Glory Ho

Recently, when on the topic of buffets (I have no idea) with a couple friends, we learned that a friend of theirs had recently seen Mike Shanahan at Souper Salad. This news was disturbing. I’ll even call it disappointing.

Why is it that I cared? Why is it that I have such disdain for the all-American “buffet”? Well, let’s see. Germs and obesity are at the top of the list. I could go on. But I happened to have written a blog about buffets awhile back. And I think there’s a little connection. . .

When I was young,  a day at Southpark Mall with my Mom meant Foxmoor, Benetton and if we were feeling luxurious–a little Mark Henri. A paper-wrapped pixie from Fannie May was sugarcoated elegance and Orange Julius seemed to be the early version of a Starbucks Frappucino. Lunch was another important decision. While Chinese made me feel international and Riverside Cafe seemed intellectual beyond my years, when I was no more than ten, when I still had hair down to my butt, a trip to Bishops, the buffet, the one where blue-haired ladies with big pocketbooks bragged about the BookIt accomplishments of their grandchildren, was like attending a Broadway Show. And I guess I’ve just figured out why.

It was always dark–the clang of chatter and silverware mysteriously emerging from its shadowed maze of swiftly moving chefs and stainless steel surfaces. The neatly wrapped marshmallow salads and compact bowls of cole-slaw, each screaming “pick me!”, rested in rows before my empty tray. And the chocolate-shaving-topped-cream-pie, saran-wrapped to perfection without a smudge or smear in sight, seemed like a special delivery. At Bishops, I could see everything, inspecting for secretly inserted onions or nuts, before making a commitment. From its own pure white china plate, my gravy didn’t know how to get near my bread and my corn could never creep into my tapioca pudding.  While some of these preference speak to the early stages of my neuroticism, Bishops buffet was plainly and simply about endless variety and protection of the commitment-phobic. And especially at ten, when jello flavor was a high priority,  Bishops Buffet empowered me.

During our time in Bulgaria, right after we were asked about our favorite Bulgarian food, the subject of American food would arise. After we denied that McDonald’s hamburgers were our national dish, they wanted to know, if not fast food, what DID we eat? Well, um, usually Indian, Mexican, Thai, Japanese or Italian, which  left us with no answer at all. When we considered holiday meals, mashed potatoes came quickly to mind, but what else? Barbeque ribs seemed American, but very regional. What about hot dogs? Macaroni and cheese? We eventually decided that the beauty of America is the variety–that because of our many immigrant ingredients, you could find endless ethnic culinary possibilities on any major metropolitan avenue.

As we travel, we notice how little tolerance we have for the same song, the same shirt or the same sandwich. It’s no wonder because America is the ultimate buffet. Our nation, like so many others, still embodies centuries-old traditions. We just have so darn many of them. And if our immigrants still cook, bake and celebrate with their own native traditions from Ireland, Germany, Mexico or Italy, all the better.

Bishops is long gone from Southpark Mall, but I guess we need not worry, ‘cuz Souper Salad is all the rage now. Even for Denver’s millionaires.

I am depleted. I don’t know how to address the next room or meal or shower or person or bus or price. I am tired. Of my hairy legs and bug bites and greasy hair. Of dust. Of crazy drivers. Of the children at the window. Of rearranging my backpack. Of conserving toothpaste and treating water and feeling the plastic malaria pill on my tongue. Of all these bug bites—it doesn’t matter what I wear or what I spray or how secure my mosquito net is, my body is a buffet. I am tired of the exhaustive communication. Nobody understands what I want for breakfast. Nobody brings the right thing. I just want to sit down to pee. To wear clean clothes. To have electricity every hour of the day.

When you see a brightly-clad woman with a baby on her back and a bush of plantains on her head walking down the road and it doesn’t fascinate you anymore, you know you’re done.

But our ambition is having a hard time letting go.

I mean, if you’re given your favorite kind of pie (Grandma’s cherry, in my case) and told you can’t have it again for another three years, should you take piece after piece until it makes you sick? Just because you won’t get to have it for a whole ‘nother year?

No. And so you see, it’s time to go home. No matter when we get to have cherry pie again—in two years or twenty—we have had enough.

There they were. A barn full of Ugandan twelve year olds in thin white shirts and bright purple bottoms, staring at me, the teacher, the white, the female extra terrestrial at the blackboard. Sunlight slipped through the rafters playing hopscotch on sixty five furry heads.

We had come to Lake Nkuruba spontaneously at the suggestion of a fellow mzungu at the Internet café in Fort Portal. I don’t even know his name. It’s amazing how comfortable I’d become in a thatch-roof hut that smelled like hay. With the pit latrine at the bottom of the hill and a bucket shower with four walls of bamboo. But I guess the bright blue, wooden barn windows made me feel a little like Gretel. There was something blurry and soft about the air an hour before daybreak when I always had to pee. Marijuana grew just down the hill at the foot of the trail, a dark and dense forest where trees were covered in a medussa-like bramble and vines created a monkey wonderland. There were ants as big as your fingernail. Birds most often seen in a book. When black and white colobus monkeys are using your house as a jungle gym, how can you complain?

