDC and promising a new dawn for Zimbabwe. (Elian: I got a shirt for you). A few people I met explained how Mugabe does still have his supporters, mostly henchmen who get food and money in exchange for support, or black market profiteers who have somehow benefited from the current situation.

The government has price controls on key commodities such as food and Mealie (corn) meal. Such things can be readily got in any of Zimbabwe's neighboring countries, but could only be bought on a cash basis, at retail prices which would make resale in Zimbabwe a loss-making venture. In response, all the stores have shuttered, while black marketeers cross the border and trade in violation of the price controls. I'm told that a bag of Mealie Meal bought in Zambia for $13 can be legally imported with a $2 duty, and then resold for $20, a tidy day's profit for your average African even in normal times. Such traders would support the current chaos.

I suppose life is quite bearable for anyone with access to foreign exchange. The staff of the Victoria Falls hotel seemed quite happy, although their standards showed the loosening which would have inevitably come with the ebb of tourism. For anyone trying to earn an honest wage in Zimbabwe dollars, life is impossible. It's difficult to truly grasp the effects of so called “hyper-inflation”, where government ineptitude and consumer fears lead to what is a doubling of prices every few weeks. I met a police officer who earned Z$12 Billion a day. Three months ago, when this wage rate was set, a loaf of bread cost $10 Billion, or a day's work.. Last month it cost $50 Billion, a week's work. Today, it cost $200 Billion. It would take the police officer a little less thana month to earn a loaf of bread.

Essentially, the government, by financing itself through printing money, has stolen every cent of value from every private citizen holding Zim Dollars in the country. It has also removed any motivation for work: the police officer I met worked for tips from people like me. If there were no tourist around, it's not clear why he would show up for work. Commerce is similary destroyed – there was no clarity about what the Zim-US dollar exchange rate was, and there prices for similar goods were all over the map, varied with the shopkeeper's expectation of inflation for the day. I saw a dozen eggs on sale for Z$5 Trillion, and in a different shop for $100 Billion – it's impossible to say which shopkeeper would have had the “right” price.

While Jacob Zuma and several other Southern African leaders are in Lusaka for a summit on Education or some such, Mugabe and his opponent are in a conference in Pretoria, South Africa, supposedly agreeing on some sort of power sharing talks. There is broad optimism in the streets, perhaps stemming from the pragmatic view that whatever comes of those talks can hardly make things worse. Relief in Zimbabwe could only come with drastic new government policies, which could only come from a new government. It's hard to see how any arrangement which leaves Mugabe as head of state could create the kind of credibilty required to control inflation and restore the confidence of the international aid community.

I recently re-read the chapter in Martin Meredith's excellent book The Fate of Africa on Mugabe's rule – it's amazing that this man is able to maintain any semblance of respectability in foreign eyes. His only virtue appears to be that he fought against the similarly odious white government, and then at least made attempts at reconciliation. Many people, even I, have remarked recently that it's so sad and strange that Mugabe, a good man, should have resorted to his current tactics. This is nonsense-- the man was am authoritarian thug in the vilest tradition from the beginning. He deliberately starved the power bases of his rivals, and never hesitated to use violence. Indeed, Meredith describes violence as Mugabe's “stock and trade.” The recent rape and murder of the mayor of Harare's wife is simply the latest in a long string of such tragedies to befall Mugabe's opponents. He has long since demonstrated that he will stop at nothing to gain and hold power.

So no, I'm not optimistic about the prospects of a negotiated transition away from a Mugabe government. The deep-rooted African gerontocracy probably precludes any regional intervention, and so the suffering will continue.

I should note that I have no idea who is reading this – should someone be contemplating a visit to Zimbabwe, and Vic Falls, I would heartily encourage it. Despite the poverty, the town is very, very safe with a strong police presence. The street touts, though persistent, are good natured, and all of the operating hotels are operating quite nicely. It is depressing, there's no denying that, but without what little tourist flow there is, things would be much worse. So go, and bring plenty of US Dollars to spend.

Mugabe is supporting Zambia

I'm writing this from a painfully slow Internet cafe in Livingstone, Zambia, a few km from where the mighty Zambezi flows off the edge of the world and into the Victoria Falls. This town, once a sleepy backwater, and low-budget alternative to its sister city of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, has become completely overrun with tourists, thanks to Mugabe's nonsense in Harare. The Internet here is slow because this small cafe is crammed with people. We are staying in this bizarre sort of conference center, because all of the tourist hotels are fully booked for weeks. We wanted to do a multi-day river rafting trip, but no operator was interested because doing so would forgo them the revenue from the lucrative day trips they are running.

