Jolly Boys- and my two cents on hostels.

When our bus finally pulled into Livingstone that first night, I was ecstatic. Twelve hours on an African bus is no pleasure cruise.

We piled off, slung our backpacks on, and found a place to sleep for the duration of our stay in Livingstone. I was quite pleased with what we ended up with.

Jolly Boys. It was a hostel/campsite place that offered cheap, decent accommodations and rather expensive (considering what it cost to eat outside of the hostel) but delicious breakfasts. I think I ordered the french toast twice, and I wasn't ever disappointed. I slept in a bed in a co-ed dorm-style room the first night, camped the next two nights. Slept great for all three. 

They did a nice job of keeping the place looking nice. Plus, it had a lot of great spaces where you could just relax.

The Commons Area--
i.e. where I finished The Help (great book).

Spent a lot of time on these stools too. 

I actually really enjoyed staying there. I've never minded staying in hostels. To be completely honest, I kind of like hostels. Obviously, some are better than others--do your research and you'll almost always end up at a semi-decent place.

Here's why hostels are so cool. I like the kind of people who stay in hostels. Obviously, there's always going to be a few nutjobs, but usually, hostels are full of friendly, adventurous people. They also tend to be budget-conscious and practical. And they're never hesitant to give you tips on what to do/what not to do/what to watch out for/where to prioritize. It's easy to exchange stories, make friends. It's nice-- makes traveling a lot more interesting and fun.

Sharing a room with ten to twenty other people is honestly not that bad. For the most part, I've found that people are very considerate. It probably doesn't hurt though that I have no problem falling asleep and staying asleep. Headphones are nice, if you've got them.

Bathrooms are always an interesting factor. Some are pretty nice, others are pretty gross-I just try to get in and get out as fast as possible. Whatever. If you have flip flops and hand sanitizer you'll probably feel better about everything bathroom related.

I've never had anything stolen while in a hostel. I usually lock my luggage shut and then lock my pack to the bedframe, especially if I'm leaving it and there aren't any lockers. I sleep with valuables in my sleeping bag. I don't flaunt anything. You know, the basics. It's fine. If you're staying in a hostel, you're probably not carrying a lot that's super valuable to begin with anyways.

Hostels are simple. Not fussy. But they've got the basics. And that's all you're paying for, which I like. Who cares about the coffeemaker and the blowdryer anyways?

As far as I'm concerned, hostels are great- it's the kind of stuff cheap travel is made of. Even in Livingstone, Africa.

I know, I know.
It's cheesy, I'm cheesy- it's true.

To be quite honest, I wish there were more of them here in the States. 

Victoria Falls.

Livingstone, Zambia- home of Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

We took the free shuttle from our hostel to the national park. We paid for the expensive foreigner ticket. And then we walked into the park.

el grupo in front of part of the falls.
Nick, me, Sam, Sean, and Jeff.

The walk started out pretty tame. See above? Yeah, pretty tame.

But we kept walking. And then life got good.

The Bridge. Or
That Pivotal Moment When You Decide You Wanted to Get Wet Anyways.

My god, those falls were something else.

I don't think I've ever seen anything that powerful in my life.

It was so loud. It was so big. It was so wet. It was exhilarating.

The mist was insane- it just pelted you with little bullets of water.

Part of the falls through the mist.

There were two trails--one that was closer to the falls and one that was a bit further away from the water. I took the closer one.

I got soaked. And I loved it. You can barely see anything--but you get to experience everything. You just keep wiping your face off with your hand--and every once in a while, the mist will clear for two seconds, and you can see the falls. Like, really see the falls. 

There was this one time I stood on a rock behind a wooden fence in front of the falls and screamed. And nobody could hear me. In a way, it was incredibly liberating. There's really no hypocrisy in that kind of alone-ness. You say whatever you want to say. In a way, it was also pretty unnerving. You fall off the ledge--you. are. toast. Good news: nobody can hear what you say. Bad news: nobody can hear what you say.

Somewhere between that and wringing my shirt out in a deserted little grove of trees, I decided that I was going to bungee-jump off of the Victoria Falls bridge the next day.

I had lost the rest of the group, so I went on a little run through one of the trails to find them. I said, "I'm going to go bungee-jumping tomorrow."

Mostly, I said it so that I wouldn't chicken out once tomorrow came. You go back on a statement like that, you feel like an idiot and a scaredy-cat.

