Leaving Malawi

We arrive at the Mzuzu bus station a few minutes after 11 p.m. after a Christmas with one thousand drunk Malawians at the Nkhata Bay beach. Moses and Jenipher drop us off in his shiny gold eight-seater Ford Expedition. The station is a gladiatorial amphitheater of a place. Ten steep steps surround a bus staging area on two sides, gates on the other two for combatants to enter and be dragged away. A few empty buses sleep on the arena floor. A cluster of long distance Christmas travelers sprawl along the steps. Some are stretched out sleeping. Others drinking sodas and talking. Maybe fifteen or twenty in all. Unidentified sacks of cargo obscure the entrance to the Taqwa bus booking office. I presume they are filled with corn, rice or sugar, and that they will ride underneath us to Dar Es Salaam.

We drink Fanta, play Skippo, and stretch legs in anticipation of another long bus journey while we wait. Around 1 a.m., a man tells us we nee to go around the corner to the Kotota Filling Station. The bus is there. Annette leads the pack, anxious to secure two seats next to each other on a bus without assigned seats. “Mohamed Coach Livery,” the ticket says. “IN ALLAH WE TRUST” is written on the back in large capital letters. It is an orange bus with “Bismillah” written across the top of the windshield. The seats are red an comfortable. The interior lights are red, green and blue, making it feel as much club as mode of transport. After two failed attempts, Annette gets a nine-year-old boy to move so we can sit together. The seats don't recline. There is no air conditioning, but the windows open. The bus is dark. We both doze in and out of sleep for the next several hours as we wind through the mountains to Songwe, Malawi's most major northern border.

We arrive at the border after a typically early Malawian dawn. It's a few minutes before 5:30 a.m. I say no to the steady stream of black market money changers, piss on a tree, and strike up a conversation with the two other white guys on the bus. One is Brazilian and lives in Seattle. The other is from Minnesota and on vacation from the Peace Corps in Uganda. With Annette's prompting, I brush my teeth. The border doesn't open for another hour, so we play some more cards. We pull through the Malawian side, one more stamp on our passports, a few minutes after 7 a.m.

The Tanzanian side requires Visas. And, for some reason, the bus crew decides to rotate all of the bus' tires. I change kwacha for Tanzanian schillings, (multiplying by ten in my head, despite an exchange rate of six), spend fifty cents on a breakfast of fried dough balls, and wait. I think about our time in Malawi.

Between the mountains and the lake, it is an absolutely beautiful country. And rainy season didn't amount to much while we were there. Just a few brief storms and some refreshingly cool overcast days. Parts of days, really. Our time there was mostly shaped by our last four days with Moses in Mzuzu. He is a recognized civil society leader, maybe in his late 30s or early 40s. He is definitely a member of the small educated Malawian elite in one of the poorest countries in Africa. Despite the fuel crisis, we spend a portion of every day riding around in his SUV with the windows open and air conditioning blasting. He doesn't have to wait in line for fuel. He has a staff member at work that does it, and gets his personal supply then too. He does, however, have to use his mouth to create a vacuum when siphoning food from the 55 gallon drum he keeps at the house into his Ford.

We spend an even greater portion of each day drinking and rubbing shoulders with the Malawian elite at the country club. It is a nine-hole golf club, but nobody seems to even know how to play golf there. Instead, they drink Jameson and water and talk politics. And talking politics mostly consists of criticizing the current regime. The mood ranges from cynicism and drunken depression to optimism accompanied by elaborate plans for regime change. These in a whisper of course, despite the fact that everybody in the club feels the same.

The conversation is interesting, although tiring after a few days. We joke that Moses one day may be president of Malawi. We joke, but the brains and ambition are definitely there. And, perhaps, the networks. Inevitably, as the nights wear on, the conversation gets more colorful and comical, complete with the inane ramblings of a few old important drunk men. Sometimes on the subject of the recently passed Chief Justice whose funeral we just attended. Sometimes on the state of the country and its economy. Sometimes, just inane babble. Often invitations for us to move to Malawi. And it is almost all men. A bit too much unchecked chauvinistic testosterone for me at times.

We pull off again a few minutes after 9:30 a.m. Malawi's lush mountains continue into Tanzania outside the bus window. It starts to rain as we pass a crane unsuccessfully trying to tug a truck out of a ditch off the side of the road. A man disconnects the chain from the back of the truck and covers his head with a piece of cardboard. After Mbeya, the rain clears. The mountains become high plateau. A waterfall cascades in the distance, a streak of white the length of a hillside. I imagine lions and leopards but only see an occasional cow or goat. And lots of hoed rows in various stages of sprouting. We eat bananas, oranges, peanuts and wafers we buy through the bus window. I dream of Zanzibar. And water we can swim in without worrying about bihlazia. And the arrival of our Christmas present—my sister—in Dar Es Salaam tomorrow.

I make it through most of the battery life and a large portion of the 12,438 songs on my Ipod on shuffle before we arrive in Dar. It is 2:30 a.m. when we wake the woman at reception at the Dar Es Salaam YMCA. But there are rooms available. And anything is better than that bus.

Mango Season

 

Bumpy back-of-the-truck view.

Annette finally got an affirmative answer to the question she gives new travelers: Can you teach us a new card game? The game is Skippo. And we ended up following the two Dutch sisters who taught it to us to Nkotakota to play it some more. We rode in the back of a truck amidst the stream of travelers and livestock heading home for the holidays. In addition to lots of people, supplies and children in the backs of trucks, the holidays brought buckets of fish, huge catfish tied together with reeds, goats strapped to the backs of bicycles, and babies holding chickens. In Malawi, Santa drives a matola. I presume this steady stream of live animals is headed to slaughter for Christmas feasts.  

Morning comes early in Malawi. The sun rises by 5:30 a.m. We leave the Anglican Church guest house in Nkotakota for breakfast and another truck to three-minibuses in order to get to Mzuzu. The ride gets better as we go. Tiny yellow mangoes are messy and sweet as can be. They are everywhere on the roadside. Kids count the number of people in the back of the truck as we pass. First it is fifteen. It reaches 25 at its height. And there is no shelter from the sun. But, soon enough, we are shepherded into a mini-bus with Lucius Banda tunes bumping. Good Malawian reggae/high-life sounds. Sweet mangoes. Windy mountain roads. Sweeping views of the clear waters of Lake Malawi. Temperatures cooling. Life is good.

By sunset, we are on the doorstep of the Church and Society office in Mzuzu, welcomed by Moses. We ate catfish with him back in New Orleans last April when he was visiting as part of a delegation sponsored by the State Department. Annette kept in touch. So, now we ride in his Ford Expedition passed gas lines that block one direction of traffic down the main street of Mzuzu. We end up at “The Club,” as he calls it. It’s a country club frequented by the movers and shakers of Mzuzu. We are introduced to entrepreneurs, politicians, civil society leaders, professors. The crowd gets more raucous, the conversation more lively as the drinks flow and the night wears on.

The professor professes to us that he is a failure, a lowly university lecturer, because he doesn’t feel that he is producing the students who can lead Malawi to the future. Dan the politician explains the challenges with the current regime and his strategies to bring the opposition to power and lead a unified government. There should be a press conference today on the subject. Meanwhile Moses plans the Saturday’s funeral for a recently-passed Chief Justice with a few gentlemen at the bar.

I pitch the idea of collecting used cooking oil from the roadside chips stands and converting it to biodiesel. It is novel idea here. And needed, given the fuel crisis and Malawi’s dependence on foreign imports of fuel, tourists and everything else but corn, tomatoes and mangoes. Moses reiterates his April invitation for us to move to Malawi. And the idea is appealing. Biodiesel could work here.

The Harlot of Blantyre

12/13/2011 (during our long bus ride)

Life fade beyond the horizon, leaving us as our only friends.
Through the darkness a new life is dawning,
she is my beginning she's my end.

