Egypt

From time to time, events take on an historic significance. Until a few weeks ago, no Arab ruler in modern times was deposed by the will of his people, neither by election nor by popular uprising. Then, a nameless trader in an obscure Tunisian town committed suicide after the Tunisian police turned over his market cart; the event ignited the masses of Tunisia. Soon Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali--dictator of over 25 years--fled the country amidst scenes of joyous celebration in Tunis and across the country.

Fast forward three weeks, and today Hosni Mubarak--dictator of 30 years--resigned the presidency of Egypt amidst similar scenes of celebration. Over the past eighteen days we have witnessed a surreal roller coaster of a revolution, with crowds fighting police, the police disappearing from the streets, journalists and media roughed up by thugs, the army deployed to restore order, a couple of incredibly tone-deaf speeches from Mubarak, and finally his departure to a self-imposed (??) exile. No Egyptian younger than about 35 remembers a president other than Mubarak! and our thoughts should be with them in the months to come as they craft a new nation.

Only occasionally do we have the privilege to witness history in the making, and today is a day for all to celebrate.

Three points come to mind. First, the United States government was caught flat-footed by these events and struggled to triangulate between siding with the legitimate concerns of a repressed people and standing by a longtime ally in Mubarak. But this was a time to stand on principle--aging kleptocrats across the Arab world will soon die anyway--and to "get on the right side of history" (as so many TV pundits have been saying). For most of the world the United States remains an ideal of freedom, and only in the Arab world is this country seen--and rightfully so given our policies in the region--as an oppressor. While it took awhile to get there, the Obama administration did finally come out emphatically on the side of the Egyptian people and probably had some influence on pushing Mubarak from power.

Second, deposing a despot is an incredible accomplishment. I spent two years living in a repressive dictatorship; Paul Biya is seeking "reelection" this year in Cameroon after 29 years in power. And in those two years we were told over and over again, by both Peace Corps staff and local friends, to keep our mouths shut with regards to local politics. But as luck would have it I was there during the disputed Bush-Gore election, and the curiosity expressed about the election by my students was both interesting and intense. There was no thought that such a thing could happen in Cameroon...indeed it was UNTHINKABLE that the people could do anything to get rid of Biya. His control of the security services, the army, and large sections of the economy was absolute. And while he had been pushed by the West to allow opposition parties and to hold periodic elections after 1990, noone believed that any of the elections had been free or fair. So I have watched what has happened in Tunisia and Egypt with a bit of awe these last few weeks, and I imagine that the ecstatic celebrations we see on TV are far, far more emotional than anything in our political experience here at home. The courage of these early protesters to organize and take on the State deserve our respect and awe, and the emotional cascade that they triggered deserves our admiration.

Third, some pundits are "warning" that this revolution will eventually be "hijacked" by Islamist parties who will impose social repressions, and that therefore these events are to be feared. And maybe they are right. But that is no reason to decry the revolution itself. People everywhere want similar things: economic opportunity, a good education for their children, freedom from fear of their government, and given the chance they will vote for these things; they won't vote for slavery and a new repression. It will be up to the people tomorrow to ensure that their hard-won revolution is not lost. And who could ask for more than that?

Finally, when Becca and I visited Tunisia a couple of years ago we remarked on the omnipresent image of Ben Ali in offices, shops, and on billboards. It was rare to find yourself in a city and NOT in view of a smiling Ben Ali. Those pictures have all come down now, as the Mubarak pictures are coming down today. And while Biya's personality cult is still alive and well, one photo we took in a Kumba hotel last year was interesting, and should perhaps be sobering for Biya. For my part, tonight we celebrate!

Then there were three!

We had an exciting 2010. At the time a trip to the World Cup, a visit to Cameroon, a wedding, a new apartment, a City Council election--all seemed like major life events. Now they are starting to look more like a prologue to the actual life events of 2011, or perhaps a coda to adolescence. In November Becca started to complain of some discomfort, we had our suspicions, and after a visit to the doctor we got confirmation: we've got a baby on the way!!

By the book she's at fourteen weeks on the New Year, the doctor puts the due date at July 1, 2011. We won't know the sex for several more weeks, but so far all the tests and progressions have been exceedingly normal--Becca's nausea even disappeared--on cue--at the end of the 12th week.

Here's the latest ultrasound photo, with some obvious legs, an attempted thumb-suck, and a big head. Stay tuned for updates in the coming months!!

Voting begins

For the first time since 1972, an El Cerrito City Council election is unopposed. Two vacancies are being contested by two candidates--one of the incumbents, Janet Abelson, and Becca. As a result, the campaign season has been a little understated for us, and while we've attended a number of events, printed flyers and knocked on quite a few doors, the pressures of the thing are not what they would have been had we found ourselves in a dogfight.