Then I got to work on getting Jeff to do it with me. He said, "Maybe."

I thought, "Uh-oh. I might be on my own on this one."

soaked.
out of the water for a bit.  

Part of the ravine.

Sam and I.
Victoria Falls Bridge in the background.

We explored the top part of the falls as well. I know there has got to be a technical term for that. I just can't remember it right now. Dang it.

There were a ton of baboons, just chilling out up there.

When I was a little girl, my dad used to take my brother and me to the zoo. Anyways, ever since that one time I watched some ill-fated baboons pick each other's butts in the John Ball Zoo, I've found them rather eughhh. Just like that. And honestly, real-life African baboons are no exception. I stayed as far away as possible.

Baboons.
Okay, so maybe the baby ones aren't quite as ugly.
But let's get real here, a baby anything is hardly ever that repulsive.

David Livingstone walked right up to the edge of the falls and peered down. It's kind of a cool idea at first--and then you realize that you're not quite ready to die just yet.

There was this picture there (Maybe in the museum? A sign? I can't remember where I saw it) of some random dude who stuck half his body over the falls. First of all, who does that? And secondly, who does that?!? Maybe he did it when the water level was low or something.

I am not an idiot and so I did not stick half of my body over the falls.

Edge of the falls.
Please note my absence in this photo.

Right before the edge of the Falls.
Pretty calm, ay?

It was a pretty epic little jaunt, to say the least. Absolutely unbelievable. We walked around the park some more, I got soaked again, and then we headed out of the gates.

There was this outdoors market right next to the little museum. Jeff and Sean just went to town in this market. They wanted souvenirs and gifts, and plus, they like bartering. 

I tried looking around for all of ten seconds before I gave up and just sat outside on the curb. 

The Market from Afar. Or
The Market as Observed by a Wary American Girl.

Why? I guess first of all, I  hardly ever buy souvenir-y type stuff, especially if I have to pack it around. Plus, I was trying to not spend money. And finally, I hate bartering. I won't do it unless it's something I really really want. And that really doesn't happen too often, all things considered.

If you know you're not going to buy something, browsing merchandise is far more of a hassle than it's worth. Here's the thing, you can't just browse merchandise in a market like that in Africa. People will try desperately to make you buy something. And if you shake your head and keep walking, you will feel...well, I guess it's different for everybody. 

But as a second-week newbie in Africa, I felt somewhat like a heartless child killer with a soul of stone. Not worth it. 

I decided I would rather just sit on the curb. So that's exactly what I did, while my clothes slowly finished drying off in the sun. It wasn't bad, not bad at all.

blogging is hard.

It's almost August. I have four weeks left of my internship.

And I still haven't even gotten through my second weekend in Africa. I've put it off and put it off and put it off because there's this huge conglomeration of things to say, pictures to post, and memories to think about floating around in my head. 

It takes time to write about all that. This is why I have never successfully kept a handwritten journal (okay, or any kind of journal at all) for any length of time. Thankfully, typing is a lot faster than the alternative, or I'd just give up right now. 

The anal, OCD part of me wants to go in chronological order. That's why I haven't breathed a word about Minnesota yet. 

Anyways, I'm going to try posting a little something everyday about something that happened in Africa. Get it done and get it outta here. I will finish Africa before I start on Minneapolis, so help me. But it probably won't all be in order. It's kind of a compromise. 

I guess the bad thing about having adventures is that blogging about them is such a drag. But if you don't have some way to read about them when you're ninety years old and losing your mind, I think that you've got some wasted utility going on--and I'm all about maximization.

Utility. Where did that even come from? Thank you, econ friends.  

literature and mr. david livingstone.

My family has always been big on reading. Even as a little kid, I could spend hours and hours reading in the library--and we would go at least once or twice a week, especially when we lived in downtown Holland. Even then, my mom had to put a limit of 10 books per library trip that I could borrow. Thankfully, my brother could also borrow 10 books, so between the two of us, we usually had between 15-20 books to last us until the next library trip.

Jon and I went through a couple of different phases. He read The Lord of the Rings trilogy when he was probably nine years old, and got me to read it when I was probably somewhere around 11. We went through a Boxcar Children phase, and I think that we both read every single Hardy Boys book our library had. He got into Star Wars--I started reading Jane Austen. The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry Potter, Ragged Dick, The Atonement, The Count of Monte Cristo, King Solomon's Mines, The Last of the Mohicans. All of them make me think of being a kid. 