With steps wider than oceans and the stars our only plan
we will scan the depths of our devotion
and receive what comes with open hands.

Patience with her perfect balance
shifts underfoot as distant sands,
in our souls we long for creation
pink mountains, teal ripples,
tiny fingers grasp for knowing hand.

12/20/2011
Malawi reminds me that resources are finite, not just petro and clean drinking water here, but all over the world. Before we arrived into the southern region's lush rainy season we were warned that transport across the country would be challenging because international support in the form of foreign exchange (forex) had been cut, and there are widespread oil shortages. It is a difficult thing to enter a new place with its own memory, languages, conservative values, history and to claim to understand the political climate. The expats in S. Africa warned that Malawi was in danger of turning into Zimbabwe with its hopelessly corrupt politicians and waste, a modern day failed state. The only Malawian take we got on the subject so far came from a milk chocolate girl who works on a “tourist island” in Cape Maclear. She had a shaved head, tatoos, and a smattering of unidentified piercings to match her British tinged accent. Unfortunately, I lost most of her drunken banter under the disapproving mumbling of her fellow vacationers an Afrikaaner expat and an Irish nurse.

We arrived in Blantyre after a 38 hour bus ride, that despite an acceptable amount of drama and several tedious border/immigration check points, was very comfortable and a good ride. I read all 400 pages of Anita Diamante's first novel “The Red Tent,” a historical fiction account of the life of Dinah, the daughter of the biblical figure Jacob the Cannanite, the father of Joseph with his multicolored robe whose brothers sold him into slavery not unknowing that one day he would be a king. I wish to be able to weave a story together like this. To master the art that makes the shapes of worlds and the faces of children appear vividly in a readers' mind. I know the very basics from my work, that every story has a beginning, middle, and end. But I am truly envious of those writers who can skillfully deconstruct the pieces and create a patchwork that warms the creative spirit with each turn of the page. I imagine once our trip is over, writing a book using these blog entries (and some private journaling) and tackfully weaving in the stories of our families, how the romance of Vicki and Tony sparked in Marrakesh, love at first sight when my dad caught my 9 year old mom stealing a watermelon from his family's patch. Their stories are our own.

In Blantyre we CouchSurfed with Elaine an English teacher from the U.K. In her mid-50s. Her spacious apartment was sunny, comfortable, and minimally decorated with a few Indian scarves draped across windows, an tapestries depicting women in the marketplace or farming decorated the walls. She immediately offered us beers and real french bread with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, 2 types of cheese, olives, and balsalmic vinegar. We ate our fill and enjoyed her easy conversation for another hour or so before heading to bed.

The next morning I awoke early to find Elaine sitting off the back porch outside our room reading a book and smoking a cigarette, she has only taken up smoking this year and intends to stop for the new year. I join her and delve into my newest addiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “Half of a Yellow Sun” a novel about love, family, and the Biafran war in Nigeria in the 1960s. A few hours later Ham and I decide to make the 20 minute walk into town to explore on foot, our time honored tradition that has gone a bit neglected over the last month or so.

By 10am the air was already steamy and I opted to wear my billowing blue shirt-dress that falls a few inches above my knees, a cheap purchase in Madrid on a day where each of us needed some alone time. For good measure I threw on my black shorts underneath. It wasn't long before I realized that all of the people we walked past along the way had their eyes transfixed on my bare legs. I had not heeded the suttle guidebook warning that Malawians are a bit conservative. I had wrongly assumed that in a place where it is common to see the bare breast of women bathing or feeding children, my bare legs would be no big offense. I was wrong. For a couple of hours that felt like an eternity we walked through town, stopping at the delicious Indian owned vegetarian restaurant Veg Delight. Even after the power went out shortly after our arrival I was still grateful to eat a tasty dossa stuffed with spicy potatoes, my sweaty legs sticking to the chair, momentarily free from the accusing glares of the women on the street.

“You are dressing very smart sister,” a sarcastic compliment from a passerby. Once we were in the city center I swear there were a couple of blocks where all the men sitting grouped on steps in front of stores all stopped talking, their entire heads following my every move. Then it happened, someone started to whistle, the shrill sound pierced the air and traveled up the length of the block as others also sounded the alarm, the Harlot of Blantyre is passing! At some point we ducked into a grocery store to survey the unappetizing packaged food, poorly refridgerated meats, and long life milk stored in cartons on hot shelves. We found an on site internet cafe and passed an hour on fantasy football, facebook, an CouchSurfing. The oscilating fan was quite pleasant until young man sat in front of it, the air stream blowing the familiar stench of body odor over us all.

Once again we were out the door, in search of a market that Elaine described as worth seeing. With a little guidance we found our way there and quickly walked through the stalls of second hand clothes, fresh fruits and vegetables. By the time we reached the hardward aisle and food vendors I was quickly scrambling past various animal intestines being grilled next to fryings pots of potatoes. The hawkers, mostly men, were smiling and staring, murmuring things like 'black-American' and other phrases in other languages. The discomfort was almost unbearable. I quickly led Hamilton out of the market and we started walking uphill in a direction that I hoped would lead us back home. This final stretch on the outskirts of the market was filled with women sitting on the ground in the shade and hawking miscallaneous goods repetitive of all of those we had just seen. They jeered at me, and then it happened again! A woman started ululating, and howling loudly, as if annoucing "her she comes in all of her boldness!" It felt as if each person we passed after that participated as well, other women offering up their loud wails with smirks on their faces, and the now familiar secession of whistles from the men. At one point Hamilton turned to me, astonishment splashed across his face, asking "is that all for you?" It clearly was.

Only a week later we would be walking through Nkohtakota with some new friends we met at Cape Maclear, 2 sisters from Holland braving the heat in much shorter shorts than my own and bare shoulders, their pale white legs glowing like alabaster in the sunlight. While they would be met with the expected stares received by random white people walking in the hood, there would be no big show outside of the standard hellos and eager greetings of naughty children and curious adults. This double standard leaves my mind reeling. Perhaps my judge and jury in Blantyre believed that I was Malawain, a common occurence in every African country we've visited, who was blatantly ignoring the established mores and dress code. Add my white "friend" to the mix and I definitely would look like an abomination. But what about those who assumed that I was a black American, what excuse would apply for their reception of me? Its a bit frustrating, like how the mini-taxi drivers eagerly rush to carry Hamilton's backpack to place in the back of the truck, leaving me to struggle alone with mine which is equally imposing and heavy. Hamilton was always apologetic the first few times, assuming that because he had been relieved of the weight of his pack, naturally so would I. Now he'll loudly instruct the men to "take my wife's bag" which is often ignored, until he himself comes to help me. Frankly, while I would like the help sometimes I really don't need it. African women carry far more unweilding cargo than my neatly contained (though heavy) pack. While there is a fellowship of having the same-ish skin, there is also a disregard or demotion in status in the presence of my white husband. In moments like these I revert back to my family roots, I can haul a 50 lb sack of cow feed off a truck and down to the stalls, I'm a Mississippi woman!

Hamilton started to make other suggestions for where to walk, I quickly cut him off saying that I only wanted to go home. Despite my visible embarrassment and discomfort he was still hesistant to comply, insisting on stopping at a decrepid building that had once been a cultural center to see if there were any shows coming up. There weren't. I chose to walk on a shaded dirt path that was out of sight of most of the passing cars on the road, Hamilton continued to walk on the other side of the street, not perceiving my desire for some sort of protection or shield. When we reached the turnoff for Elaine's apartment he shouted that he was going to the store, leaving me to walk the last quiet stretch alone, my Malawian walk of shame. I turned into the wrong drive way and knocked on an identical door of an identical apartment building, only to scandalize the small girl who answered the door. We laughed later on when Hamilton confessed that he made the same mistake.