Yesterday, we took a white-water rafting trip down 20km of the Zambezi, from right near the falls all the way down the stunning gorge, with 500m cliffs rising up on either side of us all the way. On either side of the gorge, high up on the cliffs were perched various safari lodges. Our guide pointed out that the lodges on the left, Zambian, side of the river were full and colorful, while the lodges on the right, Zimbabwean, side were empty. He said "Mugabe is supporting Zambia."

With only two more days on this trip -- not enough time to really get anywhere in Africa -- and being bored of the crowds here, we have decided to cross the river into Zimbabwe. I called up the Victoria Falls Hotel, once the grand old lady of African tourism, and negotiated a steep discount from their "rack rate" of $420 per person. We are paying $130, USD cash. I probably could have forced them lower, but felt bad.

Chillin' by the Chobe

After 4 long days of driving through Botswana's two massive national "parks", the Moremi and the Chobe, I feel that I have truly earned this quiet moment with my blackberry. I'm sitting above the banks of the Chobe river, overlooking the flat plains of Namibia's Caprivi strip, upon which graze a massive mixed herd of Zebra and Wildebeest. I'm in one of Botswana's government run campsites, the only amenity on offer inside the parks. They don't offer much, only a hearth and a shared shower and toilet block, but its the perfect level of amenities for this still-wild landscape. It's only possible to enter these parks if you have a reservation for a campsite, which you can only get in person in Maun. So in this huge expanse, aside from my 12 friends with me, I am in the company only of a few dozen other tourists. We've seen the odd game-viewing vehicle from one of the several luxury fly-in safari camps, but the discomfort I feel at sharing the road with them is more than overcome by the feeling of superiority I experience as I rev my engine at their leather seats and silly safari suits.

We're doing about 500km without being able to stop for provisions, including water or fuel. We bought fully all the jerry cans in Maun, and a few large water jugs, and filled them with fuel which we strapped to the roofracks of our vehicles. The roofrack broke later that day. Dan just came up to me, telling me that the key to the canopy on his vehicle just snapped in to. it joins the roofrack, the spare tire holder, one of the refrigerators, two of the license plates, and several fuses on the list of casualties. I've just enquired as to what the banging sound I heard was. It was Alejandro taking an axe to the padlock with the broken key.

Despite this, the vehicles, Nissan Hardbody 4x4s, have held up quite well. Although I don't think they would take more than a few more hours of driving through these parks. The Moremi park, which covers half of the Okavango swamps, is rife with roads that are not much more than long beaches strung between mopani thickets. For any of my city-dwelling readers, it may come as a suprise that sand is absoultely the worst medium for driving. If you stop in sand, you cannot get started without running your engine so hot you can smell your precious clutch burning out from under you. But in order not to stop, you must keep driving, and maintain speed, even though your vehicle is lurching over small and not so small sand moguls, each of which sends a skull-shaking shock which threatens to snap the ropes holding your spare tire to the side of your vehicle. The spare tire is tied to the side of the truck because a previous sand mogul broke the chain which previously held it to the undercarriage.

But the worst of the sand is behind us, and ahead of my lies a few hands of bridge, a hot shower, and a fine piece of steak, grilled to perfection over Mopani coals by my two Argentine companions, brought along for this purpose.
Ben Maritz - +1 917 340 6014 - Stanford GSB - "Endless Summer"

12 Hours in Civilization

A quick update -- the vehicle repaired by the bush mechanic at the last lodge we stayed at in Nambia (Ngepi Camp, highly recommended), we set out for Botswana and the Okavango Delta. We spent two nights on the west side of the delta, enjoying a little safari camp psuedo luxury (we were camping, but had access to a bar and hot showers), and now have swung through Maun on our way back up in to the East, wild, part of the Okavango Swamps and then on to the Zambian border beyond. We will be four days in the Moremi and Chobe national parks, with not so much as a place to buy water in between. We have stocked up on food and bought a set of jerry cans to tie to our roof. Our vehicles have been absurdly inefficient, but with the added fuel we should be able to make it. As long as we dont get stuck in the "maddening sands" (as per LP).

Wish us luck!

Vehicular woes, continues

Turns out that's impossible to replace a clutch in the nissan without removing approximately half of the vehicle, in parts, from out of the undercarriage. This was done, then completed, and then under my impatient eye the massive arikaans foreman started the engine, revved it a few times, and then barked something in his meifulous native tounge. I asked one of the african guys, Bruce, what he said, and Bruce looked at me and said "ach, he says we will have to take it out and put it back in again." My eyes started to widen, and then Bruce started to laugh. I hit him.

