Africa & Middle East Archives

Ten Things I Learned in West Africa, 2019 Version

I spent January out tripping in West Africa. More specifically, over 30 days, I backpacked 3,800 km from Morocco to Senegal, using buses, minivans, mopeds, sept-place cars (seven-seater Peugeots), a horse-drawn cart, one ferry, a couple of quatre-quatre (4×4 Toyota trucks), and a brutal iron-ore train that, coincidentally, at two-and-a-half kilometers, ranks as the longest train in the world.

Aside from one five-hour stretch of vomiting (on which I blame Senegalese box wine) and a few rough transit days, it was exactly the trip I needed to help me get up and dust myself off from a couple of soul-crushing events in December. I plan to write about the adventure in some shape or form; for now, here are a few observations.

Being 50, with a newly shorn head and an androgynous travel wardrobe, will not prevent African men from propositioning you.

People maintain a beautiful commitment to family, rest time and community. But having a close-knit family doesn’t negate the stress of a lack of a reliable income and opportunities to earn money. Their governments have failed them in this regard, and hence they migrate. I met a trio of Gambian migrants—a married couple and another woman—in the immigration office at Mauritania’s northern frontier. They’d traveled 1,200 km before being caught. They later rode in my mini-bus, with a police escort, to the jail in Nouadhibou, where they would be processed and eventually deported. The wife was six months pregnant, and could only watch out the window as their steps were erased, the scenery she thought they’d left behind flying by once again. When I told the other woman that I liked her scarf, she offered to give it to me.

Morocco is the ninth-largest world producer of Mandarin oranges, and exports them regionally. Mandarins are abundant. I ate them the whole time.

Kids are kids are kids. Bright eyed. Precocious. Full of possibility and potential. And yet still annoying when they call me “toubab” and ask for money.

My T-Mobile partner cell service is considerably better on a one-lane highway in sparsely populated Western Sahara, with no towns for miles, than it is in Bellevue, Washington, two miles from T-Mobile headquarters.

China has a heavy presence in much of Africa, as it has for two decades. Its expats and companies are grudgingly tolerated in Mauritania. They build infrastructure in exchange for export contracts and access to natural resources, such as exclusive fishing zones off the Mauritanian coast. One byproduct of Chinese capital is that the Bay of Nouadhibou’s infamous ship graveyard is disappearing. It once held up to 300 corpses. Now there are about five left, the others having been cut up for scrap metal.

Sex tourism isn’t only in Thailand. Some fifty-plus-year-old French people hook up with young locals in Senegal. It even happened at my European-run auberge.

The restaurant doesn’t have to be fancy for the food to be really damn fine. Example: Chez N’Tifi in Dakhla, Western Sahara. Also, I love that Dakhla has a fast-food joint called Bivouac Express.

There will be a lot of police checkpoints, and at many, they will ask for your passport and spend 10 minutes writing down the relevant data. In Mauritania, you can get ahead of the game by creating a “fiche” with all of the needed information. Once you find the only shop for miles that makes photocopies, run about 20, then hand one over to the checkpoint officer before he even has a chance to finish his sentence. As the only foreigner in the vehicle, watch your popularity increase among the other passengers when your rad prep skills spare them the extra-long stop.

It’s disheartening to see my share value drop in everyone’s eyes as soon as I tell them I don’t have children, and they almost recoil if I include that it’s because I don’t want children. It’s disturbing and heartbreaking to hear stories of ongoing female genital mutilation and child marriage. I pray for a day when girls and women around the world have full agency and equality.

Atar to Nouakchott: A Mauritanian Minibus Odyssey

By Laura Zera 17 Comments

I was in Mauritania last week, part of my Marrakech-to-Dakar backpacking route (current location: Saint-Louis, Senegal). Public transport in Mauritania was never all that great (I’m being generous), but two journeys were particularly special. Here, I do an anatomy of one of those trips, which took me from the town of Atar, in the Adrar region, to the capital city of Nouakchott.

The distance between the two points is 438 kilometers, which is 1,314 in Africa-travel kilometers. Following is a breakdown of how I passed eight hours in transit.

Window that doesn’t open? Check. Temperature? About 88 degrees F.

Window that doesn’t close? Check. Unfortunately, it was in the back, and I was told to move and sit with the women in the row behind the driver so as to not mix with the dudes.

Tail light that gets pulled off at one of about eight police checkpoints? Check. Just shove that sucker under the seat. Maybe one day it will get put back on.

Cracked windshield? Check. Apparently they can’t get windshields in Mauritania, they have to go to Senegal. True story. I didn’t see a windshield in any vehicle that wasn’t cracked.

Shit ton of sand and dust? Check. The inside of my nose was black at the end.

Le petit-déjeuner under the driver’s seat? Check.

Sunroof? Check. Actually, it’s the sliding door. It sort of closed? Not really. It also rattled a lot.

Engine block directly under the lump to the left of my legroom? Throwing 95-degree heat? Check and check.

Health app on iPhone completely fucked up by the bumpiness of the ride? Check. I climbed just one flight of stairs that day.

Old woman with rock? Check. I offered her a hand down at the end of our journey and she refused, taking a man’s hand instead. She did not approve of the removal of my layers down to my t-shirt.

Front tire blown at 70 mph, 90 minutes into the trip? Check. The funny thing is that I took a photo of the bald tire before we left, and predicted a blow-out. I even checked the other nearby mini-buses to see if any of them had better tires, which was a nyet.