The city is not without an election, though, as the Council has proposed to close a small structural budget deficit with a half-cent sales tax measure that would temporarily raise the total sales tax in the city to 10%. The measure is, in part, a response to the ongoing statewide budget crisis and the repeated raiding of local funds by legislators to balance the state budget. It is also an attempt to offset reduced property tax revenues following the decline in local property values. While there are no council signs up, the city is already plastered with "Yes on R" and "No on R" signs.

And today we received our ballots! Voting has begun.

(The happy candidate with her ballot.)

(The historic document itself!)

Coming home

Well, our big 2010 trip came to a close with a flurry of activity. Last Tuesday night we got on the plane and took a red eye from Douala to Johannesburg. It was a fitting end to our time in Africa--Tim and Jessy hosted us for one final night on Wednesday as we slept and showered and re-packed for the last time. Thursday afternoon we flew to Dakar, then Washington, and on to San Francisco for a mid-day Friday landing.

After all those flights it would have been nice to get some sleep, but there were two problems facing us. First, Becca is running for El Cerrito's City Council this fall and we needed to file some campaign papers on Friday afternoon; second, we put all of our belongings in a storage shed and, thus, had no home to go to. So we took the BART to Becca's dad's house, picked up our car and a few belongings, raced to El Cerrito (where we missed the campaign filing, but managed to arrange for a valid delivery on Monday at 8 AM), looked at an apartment, liked it, signed a lease and activated the electricity and renter's insurance. THEN walked into our new apartment, collapsed on the floor, and slept and slept.

Friday was busy, but Saturday would turn out to be even busier. We made use of our jet lag to get up at 4:30 and do lots of things: file address changes, read old mail, contemplate how we will fill our new apartment. And, feeling ambitious, Becca found us a moving van and we moved ALL of our stuff out of storage and into the new place. By 8:00 PM, we were again sleeping HARD.

Sunday we unpacked boxes. Monday we went to work, Becca filed one set of campaign papers (the late ones) and picked up another, I met the cable guy to get internet and cable turned on, and Becca went to a local art opening to meet and greet voters (and get some much-needed signatures). Tuesday night was National Night Out (more meet-and-greet, more signatures). And so it goes.

Through all the activity it is difficult to reflect on the summer. Certainly we had a unique experience--it is extremely rare for Americans to have the opportunity to take lengthy vacations abroad. Traveling in Africa, though, really requires a lot of time, and involves an awful lot of downtime. Our routine generally involved completing activities by late afternoon, eating a leisurely dinner of some kind, drinking a beer and playing some cards. During the World Cup we traded watching soccer for playing cards, but the pace was basically the same. We visited five countries, traveled 10,000 kilometers by road, flew 35,000 miles, watched six World Cup matches, visited six national parks, slept in 35 different cities, visited fifteen people I knew from past lives, stayed with two of them, and played dozens of games of gin and rummy and war.

What was most memorable? Certainly the first 72 hours of the World Cup, where we went to the opening concert, saw the US play England, and watched the South Africa-Mexico match in a square in Johannesburg. Our gorilla visit in Rwanda won't fade fast. Our first night in Tanzania, in a border town (and former Rwandan refugee camp) called Benako with no electricity and no running water. Watching the US score on Algeria in the 92nd minute, in an Englishman's hotel, to qualify for the second round. The sounds and smells and noise and excitement and pride and patriotism of the South African World Cup. Walking into GBHS Kumba and finding it unchanged.

What was profound? Staring into the eyes of a mountain gorilla. Walking with Ugandan orphans to visit the local primary school. Watching Desmond Tutu dance with excitement the night before the World Cup. Taking nine hours to travel 200 kilometers on a Cameroonian bus. With the benefit of time I am sure the list will change as some memories fade and others remain.

So this is the final travel post for this blog. It is not the end of the year's adventures, though, and as we progress through a wedding and a political campaign I will, from time to time, post a few photos and thoughts on our progress and experiences. And check out www.rebeccabenassini.com, as most of my internet energies will be directed that way over the next several weeks!

Back in the Tropics

One great thing about being back in the tropics is that we only have one backpack to lug around - because we were able to leave all of our cold weather clothing at Tim & Jessy's (thanks guys!) - and Scott is such a gentleman that I am not allowed to carry it around. Hmm, it may also be because it would not look so good here to have me carrying a backpack half my size while he carries nothing, but whatever the motivation, it means my back is much less sweaty in this heat!