I wish I could say it was all because we both loved literature. Honestly though, I think that that just came with time and continued exposure. At the very beginning, we both loved reading... mostly because for the majority of my childhood, we didn't have a TV or a computer. When entertainment's limited, you do with what you got. When your options are weed the garden or read a book, the book starts looking pretty darn good. I remember that sometimes, if we were really into a book, we got out of drying the dishes too. 

Needless to say, we were pretty huge nerds at the time. At least now we're both really fast readers. 

Anyways, when I was around 8 or 9, I went through this phase where I just loved biographies. I read a ridiculous number of them. Almost all of the presidents, presidents' wives, inventors, astronauts, pioneers, activists, noble prize winners, missionaries, doctors--I was obsessed. It was a genre of literature that I had never read before. Fresh meat for the ravenous little girl sitting on the library floor in front of the bookshelf.

My family owned a David Livingstone biography at the time, and it didn't take me long to find it. I believe we still have it now. Of course I read it multiple times. It was one of my first exposures to Africa in a context other than the shape of the continent on the globe.

Between that David Livingstone biography and a set of travel books that my Dad owned (black covers, engraved fronts), Africa was a place of mystique, of adventure, of danger. It was a bizarre combination of long-necked women (picture in the travel book) and malaria and slave-drivers (David Livingstone biography). It was a place where Masai warriors drank cow blood (travel book) and a place where Europeans had once never stepped foot (D.L.  bio).

Africa was the location of Victoria Falls. David Livingstone discovered Victoria Falls. I remember reading that chapter in the book, no joke. He went to the edge and looked down, crazy fellow. I remember thinking that I wanted to go there and see what he described as a scene "gazed upon by angels in their flight."

When I realized that Victoria Falls was in Zambia, I really really wanted to go. It would bring my Africa adventure full circle. However, the fact that it was so far away from Kasama and that it would cost a significant sum of money made me decide to leave it up to fate. If we made it, I would be thrilled. If we didn't have the time to travel all the way there, it wasn't meant to be anyways. 

But our container was delayed. So we decided to go to Livingstone, Africa. T'was momentous.

Chilling with Livingstone, like a boss.
second weekend in Africa.

bussing--en estilo africano.

Being stuck in Mbaya at 11:30 at night isn't the most ideal of situations. It was even worse because I hadn't even remotely prepared myself for something like that to happen.

I walked by a pair of backpackers--husband and wife--who were also kicked off the train. We politely made small talk--discussed the misfortune of the entire situation, made various hypotheses of what would happen next.

They took out their handy-dandy guidebook and sat down to make some plans.

I looked back at my luggage. Good Lord, I was supposed to be on a train for the next 48 hours. I'd never even heard of Mbaya until a half hour before. I didn't know if there was a hostel close by. I didn't know if the town was dangerous. I didn't know anything. I didn't have a phone, a guidebook, access to internet, nothing. I knew that we would have to take the bus--but there's not much one can do about that at 11:30 at night. 

I thought, Well, looks like we're sleeping in the station tonight. Guess we can take shifts. 

The backpackers left.

I continued to sit down. It was either sit outside or sit in the train station. We sat outside. Ashley (the peace corp worker) talked to a couple of the Africans close by. 

The backpackers meandered back.

"We got a partial refund from the ticket window," they said.

It was a relief. Partly because we would be getting some money back, partly because it gave us something to do other than just sit. 

As we were getting our refund back, Ashley saw Derrick, the owner of a lodge in that town. She had stayed at his lodge before. He agreed to give us a ride to his hostel, as well as very good rates for rooms that night. It was a sweet sweet three and a half hours of sleep we got that night. 

We got up at 5:00 the next morning to try to catch a bus headed to the Zambian border. We stood by the side of the road and waved our arms anytime a vehicle approached. Around 5:30, a large van stopped. We cramped ourselves in between Africans and bags of corn and miscellaneous other luggage. We made various stops, and Africans got on and off. We were the only white people on the bus.

After the Africans who were sitting next to us finally got off, Sam and I got
Sean to take a picture of us before more people got on. 

We reached the border in two hours. Nakonde.

Nakonde is CRAZY. Nakonde is where you've got to try to hold on to your luggage extra tight because people will try to grab it out of your hand and expect you to pay them for carrying it. Nakonde is where you'll have five different Africans yelling at you to exchange money with them and about three more yanking on your arm trying to get you to buy a SIM card. Nakonde is where "No" doesn't really mean anything unless you yell it. I gave up trying to be polite within the first two minutes of being in Nakonde. Nakonde just reeks of white people getting ripped off.