So we were on our way, racing against the sun to catch up with the one vehicle which I had sent ahead to find a campsite somewhere near the border, which I had hoped to cross this morning. 200km at top speed, and then I pulled into a gas station, and upon slowing down I started to hear very unpleasant grating sound emanating from the gearbox beneath the car. My spirits fell.

I'm now at the campsite, a beautiful site on the shores of the Kavongo river just a few km short of where it crosses into Botswana. I'm now sat on the very pleasant deck, watching the mist rise off the river and the sun rise over the trees beyond. The lodge here has a mechanic, who will triage my vehcile, and I will then decide whether to leave it or press on. I am not wasting two more days.
Ben Maritz - +1 917 340 6014 - Stanford GSB - "Endless Summer"

Clutching to the Kavongo

A belated post, brought to you only because I now have a few free moments - hours really. Yesterday morning, after a leisurly departure from our pleasant campsite across the Kavongo river from Angola, one of my vehicles lost it's transmission. We promptly towed it to the nearby border town of Rundu, and into a large garage owner by a strapping Afrikaans man named Horsti. He and his equally giant team of Afrikaans foremen took some time off the brisk business of repairing government and NGO trucks and busses to mend our little vehicle, but the lack of parts, and then the lack of the right parts has led to our still being here at 4pm on the following day.

A frustration, to be sure, but one that has allowed us to explore this oddly prosperous little outpost of Southern African civilization. The small town, which must have no more than 10,000 inhabitants serves as a regional center for the fertile Kavongo region, but has more recently found its calling as a mercantile center for affluent Angolans. "They are rich! They have US dollars," said Andy Cheng, 23-year old proprietor of the Star Amor shop on the main drag. He owns one of about a dozen "China Shops" in town. He came from the Fujian province of China about 2 years ago to follow his father in setting a little trading business. He buys his stock on credit from wholesale merchants in Windhoek's Chinatown, and then sells it here at a 5x markup. He seems to be fairly happy, and praised the local people for their honesty and industry, and unusual attitude for a Chinese person. The building his shop is and has a bizarre sort of pillared classical facade and a triangular roof - he says it is owned by an egyptian, who also owns a few other places in town. His very pressence is bemoaned by the Afgan traders across the street, who had to shut down their own general retail operation when the chinese started coming. They, two brothers whose names I didn't catch, opened a more up-market cell-phone operation instead.

Things are looking up in Rundu indeed. A nice place, but I won't be too sorry when I finally get to leave - hopefully today.
Ben Maritz - +1 917 340 6014 - Stanford GSB - "Endless Summer"

On the Road Again

"Where did you get this idea?" Dan asked me, inquiring as to how I came up with the hair-brained idea of leading 13 MBA students on a cross-Africa road trip where we would spend the majority of our time camping out in the open, preparing our own food and charting our own course.

"Well," I replied, "I've been wanting to do this just about ever since the last time I did it," which was 5 years ago when I spent some time in Zambia with my friends Mathew and Ellen. The first time I did it was with my father and his friends back in 1998, almost exactly 10 years ago. The African road trip, or "self-drive safari" as it's called in the tourist industry, is quite possibly the finest vacation there is, combining splendid scenery with all the relaxation which comes with having the pressing concerns of basic survival close at hand at all times. (It's relaxing because it's mind-clearing.) There's also the element of nature, and of natural manliness - this is perhaps the only place I feel perfectly justified in wearing a beard on my face and a knife on my belt.

Our itinerary is roughly as follows: We start in Namibia, where we see the Namib Desert, the coastal port of Swakopmund, and the game park of the Etosha Salt Pan. We then cross to Botswana where we will see the Okavango Delta, and then into Zambia where we will visit my family farm at Mandevu. We'll end the trip at Victoria Falls, where we'll hopefully cross into Zimbabwe for a day. This will all be well-documented, being the Silicon Valley MBA's that we are. Watch this space.

Below are some photos from our first day of driving.

The Namibian Riviera

 Day 2: Soussalvei dunes Day 3: A free day in Swakopmund 

This morning I pried myself out of bed before breakfast and went for a jog. Out of the hotel gates, then down the fifty or so yards to the beach. A pleasant brick path ran through a manicured grove of palm trees and then out alongside a sandy beach and the ocean beyond. It was early, and there were no bathers out, but a crew of blue-jumpsuited municipal workers were at work picking up whatever debris had washed up on the beach. There were a few middle-aged couples out strolling, enjoying the brisk salt breeze, probably down from one of the many large vacation villas that overlooked the waterfront.