A second great thing is that we can play our advanced version of the "smell" test game. Because one's clothing becomes sweaty and damp within 5 minutes of putting them on and the primary means of fixing this is try to air them out after a long day in the same tee shirt (but "airing" a shirt out in 100% humidity is kind of an oxymoron), we spend some of our evenings trying to figure out which of us is or is not acceptably smelly and which article of clothing is the most offensive. I don't think I am being unfair when I say that Scott's socks usually take top prize.

Limbe
After the wild commercial capital of Douala, we headed to what I hear is the best beachtown in the country, Limbe. We traveled to the town from Douala via two taxi cabs and one minibus. The minibus was similar to those we took in Uganda/Rwanda/Tanzania except in this one, there were some angry Angry people. The minibus proprietors piled people into the bus, telling them that the bus would take them to their destinations - the only trouble was, people in the bus were going to all different destinations. Their game was to take people's fares to their final destination, then take everyone to a major road junction, buy them onward tickets on some other vehicle for less money than was paid to them, dump everyone off the minibus, and make money on the transaction. By the time people compared notes and realized that the bus could not be taking everyone to the disparate destinations, all people could do was vocalize their complaints, but everyone was already piled in and ready to go (or, wait for 20 minutes while the driver prepared himself to drive) so there wasn't much to be done other than suck it up.

The taxis, which was just small (typically very old) cars like nissan sentra hatchbacks, are super efficient. They are always shared unless you request to buy the whole thing out (and why would you do that?) , they travel on major roads and you point in the direction you are going in, the driver slows down, you shout your destination into his window and either he stops or it is not a good fit so he keeps driving. They carry the maximum volume of people possible of course. Typically, that is 3 people in front and 4 people in the backseat. We have not ridden in one with people in the trunk yet, but we have seen them drive by with 7 in the main part of the car and the trunk open with 4 people sitting in the trunk with their feet hanging over the back. People are very friendly on the taxi but I have a hard time understanding their conversations which are usually in English-pidgen.

In Limbe, we visited a wildlife sanctuary which was very interesting; the place is nearly completely populated by gorillas and primates rescued from poachers or from people's homes where they were being held as pets (typically purchased from poachers who killed a baby-gorilla or baby-monkey's mother for bush meat). The exhibit included each animal's story of arrival to the sanctuary.

We met a university student from Barcelona who was volunteering at the place and, after we congratulated her Spanish team on their victory, she noted that actually, the World Cup was won by Barceloneans as most of the team is from that region. We also eavesdropped on some other volunteers, one of whom were observing the behavior of the gorillas. As we were sitting watching them do what they do, the gorilla-observer correctly noted that one big male gorilla was trying to mate with a baby gorilla, she sighed and marked it in her notebook.

We also tried a lot of different food in Limbe. I was finally able to try Scott's famed rice, beans and pepe (hot pepper sauce in palm oil) dish, his favorite in Cameroon or actually anywhere. This is best procured from ladies on the street who set up their wares on street corners. They can be identified by their special pots, they look kind of like crock pots but no plugs and plastic, not glass. Inside these pots can be any variety of items so you must ask what they have cooked that night. The first night we did this in Limbe, we encounted several ladies without beans or rice so you must be persistent! When we finally found our lady, we bought the dish for 200 CAF (central african francs, a common currency used in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Central African Republic) less than $0.50 and it was very good. I must say that the delight with the flavor of the dish (essentially white rice with a tomatoey/oily pinto type of bean along with hot sauce) cannot be disentangled from the fantastic value. Cheap restaurants provide comparably sized dishes (but less flavorful in general!) for 2,000 - 3,000 CAF. There are risks with eating street food with sanitation and what not, but these risks exist in restaurants and at least we can watch the lady cook/plate our food the whole time. We have eaten street food everyday and so far, so good with the not-sick..

Limbe's beach is below - Black sand and volcanic rock.. And pretty strong waves!



The Worst Value Meal Yet
After 2 nights in a scrappy-beach hotel, we decided to splurge on one night in a fancy-ish place. This hotel was was some miles from town with no meal options nearby so we expected some overpriced meals. Unfortunately, the only choice at the restaurant wa a fantastically overpriced buffet - a whopping 9,000 CFA, $18 per person, compared with 200 CFA for a whole meal on the street. We sat in the restaurant with maybe 3 other tables of people waiting for the buffett to get prepared while numerous other diners approached the place, saw the price , laughed and walked out... We stuck it out to avoid traveling at night. The food was not good, the staff were extremely surly (probably because they couldn't believe how little they were getting from that 9,000 CFA per person we forked out), and I left feeling overly full because I stuffed myself on couscous, the only item I liked, to justify the huge expense.