That evening we walked onto the campus of Saint Andrews with Elaine to sample the homemade ginger beer and other assortments of her fellow co-workers, the husband French and the wife Scottish. While there Hamilton inquired about hiking routes in the nearby ranges, asking for directions on the best ways to get there. I already knew that I would not be walking through the city of Blantyre again. While I would not have on the same clothing, I would still be totally recognizable, I could imagine people sitting at their dinner tables that evening mentioning in passing the disgusting display they witnessed earlier that day.

When we woke up that next morning I was thankful to see that it was going to be a rainy day. We opted to pack up our bags and continue to treck on to the coolness of the Zomba Plateau. Its a shame, I really would have liked to spend more time talk with Elaine, learning about her extensive travels and the disfunctionalities of U.K. culture. But alas, the Harlot of Blantyre wears shorts and hiking boots, and these boots were made for walking.

Cape Maclear



Sunset at the bar at Fat Monkey's.



Accacia overlooking Lake Malawi.

Clear and tranquil waters.

A fish eagle's eye view of the sandy stretch of paradise that is Cape Maclear.

Without question, Malawi is best seen from the back of a truck. They call the pick up trucks that take hitchhikers everywhere in this country matolas. Matolas are the main form of transportation in this country. We caught one in Liwonde and a second one in Monkey Bay as we found our way to an isolated paradise in Cape Maclear on Sunday. We sat on boxes of donated clothes, bags of mangoes and chalk-like sweet potatoes and our backpacks. One small pickup truck carries fifteen adults and two babies comfortably. People are packed in around the cargo. The breeze is delicious. The views of mountains, villages, mighty baobab breathtaking. Children run out to meet us with chants of mozunga, chichewa for obruni, white man. Annette was tickled to be back in a place where I am recognized and greeted by children.

And Cape Maclear is paradise. We eat fresh mangoes that are sold from underneath a six hundred year-old baobab tree in the center of town. All menus have fresh seafood, which in this land of one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world, includes duck. Never mind that my first duck was tough and bony. The tiger fish baked in a banana leaf and fried chambo (catfish) easily make up for it. So does a morning kayak ride exploring the nearby islands. And a fresh mango juice to cool off.

We stay in a dorm at Fat Monkeys with six beds. The first night, we have the place to ourselves. The second, we are joined by a guy named Josh from Nashville who is teaching geography and planning at Rhodes University in South Africa. And two sisters from Holland. The Carlsberg and Khuche Khuche beer flows cheaply and keeps us cool during the days. The nights cool down enough for comfortable sleeping.

We explore the area during mornings and evenings and nap in the afternoons. We walk to calls of “Ellow” from naked children splashing and bathing in the water. Boys rest on their bellies in the sand, backsides to the sun, while mom washes dishes in the lake. Fishermen in dugout canoes with slits at the top sort through their nets. Small fish dry in the sun on four-foot high reed tables. Someday, we will wander our way northward toward Tanzania. But probably not today.

The Company Gardens, Capetown S. Africa

12/11/2011
Capetown, South Africa
The Western Cape is achingly beautiful, a cosmopolitan city scooped into a bowl of epic mountain over 250 million years old. These ranges are older than the Rockies, Andes, and Himalayans combined. I learned this from a marker on the top of Table Mountain. I opted for the cable car, due to sore feet which have bothered me on and off for months, while Ham quenched his desire to hike. A cold day in the Cape makes for blistering wind that feels like it could heave you over and off the lush green cliffs. There is vegetation in the Cape which can only grown here, species of flora which cannot flourish anywhere else.

Capetown holds all of these treasures most important to us when considering relocation: lush mountain views from anywhere in the city, the omnipotent Atlantic Ocean with its icy currents and cooling winds, and a context for meaningful social justice work. Within hours of walking about the city we are able to observe yet another phase in the wonder of human migration. We are surrounded by a beautiful gumbo with hints of Malaysian, Indian, African, Dutch, Boer; with somewhat confusing designations Colored, Black, Afrikaans..... Its intoxicating aroma feels ancient with equal parts pain, exploration, oppression, and reconciliation.

As I write this I am sitting on a sunny bench in the Company Garderns facing a lily pond surrounded by strolling caramel families, a labryinth of roses, and little girls feeding pigeons and squirrels right out of their little hands. Several times since our first visit to the garden Hamilton has recited some guidebook acquired knowledge, mainly that the Dutch East India Company was the first multinational corporation in the world. I reassured him that is case law that every first or second year law student is required to learn.

Just over the planetarium I can see the side profile of Lion's Head, and if I had binoculars I imagine I could see my husband jubulantly scowering his way up to the peak. He finds an enormous sense of pleasure and fascination in flowers and mountain ranges. Today I'm slightly more excited by the solitude of walking through the city at my leisure, free to accept the advances of toddlers, admirers, and strangers in need of “only 10 Rand sista.”

Rats, Shit and Trees

Tolken's baobab requires a wide angle lens.

“Go away, rat!” Annette yells. Then she claps twice loudly. It's an early dawn in Liwonde National Park. A bit before five a.m. The rat scratching at our reed roof is wide awake. So are the birds. They sound like monkeys, like crickets, like elephants, like children playing. Malawi has more bird species than all of North America and Europe. And the general assembly seems to be convening just outside our window. Clearly, Annette is wide awake too. She has been since she woke me up thirty minutes ago to escort her to the bathroom. After a night of hearing huge hippo steps, jaws grinding on grass as they walk, she wanted the support. I obliged, mainly because of the drunk man I heard muttering epithets at nobody in the distance.

Annette has come a long way since seeing her first mouse in the Verbena Street house. Then she jumped on the couch and did the Icky Shuffle. Last night, while we played Scrabble, she watched a mouse scurry across the bar and stare us down with genuine amusement. And no evidence of fear. The rat in our roof is equally as fearless. He pauses for a moment in response to Annette's calls and claps. Then he goes back to his scratching. Nevertheless, we manage to doze for an hour or so until our alarm.

By 6:45 a.m., we are following a barefooted white man into the bush. His name is Peter. He is South African. And from my limited experience of seeing barefoot Afrikaans people in grocery stores across South Africa, his bare feet serve as an identity seal. He is Afrikaans. We walk past hippo shit splattered across a bush with its tail to mark its territory. And hippo shit wet and fresh in a pile with urine on top. Peter points out that this one if female because she pissed on her shit. Presumably, the male pisses in front of his shit. I suppose we would too if we didn't have opposable thumbs and toilets.

We see lots of baboons, mostly not close enough to confirm the opposition of their thumbs. And impala. We walk pasta pile of their shit. It's pellets, like deer or rabbit. “The impala from the same herd all go in the same spot,” Peter explains. “Then the dominant male comes along and sniffs around to understand what is happening in the herd.” He points to a turd that is a bit larger than the rest. “It's like reading the morning paper in the public restroom. He catches up on all of the gossip of the herd.”

We walk on to a monstrous baobab tree. Peter explains that for every meter of girth, the tree is one hundred years old. This one is 3,800 years old. That makes it 38 meters, the oldest and largest tree in Malawi. And it seems to possess a spirit of its own. Three different species of birds have made nests in its massive branches. And an impressive bee hive as well.

Peter goes on to explain that J.R. Tolken spent part of his childhood in Malawi. His dad used to preach under this tree. His childhood sketchbook is filled with its image. And the real setting for the fictional Lord of the Rings trilogy is here. Liwonde Park is on the Shire River, just north of misty mountains, with baobab trees that seem to be magic and alive. I haven't read the Lord of the Rings and probably fell asleep during the movie, but this sounds plausible.

We walk on past elephant shits the size of my upper thigh. They are really dry. “Elephants only digest twenty percent of what they eat,” Peter says, kicking a turd with his foot so it rolls into two pieces. “So the baboons pick through it for undigested fruits.”

I spot a water buck staring at us through the forest. At first it looks like a donkey. But its ears are horns. And its larger than an elk. Annette brings up the subject of eating it We have been talking about such things since our day driving the Cape Coast of South Africa, wondering if jackass penguins taste anything like bacon. We ate kudu and springbok that night, but no water buck.