Being a girl and being white and being so obviously new to Africa are all serious disadvantages when it comes to getting through Nakonde. It was bad on the way back as well, but for some reason, my first time through was so much more bewildering. 

We finally made it through customs and walked through the gap in the fence that divided Tanzania from Zambia.

Ashley was such a huge lifesaver throughout this trip, and here was no exception.She knew what was fair to pay for a bus ticket from Nakonde to Kasama, not to mention the fact that she was so much better at the entire bargaining game. 

She found somebody who knew somebody who was driving to Kasama. She walked with us to the van, made sure that it was legit, and took a quick picture with us before going back to find her own bus. We never talked to or saw her again.

Sean, me, Ashley, and Sam inside the van that would eventually take us to Kasama.

While we waited for our bus's departure time, we went to get some lunch. A random African tagged along with us, and somehow we ended up paying for his lunch. At least the conversation was interesting, I suppose.

A little before ten, we got on the bus. For some reason, they had a Shania Twain tape playing very loudly over the speakers. At first, it was so amusing that I thought it was really great. After they had played it for the seventh time, I was pretty sure that I was never going to willingly listen to Shania Twain ever again. Occasionally, they would switch the music up with a some African gospel tuneage. That got old pretty fast too. Eventually I got to the point where I just tuned it all out.

About four hours into our journey, we turned onto a dirt road.

We stayed on that dirt road for the next four hours. Halfway through, we heard a loud pop and realized that we had blown a tire. Everybody piled out while they changed the tire--occasionally, vehicles would whiz past, blowing up huge clouds of dust. But by that point, we had given up on staying anything resembling clean, so it wasn't even a big deal, no worries.

It was dusk when we took a ferry across a river. A shy girl of fifteen told us that there were crocodiles in that river. The ferry didn't come all the way to shore, and I didn't want to get eaten by a crocodile (that, and I didn't want to get my tennis shoes wet), so Sean gave me a piggy-back ride onto the ferry. 

dry shoes ftw.

on the ferry.
me, sam, and the girl who told us about crocodiles.

We had no idea what we would do once we got to Kasama. It was already dark, and none of us had a cell phone. We figured that we would cross that bridge once we got there, but by some miracle, Tobias (a worker for Zambia's Scholarship Fund), knew a bus driver who told him that he had seen a small van with some white people in it. Tobias told him to catch up to that van. We were those white people.

While we were on the ferry, a man we had never seen before tapped Sean on the shoulder, gave him his cell phone, and said, "It's for you."

It was Tobias on the phone. When Sean told us about it on the other side of the river, we couldn't believe it. What were the chances?

Previously on the van, Sean had the window seat, I sat in the middle, and Sam sat on the other side of me. Sam and I switched places after the river.

She told me it was bad, but I didn't realize that it was actually quite bad until after I had been sitting for nearly an hour with some strange African dude's crotch in my face. Plus, another African had his arm around the headrest, so the only thing you could do was lean forward. Sam said not to lean back or he would slap the back of your head. I didn't lean back.

We finally got to Kasama a couple hours after the ferry. Tobias picked us up from the bus stop. He told us that he hadn't told Jeff and Nick that he had come to pick us up. We would surprise them.

We got to the lodge where we would be staying. We walked up to Jeff and Nick's room, and Tobias yelled out that they had to leave to pick us up from the station. They walked out, and saw us, and surprise, and all that jazz.

We got some food (fried chicken, how did you know?), and it was great.

But more importantly,

we got to shower.

And we went to sleep in an honest to goodness non-moving bed. Glory be.

Train Travel

We boarded the train in Tanzania somewhere around 9:30pm, after which we just sat in our compartment and sweated. I thought, Well, 36 hours of this in a confined space with no showering should be just dandy. 

home sweet home for the next little while.

However, we propped the window open, and once we actually began to move around 11:00pm, we got a breeze going on that made the heat pretty bearable. We went straight to sleep.

The next day we began to experience good ol' train life at its best. 

We used the toilet (such a good experience--especially as the train is jolting from side to side, water is sloshing all over the floor, and you're trying not to touch anything). 

We played cards. 

Just passing the time yo.