Congratulations Seme Beach Hotel at Mile 11 near Limbe, Cameroon, after nearly 3 months of searching, we are awarding you the Worst Value Meal of our trip!

Cameroon - Arrival

The final stop on our trip is a long-delayed return (for me) to Cameroon. I spent two years here as a Peace Corps Volunteer between 1999 and 2001, teaching high school physics and geology in a government high school in Kumba, in the southwestern part of the country. I had always intended to come back and visit, and finally made it back to Douala after 9 years and 35 days.

Any two-year period generates memories in life, but those two years were more memory-generating than most, and the overall experience has impacted my life in any number of ways. Without those years in Cameroon, I would likely not have been interested in public policy for graduate school, not have met Becca, not have visited South Africa and thus had an interest in the World Cup. The experience informed and changed my opinions on any number of subjects that could fill many, many blog posts (for instance, I think that the US Post Office does an amazing job). And Becca has never seen the place.

So, from the start, I planned for these 13 days to be filled with visits to my old haunts and to actively dredge up memories, to visit my old house, my old school, the spots where I vacationed with and visited other Peace Corps Volunteers (who remain an integral part of those memories and lifelong friends--it was with one of them that we stayed during our visit to Kigali in May), to find former students or colleagues, to see how Cameroon is different and how it's similar.

Our journey here began months ago, when I looked up the visa requirements from the Cameroon embassy in Washington and discovered that a) Cameroon requires tourist visas to be obtained in advance and b) they only issue the things 60 days in advance of a visit. The 60-day threshold was perilously close to our departure date, so we resolved to get the thing in Pretoria.

Two weeks ago, we arrived at the Cameroon High Commission in Pretoria hoping to get visas and to be on our way. We should have known better. The consular official handed us the visa requirements: valid passport (check!), proof of plane reservation (check!), completed application (ok), proof of "sufficient funds" (I had brought a bank statement, check!), letter of approval from your employer (uh, hmm, really?), proof of hotel reservation (really??), and $100 (well, if you insist). We showed him what we had (basically everything but the letter and the hotel reservation) and he sneered at us: "Why didn't you get this in Washington? We only give visas to South Africans." After we explained the 60-day problem he relented. "Ok, come back when you have a complete file."

So, uh, we turned in a "complete" file. And we were duly issued a visa three days later. (Because of the delay, we travelled to the Kruger Park in South Africa rather than visiting Namibia or Botswana, as our passports were held by the Cameroonians).

So we were in!

We arrived at Douala airport at 7:30pm on July 14 after a six-hour flight from Johannesburg and a brief stopover in Libreville, Gabon. Various authors of Africa travel have remarked on the dichotomy of travelling from Johannesburg, whose airport (especially with the World Cup upgrades) is a rival to any in the world in terms of modernity. We left ATMs and cafes and duty-free jewelry stores and, a few hours later met the decay and chaos of Douala's airport. The airport infrastructure is more or less unchanged since 2001, and we walked off the plane onto the tarmac and up a flight of stairs to the jetway--the mechanism to move it up against the plane was broken. Down a long corridor to the health check (all visitors to Cameroon and most of West Africa are required to have a WHO-certified yellow fever vaccination, and to prove it on arrival) where we waived our certificates past a bored immigration official who stamped our passports, and into the grubby arrival hall.

It's hard to describe "grubby" in one of these places, and developing countries tend to be a bit touchy about people taking photos of airports or power stations or banks, so I can't show you what it looks like. Hot and sweaty, full of travellers and porters and security agents, with just a few dim fluorescent bulbs flickering from the high ceiling, with unfinished toilet stalls in the basement, and in desperate need of a good paint job and a sweep, it's the kind of room you can only find in the developing tropics.

I had remembered a more chaotic scene with porters attempting to run off with your bag to a waiting taxi, but on this night we basically collected our bag and walked through customs without incident. One immediate change was useful, however. ATMs. We brought a wad of hundreds to convert into CFA, and immediately discovered that there are no money-changers at the airport. But some loiterers waved at a corner of the dark hall where a visa logo stood, and to my surprise there was an ATM. And it gave us money. And it (apparently) gave us money at a good exchange rate!

So, with my broken French we arranged a taxi and made our way to the Foyer du Marin, our pre-booked accomodation for that first night in Douala.

Kruger Park

I have been falling down on the job and have not done South Africa justice on this blog.. to be clear though, we have been watching so much soccer and driving around the country so much (more than 4,000 miles) that I think I can truthfully plead busi-ness!

We are off to Cameroon tomorrow so I will take this one moment to post about Kruger Park and then will have to come back with a full-on-long-post regarding all of the other wonderful places we have visited in this lovely country!

We went to Kruger Park, South Africa's premiere national game park, during the World Cup semi-finals (we watched the Uruguay-Netherlands and Germany-Spain matches in the Park, to give you an idea of the timeframe). Unlike the Serengeti, which is largely full of foreigners, Kruger is full of South African families on school-holiday. These folks drive from all over the country, tour the park in their own vehicles, and rent small bungalows and braai every night (South Africans love braais = BBQs).

Much of the park has paved roads - and even the dirt roads are graded so our little car (smaller than our Yaris at home) can easily travel on them - and visitors can see all of the favorite animals (lions, elephants, giraffs, rhinos, hyenas, buffalo, leopards, cheetahs, etc). The setting is very different than the Serengeti (my only frame of reference for this stuff) - while Tanzania's park is very flat with little in the way of shrubs or trees, Kruger has many stretches with thick bushes meaning that an elephant is either 10 yards from your car, or he is 20 yards away, but you can't see him through the growth. This is both exciting and frustrating, either your sightings are great ones very near, or you can drive along for an hour seeing very little. Also, because there are so many people in the park driving themselves, as soon as there is something cool, a crowd of cars collects, jockeying for good-picture-positions.. The Serengeti was pretty empty of people and everyone had guides driving them. While we had some great highlights with elephants, hyenas, rhinos and lions, we did not see any leopards or cheetahs like we did in Tanzania.

The accommodations in Kruger are great big campuses with camping, permanent tents, and small bungalows with kitchens and bathrooms. We did not plan ahead, so the only thing we could get were the bungalows (and the reservations woman told us we were lucky to get that, that there were some cancellations otherwise the place would have been COMPLETELY full).

Our first day we searched and searched for lions but only managed to see a couple far away just before we had to get back to the bungalow (you can only drive yourself around from sun-up to sun-down, then only guides can drive guests, for animal and people safety I suppose).

We needed help finding lions! The lodging campuses have maps up where guests note where they sighted animals, which is pretty cool. We checked the map for lion sightings (since they hang out in their turfs, a couple of kilometers from one another, these sightings maps can be good guides for where to find them from one day to the next). The map had many, many lion sightings. Sigh. We also heard this dude bragging to some people about seeing 20 lions in 4 days.. Sigh, the lions are all over, just not where we were looking!

We committed to find them the next day by getting up a dawn, when they are more active.. (Getting up at dawn is much harder for me than for Scott for some reason.) On the road that next morning we saw hyenas and all manner of birds and antelope but NO lions.. Darn it.. By the evening we came across a crowd of cars and joined the group viewing a sleeping lioness right near the road and a male lion. The word from the crowd of cars was that they were a mating pair. We hear that lions mate for a week or so and during that period they will have sex up to 700 times. Exciting. We waited by the side of the road, hoping the lioness would wake up in the mood. No such luck, we had to return to camp as sun-down was approaching. Good lion sighting but not great.

The next morning, up at dawn again. Hyenas in the road again, we are a magnet for those animals it seemed. No lions for one and a half hours. Then, on a dirt road (good because little traffic), we saw a car stopped ahead of us in a river bed which was largely dried out, but still had small pools of water in it. We looked about spied one, two, three, four.. SEVEN lions!! Two lionesses and 5 cubs, the cubs were probably several months old.. OH Sweet Kruger overlords! It was awesome, the babies were playing in the river sand, we sat there for more than an hour.. They played and drank water, then the lionesses looked disturbed/interested in something along the river bed.. We looked in the direction of their gaze/noses and saw a GIANT male lion walking right towards us! This created great drama because the males sometimes kill baby lions so that they can mate with the mothers (like people, mommy lions do not often conceive while they are attending to babies/nursing). Would the male lion pick a fight to get to the lady lions??


Our lions playing in the sand.



Male lion passing by our car, keeping an eye on the group of lions in the sand.


Lionesses have their babies peering over this sand bar as the male passes by.

He would put himself at great peril to try this, two female adults could cause him a lot of damage. He veered off away from them, both groups eying one another warily. In avoiding the lionesses, he walked right past our car. It was awesome..The best lion sighting ever. Strange but not that strange that the 'best' sightings one can have of animals involve either mating or violence.

Luckily, we had this great experience our last day in Kruger, I left loving the place of course!

We also had a great encounter with a mommy and baby white rhino when we staked out a water hole. The baby rhino was very cute, babies always do a lot more than the adults, those adults are always saving energy and not moving much.