“It's not very good,” Peter chimes in. “They have a gland in their hind quarters. It releases a toxin when it is scared. It makes all the meat taste a lot like urine.”

I notice it has a white ring around its dark brown hind quarters. I use it as an opportunity to get the thought of Peter tasting urine out of my mind. “It looks like it has a target on its ass.”

“Most antelope have identifying marks on their rumps,” he says. I ponder for a moment where his knowledge comes from. Just how much is from experience? How much comes from books? How much from locals? He probably has the shit of three different mammals on the bottom of his feet right now.

Ku Chawe Trout Farm

Williams Falls.

A view down from the Zomba Plateau

After two days in Blantyre, Annette is ready to leave. We catch a ride in the rain past fuel lines twenty cars long to the bus station. Next bus to Zomba isn't for another three hours. So we walk to catch a mini bus (equivalent of a tro tro) to Limbe, the next town over, and another one to Zomba. The minibus is the most loaded down yet. Things are packed and repacked.. People squeezed, alternating shoulders forward, shoulders back, layered to fit. We sit, knees pressed into the seats in front of us for close to an hour or so before it leaves Limbe station. As usual, a parade of items for sale passes us while we wait. Cold Fanta in glass bottles. The good kind with real sugar instead of corn syrup. Hand-tied bags of water. Processed corn nuts. Sunglasses. Samosas. Styrofoam boxes with unknown edible contents. A huge platter of rice with small blue bags for measuring servings to order. Bags of french fries fried in metal sinks over charcoal fires. The rain chases them off, but only for a moment.

We pull off through a gauntlet of minibuses strewn about the station like toddlers' toys. We exit town through one lane of traffic. The other is taken up by cars and trucks parked in both directions waiting for gas to arrive at the Total station. There are probably forty cars and trucks in the queue. Maybe more. As far as I have been able to piece together without the worldwide web, BBC or New York Times, here's why:

Malawi is one of the poorer nations on earth and deeply dependent on foreign aid and investment (forex). Fuel cannot be bought on credit. Everybody who tells me this story makes that point early on. So I figure I should just go ahead and get it out of the way. The Malawian president supposedly bought a private jet with foreign aid money. He may have even done this on credit in anticipation of the money coming. Well, the money was late. Word about the jet got around. Two homosexuals were arrested in Malawi for being homosexual, leaving the foreign community (Europe and the U.S.) up in arms. And fuel was trickling in to begin with through one main road that is under construction on the border with Mozambique, or so a early afternoon drunk Malawian female tour guide told me. So, the story goes tat upset by the jet and the human rights violations, the foreigners threatened to cut aide if the prez didn't change his ways and apologize. The Malawian president scoffed at this. Some say he was egged on by his friend, Mugabe. In this effort to show strength and independence (albeit a heavily dependent economy and national budget), the tiff escalated. The British ambassador was kicked out. Forex was stopped. So fuel trickles into the country only at the rate for which the Malawian government can pay cash for it. Very slowly. And that is the story of how Malawi got its petrol queues.

The traffic of Limbe, however, quickly fades into the green lush mountainscape that is southern Malawi. Rows of corn two-and-a-half feet high fill the foreground. The roadsides host steady stream of people on bicycles, people carrying wood and makeshift stalls selling green and yellow mangoes and bright red tomatoes. The road is mostly straight and mostly paved. Our speed is scary. And I can't see our the windows. If I slouch so I can see, I end up with my knees in my chin. So I do my best to look out the back window at what we just sped by.

The bus driver drops us at the bottom of the hill after the one traffic light in Zomba. We walk one hundred happily-dry yards to the guidebook recommended Tasty Bites. It is a crowded outdoor cafe with a steady stream of ice cream coming out. It has the right proportion of white people (about 10-20%) to know it is a good place. Behind it, the granite walls of the Zomba Plateau, decorated for the holidays in bright green foliage, rise five hundred meters toward an ominous sky. I order the beef curry and rice for 450 kwachas. Annette the chicken shwarma and chips and an order of veggie samosas to split. They come last and are the best. On the day we arrived in Malawi, the exchange rate was 250 kwachas to the dollar. Today it is 160. We ask the waiter how to hitchhike to the Zomba Plateau and how much we should expect to pay. He explains that it is about 10 kilometers. Malawians pay 200 kwacha, but they will try to charge us more. We should say we paid 200 kwacha last time we went and see if that works.

We walk up the main road to the first turnoff up the hill. There's a pullout just after the turn, so we hang there. The first few cars don't stop. The sixth one does. A man wearing a South Africa hat is driving. He leans across the young man in the passenger seat to greet me. “Are you going to Ku Chawe?” he asks. We are. “Where are you from?”

“Louisiana,” Annette answers.

“Oh! I have been to Mississippi.”

Annette stands up from her curbside seat and approaches the car to explain that she is really from Mississippi.

“I was actually just stopping while this young man runs into the Metro Cash and Carry to get me something. But you shouldn't have any trouble getting a ride.” He goes on to explain he is the only Malawian with a Ph. D. in Physical Education. He is a professor at the local college. Went to Virginia Tech. Spent six weeks in Mississippi, but can't remember the name of the town. We spend the next five minutes naming every Mississippi town we can think of. But it is none of them. He gets out of the car to say goodbye. I hand him a card and tell him to e-mail us when he thinks of the name. In a final covert effort for a ride, I ask him if this is the best place for us to stand to get a ride. “No,” he explains, “most people are going to the club just up on the left. You should go past that.” But his directions quickly lead to, “Get in. I will give you a ride to that spot.”

As we continue to guess Mississippi towns, he keeps driving up the hill. Finally he insists on driving us all the way to Ku Chawe Trout Farm, our accommodation for the evening. Zomba, the sky, sun and clouds stretch out below us as we wind up. With every 20 kph turn, we grow more thankful not to have to carry our packs up this far. He takes us up Down Road and saves us from having to climb Up Road.

The trout farm is quiet. Just inside the gate, five men are digging a trench for a water line. Its pools and cabins are all empty. We are greeted by name (the benefit of one of our only reservations of the trip) by man with a smile named Christopher. We say goodbye to the professor who has already picked up two passengers for the ride down. He refuses the 500 kwacha bill I try to shove in his hand. We look at two options for the 2,000 kwacha cabin we reserved. The first is spacious with pots, a deep freezer, and a sitting area. But our only food is some trail mix, a few apples and two bottles of water. The second is half the size but smells like fresh cedar. Annette chooses the smaller one.

We drop our bags and wander out in the drizzle. We walk past the empty trout pools. The only trout in sight is in a stylized head-over-tail turn printed on a piece of paper on the inside of our cabin door. A few faded signs label tall trees around the picnic area. Cinnamon and cedar it looks to be. The picnic area yields to a campsite occupied by a tent and a 4Runner, two Jerry cans of fuel on its roof, its contents lavishly spread across a picnic table under a gazebo at its rear. We ask the tent's inhabitants for a corkscrew, learn they are from New York, and thank them anyway. The trail passes a vacant, labeled guardhouse, and follows a stream before petering out. As it peters, the rain picks up. We turn around. We walk back past the entrance and take a left toward Williams Falls.

As we climb, the view opens to reveal a ridge line half-enveloped in mist. The forest smells sweet. Wet pine. And a smell halfway between honeysuckle and rosemary. It evades description. It comes from a trumpet-shaped white flower. It all looks like the world does through the super vivid setting on our camera. Ten thousand shades of radiant green. A red-leafed plant that looks almost fuchsia. And brilliant pink and purple bougainvillea. It all reminds me of Romancing the Stone, which has filed itself most likely incorrectly as my parents' favorite movie from my childhood.