The French Riviera perhaps? Or a pleasant part of the California coast? Nope – The Namib desert, namesake of it's host, the proud republic of Namibia. The Namib, a massive sea of sand containing the oldest and larges dunes in the world, butts right up against the Atlantic for several hundred miles. About right in the middle of it, lies the old German colonial port town of Swakopmund, reborn as a holiday destination. It's a bizarrely pleasant town, with about two dozen clean, wide streets, polished store fronts, and a good stock of pleasant hotels and restaurants. The beach here is nice, but it's a bit odd to be bathing in the shadow of desolate sand dunes.

The whole country is a bit odd – unlike anywhere I've ever been in Africa. It's massive, about a quarter of the size of the United States, but has only two million people in it's entirity. It's a new country, in some sense the final offspring of the de-colonization process, having gained it's independence from Apartheid-bound South Africa only in 1990. The Germans had it initially for about 40 years leading up to the First World War. It was then given by the Versailles Conference to South Africa to govern under a mandate, which it did up until the 1960's, when it became a formal part of South Africa. In the 1980's an liberation movement gained momentum, and the South Africa apartheid government finally gave up this streatch of rocks and desert, only months before it met its demise.

It's a poor country, although it benefited greatly from South African investment and management. The infrastructure is magnificent, and even the dirt roads are well maintained. A beautiful 100km streatch of gravel highway we crossed had it's own full-time maintenance crew – we stopped and chatter with the driver of the grader, who told us he managed to grade the entire road in a week, up one direction, then back the other, then repeat. His family comes along with him and lives in the trailer that he pulls behind.

His road, like most of the others in the interiror of Namibia, was straight as a needle to the pole, and traversed a moonscape of dusty plains that extended for as could be seen. Once every few hundred kilometers, we'd pass a small town, usually built around a cross roads, or a shuttered mine. There'd be a few dusty signs, a few vehicles, a few houses, and not much else. Maybe a store, maybe a filling station.

We drove to this town by way of the Soussalvei, the name given to a small gap in the sand sea of the Namibia, where a normal vehicle can penitrate into the middle of the biggest dunes. We spent a very windy night camped just outside the desert, then struck camp and drove before dawn to see the sunrise over the dunes. It was, as promised, magnificent.

Localizatin'

"Oh yes!" Exclaimed the bolder and prettier of the two Swedish girls opposite me in the common room of the hostel I was staying in, "Swedes are just the same as Norwegians. Same language, same look, same everything!" (Emphasis hers). She was explaining why it was so easy for her and her friend to come and work in Norway for the summer, as they and countless other “low-wage” Swedes do every summer and around the year. These two were medical students, a year away from being doctors, and they were working “taking care of old people” for a few months to save up for their (subsidized) studies. Norway is importing low-wage labor from... Sweden.

I'm writing now from Heathrow, where I just bought a sandwhich and a diet coke for $10. Every time previously I've come through London I've always complained about the prices, but here they look downright reasonable. In Norway, the second most advanced nation in the world , has prices that are absolutely insane. I paid $8 for a capuchino. My hotel in Oslo cost $160, for a room the size of my closet in Atherton. My dinner last night at a counter-service restaurant was (delicious and) $50.

Now this is due in no small part to petro-state inflation and currency effects, but it also MUST have something to do with this nations xenophobic attitudes toward labor. Unit labor costs here are clearly out of control – that $50 dinner? As I said: counter service. I even had to get my own spoon. The $8 capuchino? Served in a crowded cafe manned by one dude, unflappable behind a counter. The society has adapted to this – bussing your own table seems to be a way of life.

Sure, the government has issued calls to import labor and has tried to lower barriers, but I can't help but suppose that the Norwegian, worldly as they are in their excellent English-language ability, are fairly content to live their isolated Nordic lives, seeing foreigners only as tourists, and only three months a year. (24 hours of darkness anyone?). They are extremely wealthy ($90+ GDP per capita at current exchange rates) and are quite content to share that pie only through foreign aid (they're the world's most generous country), not through truly immigration-led job creation, which would of course lead to lower prices and huge increases in living standards for those moving in.

(An aside: a quick web search for some data to back this up theory came across this incontrovertible headline from the New York Times. “WAGES HIGH IN NORWAY.; Commerce Chamber Calls European Cheap Labor a Bugaboo.” Sadly, it's dated 1921.)