Continue reading ‘Hopscotch on Sixty Five Furry Heads’

We started this trip with two cameras. We now have none.

Yes, the whole stolen thing really sucked. So did the day-long police report experience. There was disbelief, devastation and denial. But there was, eventually, a solemn belief in the idea that this didn’t mean the world was bad, just that two people were bad. We had to move on. To do that, we engaged in a little exercise.

Why do we take travel photos anyway?

Answer One: To show others what adventurous, well-traveled individuals we are. To decorate our home with our excellent photography (so we can show others what adventurous, well-traveled individuals we are.) To color our blogs, (so we can show others what adventurous, well-traveled individuals we are.)

But this preoccupation with proof for others is no good. Who are you living for? You or your dinner party guests?

Answer Two: It’s about us! We want to be reminded later in life about all the exotic places we’ve been. Every action-packed moment. Each tri-textured vista.

I understand. But think about it.

Continue reading ‘Naked Eyes’

We’re in a kitchen again. The most basic of African diners. Her name is Miriam. It was eggs and avocados by Grace in Lake Naivasha. Chapatti and beans by the team at the YWCA in Kisumu. Cabbage, potatoes and blue lantern-light at Mamma Joyce’s in Bujagali Falls. Their food leaves us content, regular and calm. We sit facing outward. The man in front of us–I can’t see his hands—I can barely make out his face. He could be massaging someone’s back, making a pie or gutting fish. But I know he is rolling our chapatti—a kind of homemade tortilla-pancake. The whole cow’s milk has become a soft silk bedspread above my tin cup of tea. A breeze I cannot feel threatens the candle, which is stuck to the white plastic patio table with wax. On the other side of the metal cage window, fluorescent strips light the space between sunset and dark in this ghetto enclave of local chores. Women pick tiny rocks from sacks of rice and fry fish in oil. Men carry gas-gallon containers of water on their heads across the plywood-bridged sewer canals. A black cat slides into a wheelbarrow of scraps. Around them is a mishmash of sticks, poles, two-by-fours, sheets of wavy tin, cement blocks and plywood bridges across sewer canals.

Michael says, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of money you spend and the richness of your experience.

The Pacific Hotel was sort of in the ghetto. I mean, it was.

Continue reading ‘Pringles, Ghetto Kitchens and Bittersweet Red Chilis’

The Things We Carry: mosquito cream, malaria pills, sunblock, journal, head lamp, iodine-treated water bottle, Kleenex,
The Food We Eat: beans, bread, eggs, tea, samosas, avocados, cabbage, rice, Pringles,
The Stuff We Hate: being asked for money, overland trucks full of mzungu, horrendous bus rides, developED country prices with developING country service,
The Stuff We Love: bicycle taxis, helpful people, homemade cooking, lush green landscapes, African tea, zebras, giraffes, monkeys, when they manage to undercook the eggs.
What Would Be Nice: sheets on the bed, washing machine, hot water, our cameras back,
Souvenirs Which Intrigue Us: jewelry made of paper, coins from before independence
Souvenirs Which Make us Crazy: Wooden giraffe salad bowls which are also sold at CostPlus in Cherry Creek
Most Dangerous Thing We’ve Done to Date: Both riding on the back of a boda boda (motorbike taxi) across town in a the traffic-intense Kampala traffic.
Current Bodily Inflictions: blue and yellow bruise from rafting, tire-burn from a bike while crossing the street, dozens of flea bites
What We’re Reading: The Economist, Lonely Planet East Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun (historic fiction about Nigeria’s civil war), We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families (journalists tale of the Rwandan genocides)
Cost of a Dorm Bed: $3-7
Worst Bathroom We’ve Seen: hotel staff bar where we watched Chelsea and Manchester United footie game during safari in Masai Mara National Park, Kenya

When we arrived at couchsurfer Mutinda’s home after two hours in a matatu, a taxi ride which ended in a flat tire and a forty five minute walk. . .even after we shuffled along the red dirt road lined with cow-herders, vintage bikes and a valley view of coffee beans and bananas, I experienced a level of panic I wasn’t really used to . It wasn’t any one thing. Not the lack of electricity. Not the outhouse where the newspapers are not for reading. Not the bucket showers. Not the bottles of water we must iodize to drink. Not the milking cows. Not the lunch of maize, beans and rice. I mean at that point, I didn’t even realize that maize, beans and rice would be served at every lunch and dinner (tea and bread for breakfast). I guess it was just the combination of all those things. But I had to lie down. When I recovered and came to the table, I could take Mutinda’s lecture-like conversation for only a few minutes. And then I literally fled.

I didn’t know where to go. So I walked next door.

That’s when I frightened someone more than I ever thought possible. Three year old Junia was Mutinda’s nephew, who wandered between the neighboring farms. He was the little bald son of Ana and Bosco, who I would watch spend entirely too much time between his mother’s skirts in the cooking shack, a place which made me cough upon entrance. After eight years of “friendship” with Bosco, Ana had been purchased by Mutinda’s parents, Jospin and Barnabus. The negotiations were to be determined this Sunday (I would wait outside during this meeting), but the traditional trade included either 200,000 shillings or seven cows.