A man walks by with a log on his head, five meters long, 15 inches in diameter. He is barefoot. So is the man walking his bike down the hill. His bike stacked six feet high with logs. Children walk by with bags of petite peaches, passion fruit, berries and rock crystals for sale. They call this the potato path. The potatoes are grown on the northern side of the plateau. They follow the path to the market in Zomba, along with wood, fruit, and people. The potatoes are mostly yellow egg-sized things. A path to the left leads us to Cascade Falls—fifty meters of water three inches deep, cascading in ripples over smooth black granite.

It's dark by the time we make it back to the Trout Farm. Annette brings out the dessert wine, the one purchase from our wine tasting excursion in Stellenbosch, South Africa. I cut through the cork with my knife and pop it into the bottle. Our confiscated corkscrew a la Swiss Army knife is probably languishing somewhere in Senegalese airport security. Surely it is not having as much fun as we are. We sip wine from the bottle while I skunk Annette at successive hands of cribbage before we crawl into a twin bed together.

On the Road Again: The Long Ride to Malawi

The "before" picture. (We forgot to take the "after" picture).

Zimbabwe from the bus window.

Mozambique Malawi border.

Our one night in Johannesburg didn't allow for much sleep. But it did allow time for laundry, re-packing, sending off a proposal for consulting work back in New Orleans, watching the Saints narrowly beat the Titans, preparing food for our 30-hour bus ride, some pints and good Indian food to celebrate a new friend of a friend's 39^th birthday.

We rush out of the house at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday morning for a Johannesburg Park Station, The Ingwe Bus ticket says it leaves at 9:30 a.m., but the gate agent told us to be there at 7. When we arrive, the LED sign reads, “Blantyre 10:00.” We play a few hands of gin rummy and walk a bit while we can.

The bus finally pulls off half full at 11 a.m., only to be stopped by the gate agent running after it. “There is another passenger who just arrived,” he says panting. “We have already made people wait for four hours. This is unprofessional. The people wait for the bus. The bus doesn't wait for the people. We are not waiting,” the older driver shouts back. And the bus pulls into the streets of Johannesburg. We would quickly learn that the Ingwe staff on our bus are excellent advocates for their passengers.

We find the seats surprisingly comfortable. A pretty conductor (stewardess) in jeans, sandals and a checkered shirt accompanies us. She speaks through a mic with too much reverb. She welcomes us with an echo, explaining the on-board bathroom is only for urinating. (She would later come back and tell Annette not to put toilet tissue in the toilet either). She has blond braided extensions and pink toenails. She distributes an unseeded kaiser roll to each of us, followed by a packet of ketchup and one of peri peri sauce. Then, on her second pass, a box from Nando's with soggy South African fries and a delicious quarter roasted chicken. We are thankful of this surprise, as we never made it Nando's – South Africa's largest competitor with KFC – but heard, rightly, the food was good. This is followed by handful of toilet paper to be used as a napkin. Then a styrofoam cup. On the next pass, a choice of Coke, Fanta or Sprite. We choose Sprite and fill the tiny styrofoam cup twice before she sits down.

After some back and forth with the two drivers about how to work the stereo, the conductor plays some mellow Malawian reggae music. A beeping periodically and persistently interjects. It is an automatic and annoying alarm that goes off anytime the speed of the bus breaks 90 km per hour. It can't be shut off. So, we work on welcoming it as a sign we are getting to our destination quickly. Annette and I doze. We wake to the sound of Christian American rap, “gangsta gospel,” as Annette calls it.

We drive past countless signs for game reserves, conference centers and retreats as we work our way north across savannah and through Limpopo. For a moment, we enter a verdant forest, the first I have seen in South Africa. Rocky crags poke out from the top. The road becomes windy and steep. Soon it descends and we start to see the baobab trees. They look like gray sprouting sweet potatoes with their pock-marked bark and wide trunks. They grow larger as we drive north. The conductor puts on  Stallone vs. Schwarzenegger DVD and tunes it to Collateral Damage. I remember this movie was about terrorism. It's release was delayed by September 11^th. As the sun sets and Arnold leaves Colombia triumphantly, we stop for fuel in Musina. Annette and I each get a delicious Hazelnut Magnum ice cream, a reward for completing one fifth of our bus ride. It is a sort of parting gift to ourselves as we leave the comforts of South Africa.

Twenty minutes later, we reach the Zimbabwe border. We wait in a long, quick, stinky and pushy line for a South African exit stamp on our passport. The stamp comes easily. As we return to the bus, we walk past a dozen pickup trucks, beds piled high with goods and people. One passenger who is late to return to the bus calls the older driver stupid. The driver barks back, grabs his cooler and blanket and leaves the bus blocking the only lane crossing the border. Half the passengers follow, among termite swarms, to coax him back on. Everybody agrees the young man was out of line. “The driver is old enough to be his father. We are taught to respect our elders,” they tell me with a mix of amusement and embarrassment.

The bus driver reboards the bus to sit in traffic for another thirty minutes while we cross a narrow bridge over a river among huge tractor trailers. We wait on the bus for another hour or so as the termites swarm through the open bus door. Finally, the conductor returns and calls us to follow her “fast, fast.” We quickly find ourselves in a line outside the entrance to Zimbabwean immigration. We are hurried into a dusty building with peeling paint while hundreds who were there before us wait in the heat and termites outside. When Annette and I reach window #2, a uniformed gentleman writes “$30 fee” and a bunch of letters on our immigration form. He sends us to pay at window #1. There we wait behind a Korean couple and their son, in his early twenties. And two young white women from the Peace Corps in South Africa. They are headed to Victoria Falls for their holiday. The one from California leans on two crutches as she recovers from a sprained ankle from an ultimate frisbee accident last week. The other is from New Jersey and has braided extensions in her hair.

After a seemingly endless twenty minutes in which all of our fellow passengers disappear with stamped passports, the woman behind the glass takes our passports and three crisp twenty dollar bills. She handwrites a receipt on carbon paper, stamps it firmly six times, and walks our passports to window #3. There we wait behind our Peace Corps friends again while a woman in a beautiful dress with a nametag over the Zimbabwean flag on her chest handwrites our visa stickers. She presses them firmly on our passports, stamps firmly and initials in the stamps. Then she sends us back to our bus and into Zimbabwe.

It is close to 10 p.m. when Annette and I celebrate a successful border crossing with a smoked chicken sandwich and a duty-free 20-rand nip of Glenfiddich. As we pull off, the conductor makes an echoey announcement to applause in a language I don't understand. Then in English, she says the driver has forgiven the passenger. She asks us to thank the driver for this display of character. We clap. She then says a prayer for safe travels in the language I don't understand. The lights of the bus go off and we fight the termites for a while before dozing off to sleep. We wake periodically in the darkness to the speeding beep muffled by the sounds of rain. It seems like it rains all night and well into the morning. The bus stops periodically for police road blocks. I dream of a flat tire being fixed, but it was just a dream.

The bus wakes up around us to a gray rainy dawn. By 8 a.m., the rain clears to reveal a landscape of granite domes damp with rain. They look mystical in the clearing mist. Looks like good climbing. I flip through the Malawi guidebook to sort our our itinerary for the coming weeks. Blantyre, Zomba, hiking, maybe a canoe ride safari among crocs and hippos, beach relaxation in Cape Maclear, maybe Christmas in the mountains in Livingstonia, then a long bus ride to Dar Es Salaam. Lots of good outdoors. Hopefully not too much rain.

The Mozambique border is far smaller and quieter than the entrance to Zimbabwe. Our passports are stamped on the Zimbabwe side in a matter of minutes. When we were boarding the bus back in Johannesburg, there was some discussion among the Ingwe staff about whether we would have difficulties at Mozambican immigration. We are the only passengers who aren't from South Africa or Malawi. We are happy to find the small house that is the immigration office, empty. We fill out our immigration form and report to the desk only to be sent back to complete a visa application. We do so quickly, fumbling our way through the Portuguese form with some assistance. We don't want the bus to leave us or hold all of the passengers up more than necessary. We report back to the desk with $60, two complete forms, two passports. “Wait one hour,” we are told, gruffly. The agent is uninterested in the fact that we have a bus waiting for us.