The return trip

Again, past midnight, again staring out at the eerie light, this time under stark blue skies, watching the sun gleam off nearby mountain tops. This time, I'm on a train, retreating. I woke this morning, peeled off my eye-mask, and after a brief walk around and a return visit the excellent restaruant Brygga for a repeat serving of their transcendant seafood soup, I hopped on a bus, and then a ferry, to take me back to the mainland.

My ferry arrived in the town of Bodo ("Bo-DOH" to the locals) where I passed a few hours, enjoying a $9 cappuchino at a recommended Internet cafe. I was killing time until I would be able to board my train for the long trip back to Oslo, where I am to spend a short night, and then climb on board a succession of aeroplanes to take me to other extreme of the earth, Cape Town.

But this post is about this train: splendid! I think my two passions in life are food and trains. If this were a meal, it would be top-quality Scandinavian. Sensible portions of hearty sustenance, beautifully presented, nicely but not extravagantly seasoned. I booked online, and had no ticket. As I walked down the platform, I was met by the sole conductor. I gave him my name, and he gave me a hotel-style key-card to what was to be my cabin. I entered the carriage, walked down a long line of doors and let myself into mine. A generous imitation of one of those Japanese capsule-hotels, but with two beds probably a good 7' 6” long, to accommodate this most evolved race. A sink, a mirror, a power outlet, and a small window to watch the world go by.

I've just spent a few hours enjoying myself with the childlike glee I always find aboard trains. I took a stroll down to the cafe car for a tea and a snack, but as I only had 50 kroner with me (about $12), I could only afford a tea.

Back to Bacalao

It's just a bit past midnight, and I'm typing away in my little attic hostel room, free from the need for any kind of artificial light. It's about as bright as 2pm on your average dreary winter's day in my hometown of Seattle, and about as bright as it was when I landed on this funny little island around the same time earlier this afternoon. The light is eerie, though it's hard to say whether it is actually thus, or just appears to be so due to the eerie hour.

I'm on one of the islands of Lofoten, in Norway's Nordland province, well north of the arctic circle. If New York is on the same lattitude as Rome, and I'm waaaaay north of Rome, that puts me on roughly o a level with, say, Santa Claus. The landscape was clearly carved by glaciers millenia ago and left fairly intact since. The islands are merely large pockets of rock spared by the carving ice. They are hills protruding from the icy water and descending back into it at a steep, constant angle. No beaches, and little room for human habitation. The few structures extant are perched on stilts above the water – a situation that served the sea-fevered residents just fine.

I came here for the fish. As avid readers of this blog (Hi Nana!) will recall, I am particularly fond of Bacalau, the Iberian salt cod delicacy so popular in Brazil. I am now in it's very home. Lofoten lies along the furthest north extreme of the Gulf Stream current which keeps most Northern Europe inhabitable despite it's northerly setting. The islands are the most convenient point for arctic fish, such as Cod, to swing by when looking for a slightly less frigid place to breed. They do so every winter, and during the dark months of November and December, tens of thousands of fisherman descend upon these waters to greet the millions of Cod.

These days, I imagine, despite a large cod-fishing festival on the islands, most of the fisherman go about their business from the comfort of some epic deep-sea fishing vessel, but clearly in years past these little islands served as the base of operations for a navy of bearded, strapping Scandinavians. They would have stayed in the Robuer, the little stilt houses over-looking the oddly calm waves and eaten their fill from the ovens of the centuries-old bakery, still bringing forth loaves of bread from it's birch-fired ovens, still manned by rosy-cheeked women with hankerchiefs covering their hair.

Today there still is quite a bit of fishing activity on the island. Drying racks abound, and I'm told they are still used each winter in cod season. Fishing boats still operate out of the region, though the boats based on the small towns that I saw were clearly more oriented towards sport-seeking Germans than commercial fishery. If I had had a few friends with me, I would have certainly chartered a small ship and plumbed the depths for my dinner – I'm quite fond of fresh fish, and the haddock and pollack I saw being cleaned under the midnight sun on my walk around just now looked perfect.

I should note that I am now in the village of “A”, the furthest out town on the furthest out island, the very end of the archipelago and thus rightfully named after the very beginning of the Norwegian alphabet. It's one of the ends of the earth, there's no way back except the dead-ended road you came in on. So it did not surprise me at all to learn that Jonathan Lee had already been here. I'll get you next time, Jonathan!