We ate lots of rice, served with chicken breasts that once belonged to very skinny chickens. 

We also did lots of looking out the window.

I don't know what I was expecting to see--but I had what I knew to be a very cliche picture of Africa in my head--and I was expecting to see not that. Well, I saw just that.  

Grass huts, barefoot children, women carrying enormous bundles on their head, banana trees, breathtaking sunsets, and tall, tall grass. 

train ride in a nutshell.

Beautiful scenery. We settled in for the night and I honestly thought, "This is not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be."

At one of the train stops, people jumped on the train and barged into compartments, trying to exchange money and sell things. It startled the crap out of me. Apparently, the lock was broken on our door. I went from sleeping to having some stranger open the door to our compartment, close it behind him, and try to barter. Ashley exchanged some money, but yelled at him to be quiet.

The second time it happened, she sat up in bed, pointed a finger, and said very sharply, "You! Out! Now!" 

He got out. 

We started to settle back down as the train began to move away from that particular station. A while later, somebody knocked at our compartment door. We were stopped again. 

"I am very sorry, but this is the last stop."

"What?"

The train worker informed us that the train could take us no further, due to the worker strikes in Zambia. We were at the last stop in Tanzania- Mbaya.

The train was returning to Dar es Salaam that night. 

It was a little after 11:00pm, almost exactly 24 hours after our journey had begun. 

We got off and didn't know where to go. Some of the Africans were refusing to get off the train until they got a refund. Others went inside to find the ticketmaster. 

We walked inside the train station. It was full of people sleeping. Everywhere. On the chairs, on their luggage, on the floor.

We walked back outside, put our luggage on the ground, and sat down. Time to figure out Plan B. 

Getting Outta Dar.

Arafat dropped me off at his house after he picked me up from Safari Inn. He went to pick up Sam from the airport, and dropped her off at his house too. 

It was incredibly nice to have someone to speak English to who was just as hot and sweaty as I was. Sam and I waited together some more--while Arafat's grandmother, an elderly Indian lady, fussed around and made sure that we always had water and fruit punch to drink. 

And then finally, Arafat went to pick up Sean.

Sam, Arafat's grandmother, myself, Sean, and Arafat.
All at his house.

Once we were all reunited, we spent some time going around Dar with Arafat. He took us out to eat at Steers--a hamburger place. Lesson #2 learned in Africa: Never order a hamburger if you can help it. Chicken is almost always a pretty safe bet, although Tanzanian chickens tend to be extraordinarily skinny.

The traffic in Dar is absolutely ridiculous. It takes forever to get anywhere and traffic jams are very much a constant nuisance. Bicycles and motor scooters weave in and out of traffic nonstop. The last person to hit their brakes wins--and thus actually gets somewhere. So sometimes you just grit your teeth as the taxicab driver floors it. 

Our train was supposed to begin boarding at two. But thanks to all of the traffic, we finally arrived at the station as the clock inched closer to three. We were already late for boarding, and all we saw as we walked into the train station was lots of Africans sitting, just waiting. No train. We began to feel slightly panicked.

We went down to the ticket office and asked where we needed to go to board. 

"The train will not be arriving until 9:00."

And that was that. The worker behind the glass had no interest in talking to us any further. 

We found an empty spot against the wall and put our bags down. And we sat. Sean and Sam tried to sleep for a while. I watched the bags. That, and slowly lose feeling in the entire lower half of my body. 

There was a group of kids playing around right in front of us. They were the cutest--chasing each other, wrestling, doing cartwheels, flopping around on the floor, flashing shy smiles. 

Rumors started floating around that the train would not be coming at all because of a worker strike in Zambia. By then, it was dark outside. If the train didn't come, we decided we would spend the night in the train station and decide what to do the next morning. Workers then switched off all the lights so that people could sleep if they wanted to. It was almost pitch dark in the station. We made sure our headlamps were easily accessible.

Around 8:00, we discovered that there was actually a first-class lounge that we could wait in if we so desired. Real chairs. We were thrilled. 

We met a girl named Ashley--she was a peace corp volunteer, stationed in Zambia. She agreed to be the fourth person in our cabin. It was a relief to get that wild card taken care of. 

As the minute hand edged closer and closer to 9:00, everybody began to get a little edgier. Why hadn't the train arrived yet? Then we heard the horn, and everybody breathed easier. 

The train finally pulled away from the station at 11:00pm, eight hours after it was originally scheduled.