I find a seat on the step outside where I can keep an eye on the agent. I am happy to see he goes right to work at the one old computer behind the desk, our passports and visa applications in hand, presumably processing our visa applications. Within 45 minutes, we have a stamped visa. We head to the bus, now parked just across the border gate. A young man in military dress thumbs the pages of our passport, tracing our travels with his fingers. He takes enough time to make the conductor appear in her checkered shirt. At her approach, he hands us our passports an sends us through the border gate to our bus.

It is 10 a.m. We are 130 km from Tete, another 540 to Blantyre. One more border to go. And Malawi doesn't require a visa. So this should be the home stretch. Hopefully we will be in Blantyre before dusk.

We are welcomed to Tete a few minutes before noon by an official with a gun. The conductor quickly shepherds him off the bus and into a guard house with a folder of documents. Five blocks later, a female official with a gun stops the bus and jumps on board to check passports. Our crew argues with her that they just checked the passports. First, it is our conductor. Then the driver who isn't driving. Finally, the older driver walks to the back of the bus to confront her. He is close to six and a half feet tall, probably 280 pounds. Shortly, the female official points her slightly rusty gun toward the floor so as not to clip any passengers with body parts protruding into the aisle, and exits.

Outside the window, children bathe in a small fountain. We cross the Zambezi River as children jump in from a brick wall town meters above the far shore. The baobab trees grow bigger and more frequent. Coast and a hard hat hang on one in the middle of lunch break at a construction site. Further up river, a boy washes clothes in muddy water. Termite mounds sprout leaves, camouflaging themselves as baobab Two rows of raised wooden houses, a dozen each, rest roofless. No workers or tools are in sight. Only a few personal clothing items in two.

A man boards the bus with a big blue plastic bag. Inside it are black bags, double-wrapped. They look to contain loaves of bread. I watch him curiously as he tears through the bags like they are wrapping paper on Christmas morning. The loaves of bread are stacks of 500 Malawi kwacha bills. (About $2 each today, maybe more tomorrow). He starts at the back of the bus, trading kwacha for rand, 28 to 1. I give him my last sixty rand for four wrinkled bills.

I see patches of sunshine ahead. And mountains. That must be Malawi. Villages of mud and thatched roof huts reach to the roadside with neatly stacked bags of charcoal for sale. The bright pink and yellow bags look like the huge dried dog food bags I used to scoop out of to feed the dog as a child. But these are netted at the top, so it looks like a hockey helmet across a black charcoal face. Police roadblocks have yielded to potholes and herds of goat and cattle to slow us down now.

The road east reveals a beautiful sunny day among mountains of green and granite. We stop for another passport stamp at 1:54 p.m. as we exit Mozambique. It comes easily. They demand our yellow card before allowing us across the border. Nobody ever actually opens the card to check we have received the correct shots An official card with our name on it seems to be enough.

Annette picks up two rubber-banded styrofoam containers for each of us. One has chicken and greens. The other, a southern African version of fufu. Its the first time I have had greens since Mississippi. They are some of the best I have ever had.

We are greeted on the Malawi side by a cluster of young men all selling the same phone cards. This has become a familiar sight, although we haven't seen it since West Africa. I find it welcoming. We push through for an easy passport stamp, rinse our fingers and board the bus again. But it's empty. The conductor explains that there is an Intercape bus ahead of us. We will have to wait until after them to go through customs.

So, I start reading Old School by Tobias Wolfe. I found it, spine still crisp, in a used bookstore for $2.50 on Long Street in Cape Town. It is good enough writing to keep me reading. I read for a while. Go to the ATM. Buy a Malawian phone card. Text Elaine, our host in Blantyre, that we will be late. Snap photos of the sky over mountains, half storm, half sun. I watch two goats trot across the border without waiting in line or having passports checked. They munch on the roadside grass. I snap a photo of the mountain, nearby, its granite face squinting warmly at me in the sun. A boy tells me the name of the mountain. I repeat it but it leaves my head even before my lips. Another boy is wearing wool gloves. “Why are you wearing gloves,” I ask. But his only answer is to peel one glove back to show his palm underneath.

By 5:32 p.m., the Intercape bus moves. People's belongings are stacked from the sidewalk outside customs to the trailer. Our bus pulls up. Its flanks open. We unload our belongings into a hall, laving the belly of the bus empty so you can see through to the other side. Customs declarations cards are provided. Then Annette puts her bag on the counter, answers a few questions, and brings it back to the curb. My turn next. The woman's only questions are about my wife and why we don't have the same last name. She explains something about benefits in Malawi. I nod and smile without understanding, and bring my bag to the curb.

At 7:04 p.m., the bus departs again, its contents replaced. The light is fading. I read the final pages of Old School to the light from our cell phone. Soon, the conductor announces something about a police stop with too much reverb for me to understand. We all leave the bus. Its flanks are opened again. One policeman flirts with Annette while another points at various pieces of luggage and asks questions. After the police officer realizes I am her husband, he beams, “I want to marry a white woman some day!” Annette argues he should marry who he loves. I tune out and watch the police officer looking at the bags. He points to an electronics box and asks a question. After he explores the second side of the bus, the conductor says something critical to him about everything having just been checked at the border. They go back and forth. We shut the luggage compartments, and reboard the bus. The whole thing seems ridiculous.

Close to 9 p.m., we pull into the back of a deserted gas station in Blantyre. We reattach the tops of our backpacks to the bottoms and argue a cab driver down to 1000 MK ($4) for a cab ride to Elaine's, next to St. Andrew's International High School. It is probably still too much to pay, but it's been a long day. The passenger seats in the cab are still wet from the early evening rain. We make it to Elaine's shortly after 9 p.m., where cold beer, food and good conversation await us. It has been 38 hours since we left Lee and Tabitha's house back in Johannesburg. Close to ten of those hours were spent at border crossings. The difference, on the bus. We will give ourselves a couple of days to shake the ride off. It only took a few hours to learn the language I didn't know is chichewa and the fufu-like food is made with corn. It is nsima (and delicious)! Our next long ride will be to Dar Es Salaam around Christmas time to meet my sister, Mara.

Leaps and Bounds

We woke up to an alarm Thursday morning to catch a taxi downtown to a train to Pinelands. Mona, the principal of the Leap School in Cape Town, called late Wednesday night as I was hatching up plans to climb Table Mountain early the next morning with one of the last sunny days the weathermen promised to us while in Cape Town. Disappointed, I took down the details and agreed that Annette and I would meet her at the school by 9 a.m.. I had hoped to be climbing up a rocky gorge on the slopes of Table Mountain by then. But this is the last week of school and Thursday is the day for their social responsibility project, which sounded interesting. Mona told us we could take a train but recommended we take a taxi ride that is too expensive for our travel budget. So, we woke up early to catch the train.

We had directions from Old Mutual Station in Pinelands. I just told the woman at the ticket counter Pinelands. One stop from Pinelands, I discovered we needed the other train to go to Old Mutual. We were on the wrong train. So, we got off and appreciated the opportunity to walk leisurely in the cool morning. We had a half hour to spare. The walk took that plus another twenty minutes. Time and the weather quickly changed it from leisurely to brisk, but no less enjoyable. When we finally entered the school we found the buses pulling up and Mona briefing Patricia, a life science teacher, on our visit.

We were paired up with two science and math teachers to join their classes as they visited a home for the elderly. The Leap School is a high school. It is similar to a charter school in the United States. It is designed for black children living in the nearby townships whose families cannot afford to pay for a good basic education. It is funded in part through state funding and then supplemented significantly through private fundraising. (The total budget averages about $5,000 per student). Everything is taught in English (except, I imagine, for Xhosa). Xhosa is the native language for most students. English is usually a second, third, or fourth language. I quickly befriend a young man from the Congo, who taught himself English and finished a masters degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Cape Town. Today is the second to last day of his first year of teaching.