When this little boy saw me, he screamed with genuine fear and ran for his life. . Then, as if in some horror movie and on director’s cue, he stopped, look back again to confirm what the monster he’d seen was real, screamed twice more and ran into the house.

Mary and Joseph, the neighbors, couldn’t stop laughing and neither could I.

“Watcha,” I said, the traditional tribe greeting.

“Ah,” they replied.

Mary was shelling beans and Joseph was watching. They were pleased to meet me. And so, surrounded by flowers and cows, my panic attack now lost in the rows of coffee beans, I took a seat and accepted some tea for a chat.

We’d been dreading Cairo for a long time. Pyramids or not, it didn’t seem to please many people. Matt and Olivia vowed never to return. Koubi and Carey advised us to see the required wonders and get the hell out. Everyone told us that the chaos, the hassle, the pollution and the traffic was just barely worth our time. In Jerusalem and Jordan, the tourist trail had been inevitable. To find feeling, we’d had to look a little harder. So it went with Cairo.

And suffice to say, I hope I never find myself there again.

I must admit, the chaos was initially intoxicating. Black and white lada taxis, some with the horn of a 1930s jalopy, others mimicking a low train whistle, honked and gunned and weaved through intersections. Turbans and gallebeyas created a city of sheesha-smoking ghosts, who went inside from the alley teahouse five times a day to pray, careful to keep up their forehead rug-burn. Women emerged at night, arm in arm in arm, to shop and stroll. Their luridly colored halters and headscarves, layered atop long-sleeved shirts coordinated well with mango and raspberry ice cream cones from the crazy bakery, where you’d think they were selling American visas instead of dry macaroons.

The gender-separated subway cars were kinda funny–even if the ladies sometimes stared icily at my whorish clothing and bare arms. Flat-bottom family-filled boats fished up and down the River Nile, while the corniche served as a lover’s lane every Saturday afternoon. Food was cheap and good–sometimes twice a day, we savored the “mixed sandwich”, falafel, fuul (mashed beans) salad, eggplant and French fries for about 45 cents. Our $7/night, rooftop hostel, despite its vibrating 1950s washing machine, packs of cats, lazy clerks and 5 x 5 rooms (the only thing funny about this is that you think I’m kidding), was a garden oasis for evening beers and cool breezes. And Michael’s traditional dress and hat were a hit, to be sure.

But Egypt was undoubtedly dark. Overcharged on everything from books to chocolate bars, buying anything was a battle. The art-deco architecture, once nouveau, was furry with dust, yet bistros still asked minimum cover charges for mere fingerprints of faded charm. Garbage and dirt piled wherever no one was living—on rooftops, like weedy, wilted wreaths around the hundreds of satellite dishes, or on the spiral staircased fire escapes, which hid in the vertical tunnel of every building. Policemen wore bright white uniforms and with the truly perilous Cairo traffic, it’s no wonder. They mostly stood around smoking. And Egypt was too clever for a tourist’s good. By creating non-existent jobs to boost employment, poor Egyptians are paid almost nothing to distribute tissue, push buttons and close doors. In turn, those same clerks beg for tips from you. And for reasons which remain unclear, on every restaurant bill was a service charge, which, incidentally, has nothing to do with your server’s tip.

An errand to buy more tissue or fresh water was an obstacle course of brazen sexual harassment and offers for directions which instead led to a papyrus or perfume shop. And our time there, three weeks in total due to some flight and planning debacles, was not what I would call “fun”.

However, as we approach our 150th day of travel, it is quite evident that travel and work have a few things in common. Just as the managers who taught you the most are rarely the ones who would waste an hour playing foozball on break, the most intriguing cultures, those which provide the most lessons are not always the giver of good times.

I would never recommend Cairo, but I will never regret it. More is coming. . .

We’re not the guided tour type. Museums are not our thing. Quite frankly, they are for people who prefer to be led and handheld as they walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood. Which is fine. For everyone else.

But in Jerusalem, there was just too much relevant history to avoid the whole cross-bearing, guilt-smothered enchilada. I mean, there are places here like Nazareth. Gallilee. Bethlehem. Judea. Jericho. We wanted information, explanations, theories, anecdotes and answers.

My first attempt to fling myself off the nearest religious rooftop came after we spent an hour and a half worth of walking and busing to reach the beginning of our tour, when we were actually STAYING in the heart of the Old City, the subject of our tour.

My second came when I realized the size of our tour: Fifty people.

Number three came when the information being offered was nothing more than I’d already read in my nifty Lonely Planet Guide.

But the final blow arrived when we were led into a tourist shop, handed out baskets and assured of the handmade status of each carved cross and turquoise bracelet.

As the tour continued, I foolishly attempted to soothe myself by connecting to the others in this predicament. Surely they were also disappointed in this $42 complete waste of time and money. Surely they wanted to commiserate with me. Surely they would accompany me to the tourist office to complain. Yet it was clear from their very zombie-like stares and video-cam screens that the tour had met their expectations.

The only thing worse than disappointment is finding no one who can relate to your complaint.

And no, there is no dirt-deep lesson about this story except do not take guided tours.

See my in misery here: