Picture Me Walkin'

(Mango Drift on Likoma Island, Malawi) I am now in Livingstone, Zambia, on the border with Zimbabwe. Livingstone is a very cool city; mellow, clean, with a lot of food and things to do. It's roughly the size of Mbale, which makes it very comfortable for me. It was the nation's capitol pre-independence, so it has a lot of nice older buildings and a good layout. It would be a nice place to spend a few days even if it had no tourist attractions at all. But Livingstone does, have a little toursit attraction of its own to offer. In the local language it's called "the smoke that thunders," and though I haven't been to see it yet I have seen the mist hovering about 10 kilometers outside of town. It is also often refered to as The 7th Wonder of the World, Victoria Falls. I don't really know the specifics, and I know there's a lot of wiggleroom about "biggest" when you talk about lakes and waterfalls. Whatever the case, I think they say this is the b...

I have been talking to some people and there seems to be some confusion. There are two authors of this blog, myself and Patrick. Patrick is now back home in the US and writing gripping transcripts of conversations with the elderly. I, however am still here in Africa scratching around in the dirt and eating bugs. I went back to Sipi Falls (the place we went for my birthday / 4th of July) with my new roommates for a little team building retreat. We had a good time, and saw our guy Juma the mountain guide again. We placed some flowers on the grave of the dearly departed Tin Can Tony I, and did our best to honor his memory with some quality Waragi soaked campfiring. Of course no Marple reatreat would be complete without Mr. Eddie.com debating a white girl about the relative merits of caning women and how best to treat a beezy like she aint shit. To that end he did his best to enlighten Rachel as to the fair 60/50 breakdown of rights in a relationship. As in women and men are equal, men ar...

[Luke, Wednesday morning] Our second full day in Lira. We are just hanging out in the house where we have been staying for the last couple days. The house where we are supposed to move into for the next 5 months is in theory available today. In theory. The extent of the conversation with this guy was like "yes I have rooms in my house that I have rented to American students in the past, yes you are welcome to them." He has been in Europe or something for the past x weeks and is supposed to get back to town today. Hopefully we don't get an April's Fools Day prank of epic proportions. "Welcome to my mudhut, Here's your room. Haha April Fools!" "Nope, I don't really live in Lira at all. April Fools!" Worst case scenario, there are hotels (plural, but not very) and I guess there are a lot of houses for rent because all the NGO's have packed up and moved to Gulu. So good that there's space, not so good that apparently we showed up to th...

The journey has officially begun. I'm in Boston and Pat is unemployed, so it's too late to back out even if we wanted to. Being that I'm going to Africa, I packed for Africa. Being that I'm in Boston in winter, its cold. Very cold. It's been a while since I've been someplace that gets cold like this when I haven't had a snowboard strapped to my feet. That's one thing you can say for Oregon. It's cool though that I'm going to go through such climate extremes within a month, and if you factor in the monsoon rains in Oregon the last week, that's another one. I imagine there will be nights where I'm too hot to sleep and surrounded by bugs wanting to eat my blood when I would give anything for a handful of this snow and ice. Thanks to everybody who came out to see me off or sent me their wishes the last few nights. You all mean the world to me, and it was the best sendoff I could ask for. My night in Portland particularly, was everything a per...