The five teachers on our trip are all very laid back. Three of them are white; all of them under 40. The social responsibility program is the responsibility of the students. They plan their activities and organize themselves. The teachers just follow. Nobody seems to count the number of children on the bus. When we stop, the students pour off the bus. We follow with the teachers carrying a tupperware of muffins. One has a small electronic massage device. I am told that the students plan to offer the elders foot rubs and massages. And they have a small program planned with a few songs.

We gather in an auditorium. The students set chairs in a circle of close to eighty. Everybody sits. The majority are students. And the elders aren't as old as I expect. They look to be in their sixties or seventies. I suppose that is old in a country where the average life span is much less, thanks largely to the AIDS epidemic.

Once everybody is seated, one female student comes to the middle of the circle and speaks in Xhosa. She speaks very quietly, accented by an occasional click that seems to come from the sky. Only after a few of them do I realize that the clicks are coming from the student speaking. It flows effortlessly between and among her words. It is part of her words, after all.

The students all rise to sing. Their voices fill the auditorium. A small group of boys cluster in the back toward the middle. They provide the vocal bass line a capella. It sounds like a church song, but I don't know the words. And the voices that fill the rafters come from something far deeper than a church. It is like each voice lets out a thousand doves that flutter to fill the rafters of this dusty auditorium. It is beautiful. It is spiritual. It is moving.

The elders clap. One by one, people stand up to speak to the group. One elder. One student. A second elder. Another elder. A second student. One more student. I don't understand what they say. I ask the Congolese teacher near me, but he doesn't understand. None of the teachers speak the language. Today, they are chaperones more than teachers. Not like chaperones at a school dance, because they aren't enforcing any rules. And they aren't as active as coaches. They are more like security hanging in the background, which speaks to who's boss – the students. That's very much the philosophy of the school. Empower students. Teach them science and math, character and values, through practice and experience, not rote repetition or discipline from on high.

Soon an elder speaks passionately about something. Two students cry. One elder joins the tears. A student sits on the other side of Annette and offers to translate for us. They are speaking of their own grandparents and grandchildren, the struggles and the joys. Some are estranged. One young woman lives with two grandmothers. She loves one and hates the other, she says in Xhosa, to a room full of laughter. Several students bring around trays of juice and sandwiches. They serve the elders first, then teachers, then each other. After nearly two hours, nearly every student and elder has spoken, each from his or her heart vowing to change their own relationship with their grandparents or grandchildren because of today.

It doesn't matter much that we don't understand Xhosa. Clearly, the students are humble, reflective and eloquent. And deeply respectful of their elders. They are an impressive bunch. I learn on the bus ride home that they are the best of the best. They are recruited by Leap tutors and teachers who work in schools across the community. I am told there are one thousand applicants for fifty slots each year. There are two Leap schools in the same building. The first serves the Langa township. The second accepts students from several townships across Cape Town. The school has since expanded to Johannesburg and Limpopo. There are now maybe five or six of them across South Africa. The education is tied to community development efforts that include tutors and a significant portion of the $100 or so in school fees paid by parents going back to the community in one form or another. Private dollars that are raised, I am told, follow the students, even for the one or two students a year who leave the school.

By the time we return to the school I am anxious to track down Mona to talk about job openings. To the degree that the students are a product of the school, it seems like a place where I would enjoy working. Mona explains they have done their hiring for January already. I ask to meet the founder, “just pop our heads in and say hi.” She calls two offices to track him down and walks us to a small building across a courtyard and up the stairs. His name is John. To my surprise, he is a middle-age white man. I heap praise on him about the school and explain who we are.

“I came to this after trying to be an education reformer in the early nineties. I realized I was part of the problem. We are not just about education. We are about social transformation. I have to deal with my role as an oppressor. I have to deal with my whiteness every day to be here. And we ask our teachers and staff to do that too.”

We are glad to hear somebody speaking the same language for our first time in South Africa, much less a white South African. It reminds me of Al Alcazar's informal lessons on liberation theology when I would visit him in the offices of the Loyola University Community Action Program (LUCAP) back in New Orleans. And the poster I used to have. It had a white hand and a black hand, fingers interlocking behind the words, “If you have come to liberate me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us struggle together.” It is refreshing to hear somebody speaking of struggling together in post-Mandela South Africa.

John introduces us to two students to tour us around the school as students prepare for their awards ceremony. The students select and present the awards themselves, John explains. There are no adults on the program. This is a concept I know well in New Orleans. And it seems to be executed brilliantly here, based on my six hours at Leap so far. In the cafeteria, a choir fills the school with doves of song. In a nearby classroom, a group of young men practice a step routine, slapping big rubber boots in unison. No teacher is in sight. The two young women take us to a meeting of the Open Society club. They discuss social issues in South Africa. But at this meeting, our young tour guide (who happens to be the president) makes three clear and concise demands about what the club needs next semester. These include the principal meeting with them once a week and “their own space.” The student teacher takes notes and tells them he will report back to them.

Then they bring us to meet Bonesile. They call him Bones for short. This is the man we have heard about. I e-mailed with him a few times over the last two weeks. He has spent the last six months in San Francisco on an educational leadership fellowship. He just got home yesterday. We find him in the second floor reception area at the top of the stairs. He is a thick young black man with big dreadlocks. He wears jeans and a collared shirt under a velvet black sport coat. He is in his early thirties, and youthful. We enter his office for a chat amidst a steady stream of young male students and teachers coming by to greet him with a handshake, a fist pound, a snap and some words in Xhosa.

Bones is quiet and thoughtful. He has a laptop open on his desk. Occasionally his phone rings, but he doesn't answer. He has a blue metal water bottle in front of him with the letters KIPP in white climbing toward the mouth. It looks brand new. A souvenir from his time visiting the KIPP charter schools in the states, I presume. He gently and precisely grabs the thin metaphorical string to our floating balloon of impressions of the Leap school and ties it to the desk.

“I'm struggling,” he says. “I know I have only been back for a few days. It is hard to be back. It feels we say all the right things but that we are just as oppressive as schools like KIPP. I don't know what to do with myself. Everybody wants me to step right back into being principal. But it is the last week of school. I don't know what has been going on. A lot of teachers have left. And I am not sure I still fit here.”

These last six months for him have been one of those rare times in a job like his when he has the chance to be the academic, not just the actor. We connect over the culture-shock of South Africa and how it compares to the states. We talk about race and social justice in South Africa and the U.S. We spend a half hour in his space. But his space stays with us for much longer.

By 4:41 p.m., I step onto the Plateville Gorge trail up Table Mountain. The guidebook says it takes two and a half hours. And that is about how much day light I have. Annette and I agree to meet at the restaurant at the cable car station at the top. From there, we will ride back down together. I climb quickly amidst blooming flowers and trickling waterfalls. The path is clearly marked. It goes up steadily, maybe 2,000 feet up in total. Soon I can feel my quadriceps burning with each step. As I breathe heavier, I cough up mucus as it loosens in my throat. There is a metallic taste in my mouth. My lungs start to burn with air touching parts that haven't been used in a while.

The views behind me improve with each step. Cape Towns stretches out to the water. Robben Island is the dot on the i in the series of cursive vowels that form the shore line along the bays of the Western Cape. I look to follow the trail up to find it receding behind and among rocky cliffs. The wind and shadows welcome me to the gorge with a steady blow. I greet the wind with a shiver and lean forward slightly with my hands to steady myself. I pass one couple going up at the bottom of the gorge. Everybody else I see is going down, satisfaction, completion and exhaustion mingling on their faces.

By 5:30 p.m., I encounter a couple that tells me the last cable car is leaving soon. They heard the bell ring from on top. The wind is too high, so the cable car is closing. Moments later my cell phone rings. It's Annette. It is hard to hear her through the wind. The cable car is closing, she explains, and I will probably have to hike back down. She will meet me at the bottom. I hike on to discover that for once in my life the top is closer than I thought. And, much like a table, it is flat and broad. A sign points me to the cable way station. It says it is a thirty minute walk away. A few steps in Annette calls again. It is 5:44 p.m.. The last car leaves at six, she says. “Ok. I will call you if I don't make it.” Then the pay phone cuts off.

I hurry to the cable car station, pausing to snap a few photos, mostly to examine and enjoy the view at a later date. I make it there at two minutes to six to find a few staff members and no cable car. The ticket window is closed for the evening. A young woman in a green Table Mountain National Park fleece jacket has a stack of receipts in her hand. They tell me to wait by the gate where the wind whips and howls. A cable car arrives in five minutes. The doors open and I follow the woman with the receipts on board. I confess to her that I am more scared of man made heights than mountains. I am thankful nobody asks me for money or a ticket. The doors close to block the chill of the wind. We wait for ten minutes. Slowly a dozen more staff members meander aboard. The ride down is uneventful. I find Annette at the bottom bundled in a wool hat. She is happy to see me.

A view from the gorge on Table Mountain

Leap students sing for elders

We take a bus that is somewhere between 25 and 35 hours tomorrow. Our ticket is good to Blantyre, Malawi. Presumably, the bus goes through parts of Zimbabwe and Mozambique en route. We leave South Africa wanting to find our way back to Cape Town soon. It has all of the key ingredients we have been looking for in a new place to live: mountains, ocean, beauty, and meaningful social justice work opportunities.

Life Under Table Mountain

“What is palany?” The question elicits a puzzled look from behind the bushy beard of the young Arab man behind the counter at Grand Palace Fast Food. “Palany, pa-lo-nee, polony,” I repeat, altering the pronunciation slightly each time until I get it right. “What is polony?”

The young man looks to the customers next to me for help.

“Is it a kind of meat?”

He nods and adds, “it is ground.”

“Like mince meat? What animal is it from?” I shoot back.

“It's beef, right?” the young black lady next to me in line chimes in. On my other side a light-skinned woman chuckles at my not knowing but seems unable to answer any of my questions.

“Is it good?”

The young man remains noncommittal, but patient. The young woman on my right nods, “Yes, it's good.” She seems glad to know the answer to one of my questions.

“I just ordered one,” the young lady on my left adds.

So I do too. One quarter polony gatsby with salad on it. In New Orleans, it would be a po-boy. Elsewhere, a grinder, hero, a sub. Here it is a gatsby. Eskimos have many words for snow. I have many words for sandwich.

It comes slobbered in hot chili sauce, stuffed with soggy South African french fries, an afterthought of lettuce and tomato added on top. Among the fries are a few pink beet-like slices of meat. This must be the polony – a thicker, beefier version of bologna. I probably should have translated people's inability to describe it into an unwillingness to order it But it only piqued my curiosity. And it cost R6.50, less than a dollar. So, I eat it, enjoy it, wash my hands with a wet nap, and silently promise myself to never order it again.

As we wander through Cape Town, Table Mountain tosses off her veil to celebrate summer in the sun. When we arrived last night, her head was completely shrowded in clouds. Just the tip of her chin periodically peaked out while we walked along the promenade from Sea Point to Green Point under gray skies reflected in gray seas. Seaweed imitated thousands of whiskered sea lion heads playfully ducking in and out of the waves. Joggers, mostly white, ran amidst the statues of a girl in a red and white bathing suit becoming a dragon fly. Annette and I agreed we've only seen more people exercising in our travels on the morning ride to the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Today, the colors of Cape Town reveal themselves under a crisp blue sky. We walk through Company's Gardens. I soon learn that the “Company” is the Dutch East Indies Trading Company, a leader in the slave trade for centuries. As David Gladstone taught me in a Social Policy course, this was the first corporation to be granted the legal status that would become the corporate veil that makes international corporations more powerful than nations.

The gardens are beautiful. A solitary white tear seems to have frozen in its path down the trunk of an enormous rubber tree. A young girl feeds a pigeon out of her hand. Another chases them in the grass with a shriek. Annette snaps photos of both. The rainbow nation is evident here in the park. The young children are varying shades of black, white and light brown, mostly matching their parents.

I find a sunny patch of grass and kick off my sandals I open my notebook to a blank page just past my to-do list. Most of the items on it are baby steps in finding a future for ourselves. As our travel has slowed and our money dwindled, the urgency of finding more of both has increased. The to-do list has seven bullets that go a thousand directions – teaching English in Thailand, selling photos online, conducting interviews for international companies, heading home to make more money to continue traveling.

“Ham! Come here!” It's the loudest I have heard Annette's voice all day. I look around to find her under a huge pine tree, camouflaged by the shade. I go, reluctantly, to see what she wants. “Have you ever seen an albino squirrel?”

“I am not sure,” I respond. But there stretched out, facing down on the trunk of a huge pine is a squirrel with a shiny white coat and pinkish lining around its eyes. Of course, it is here. In South Africa, a race-obsessed society trying to be color blind in the face of historic and recent racial atrocity. Albinism, a curve ball in the idea of classifying anything according to skin color. Of course. An albino squirrel in Cape Town's Company's Gardens – the most racially-mixed environment I have found since setting foot on South African soil – on the grounds created by one of the most racist corporations in history.

Fear and Loathing in South Africa

I have never been mugged or attacked. And I can count on one hand the incidents when I have had property damaged or stolen.

Yet, it didn't take long for me to internalize the fear that seems to dominate the lives of white South Africans. At an intersection, I  found myself rolling up my window as a black man in dirty clothes crossed the street near my car. We went to visit Newtown in Johannesburg the other day, but we didn't stop because Annette wasn't comfortable parking her friend's car on the street in broad daylight. And we shelled out more money than I would have liked for a private tour of the township of Soweto, an idea I was never completely comfortable with.

But the guidebooks, like the white people living in South Africa whom we have met, says nobody should go to Soweto without a guide. And it warns against the various crimes and dangers in Johannesburg, including carjacking. Lee, our host, and my sister, have both been the victims of attempted car jackings or muggings. And my sister was only here for a few weeks. So, the buds are there for fear.

And the seeds have been cultivated for over a century. The Apartheid Museum, Hector Peiterson Museum, and just about any history of South Africa show it. It is a fear of white people being "swamped" by the black majority. Even as Apartheid is history, this fear still seems to permeate the lives of the white majority here in South Africa.

I realized the fallacy of it yesterday as we drove all over Soweto. It was far wealthier and nicer than most of the neighborhoods we saw in West Africa. And it reminded me of New Orleans. I have always had the most fun in the neighborhoods of New Orleans that the guidebooks and tourist offices declare as unsafe and discourage tourists from visiting. Soweto has four million black people living in it. It was a cauldron of the anti-Apartheid protests, violence and riots for more than a decade from 1976 to 1986. And undoubtedly, that legacy still colors people's perceptions of this vibrant community with far less fences than the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

Soweto also has the only street with two Nobel Peace Prize winners who lived on it. Archbishop Desmond Tutu still lives there. Nelson Mandela has since moved away from his home a block away from Tutu's.

I remember a decade ago when I first visited Compton, California. I had the same impression. It was a beautiful neighborhood with row houses each with its own yard. Hardly the scary place depicted in the movies or the news.

Our guide, Elvis, started talking on the way back from our tour about the problems with the Nigerians and Zimbabweans. He said the Nigerian gangs are very sophisticated. He quoted a Nigerian leader as saying all of the bad Nigerians moved away from Nigeria. So now Nigeria is filled only with the good ones. This isn't what the guidebook or my imagination says when I think of Lagos. And that was when it all made sense. The Nigerian leader blames a bad reputation on the people who have left. A black South African blames violence and crime on foreigners. And the whites blame it on the blacks. And none of it is the whole story. It is amazing how much crime and safety is a matter of perception. I would far rather build a world where we know my neighbors and we look out for each other than ensuring safety with walls, barbed wire and electrical fences.