Spare tire as smooth as a baby’s butt? Check. I reiterated this to the driver several times. Thankfully, he stopped at the one town on the route and got a better used tire. Apparently they don’t have new tires in Mauritania, either.

Worth the trip out to the desert in the first place? Check. It was all to see Chinguetti, a Berber town founded in the 13th century as the center of trans-Saharan trade routes,

The wise and funny curator at the ancient library in Chinguetti. It holds some incredibly old books of math, literature, science and astrology, as Chinguetti was also a place of Islamic scholarship. Sadly, a thief broke in about three years ago and stole the oldest book in the collection, which was the Koran.

To Kibbutzniks from Eilot to Misgav-Am, Thank You

By Laura Zera 24 Comments

This post is a message of gratitude to the thousands of kibbutzniks in the State of Israel, written by a former kibbutz volunteer.

When you began welcoming volunteers to your bucolic kibbutzim in the 1960s, you thought you’d kugeled two birds with one stone. First, you could introduce Israel to Jews from the Diaspora communities, especially given the sudden uptick in interest after the Six-Day War. You’d also found a source of cheap labor to pick your fruit, tend to your babies/cows/turkeys, prep your food in the community dining halls, and spend eight hours at a whack rescuing tiny cans of orange juice when they tipped over on the juice factory assembly line.

But after a few years, the demographic of the volunteers shifted, and along with it, the driving motivation behind them coming to your community collectives. Non-Jewish visitors weren’t interested in studying Hebrew and supporting the kibbutzim model. No. The goyim wanted to party.

This created friction. Kibbutzniks disliked when the volunteers’ living quarters turned into fraternity houses. You weren’t happy when bonfires burned too high and noise levels peaked at one a.m. (On my kibbutz, neither were the turkeys: many of them had heart attacks.) You did not enjoy having to resuscitate alcohol-poisoned youth, and cringed if your own children became entangled with volunteers. You worried that inevitably, one of those foreign jackasses would start a fire and burn down a building from cooking toast on space heaters in their rooms.

Rightly so.

On behalf of a moderate percentage of the roughly 400,000 young people who have volunteered on kibbutzim over the past half century, I’d like to offer an apology. And, perhaps, a bit of an explanation.

Using the volunteer section of my own kibbutz as a representative sample, I can tell you this: we came to Israel to seek adventure, and often, to run away from something else. Splintered families. Dead-end job prospects. Uncertainty over career paths. Boredom. Heartbreak. Adulthood.

Imagine our delight when we arrived at a kibbutz, met the other volunteers, and realized we’d just joined our own special kind of mixed-breed tribe. There was safety in our cohort. We could speak up, act out and fuck off, and in at least two dozen languages. We spent our stipends on chocolate, cigarettes and alcohol, and when the latter’s supply in the kibbutz shop ran out (or was tactically suspended), we made covert connections with Yemeni laborers in a nearby village and took our business there. We worked all day, and at night, blew off enough steam to run power-plant turbines. We erased memories, and struggled to form new ones, given our inebriated states.

There were other things going on, too. Sharing of cultures and perspectives. Learning how to navigate a new country. Trying new things (I changed my first diaper on a kibbutz). Making friendships. Growing up. It was messy at times, but it happened.

This is where the gratitude comes in, because it was you, dear kibbutzniks, who created this opportunity. You gave us (shitty single) beds, fed us delicious (high-fat) food and washed our (crusty) clothes. You riskily invited us to your family-friendly celebrations. You organized trips around the country for us, to places like Masada and the Sea of Galilee. You dispensed medicine, and sometimes, advice. You taught us how to milk cows, drive tractors, raise children and chop cucumbers into very thin slices.

We couldn’t have had all of that at home. We couldn’t have had all of that anywhere else.

The impact of the things we absorbed during our volunteer tenures was less tangible and visible than what you saw on a day-to-day basis, so I can understand your skepticism. It only just snapped into clear view for me last September in London, when I gathered with a group of eleven volunteers from my former kibbutz, Givat Haim Ihud.

Givat Haim Ihud volunteer reunion – 2017

We came together from Canada and the U.S., England and Scotland, Denmark and the Netherlands. It had been 30 years since we last woke to the persistent call of Boker Tov, the volunteer tasked with getting our drunk asses up for work battling a constant game of musical rooms.

Good news: we’ve evolved into stand-up human beings! Informed by our kibbutz experiences, we went on to figure out our families, find our vocational calling (or at least something legal that pays the bills), and feed our hearts. We’re a beautiful lot, and I dare say, we wouldn’t have turned out this great if it weren’t for having stumbled down a few dusty paths together during our time in your country.

Our reunion comprised a whirlwind of a weekend where we tried to catch up on everything and had to say le’hitra’ot too soon. We went through reams of photos and stories from the old days, laughing over the absurdity of our antics. We were so comfortable together, because, after 30 years of trying to explain our kibbutz time to others who just couldn’t get it, we were finally among people who did.

So, thank you, kibbutzniks. All of you. Thank you for tolerating us. We’re sorry for puking in the flower beds. We love what you gave to us, and we’ll never forget it.

Six Things South Africans Do Differently From Americans

By Laura Zera 21 Comments

South Africa clocked 348,646 visits from American tourists in 2013, and given the lure of a favorable exchange rate, screaming airfare deals, and winery tours and wild animals, there’s probably no chance of those numbers dropping off. South Africans have also gained a reputation as some of the friendliest people in the world, and well worth getting to know better. So, beyond calling a barbecue a “braai” and having enough diversity to warrant 11 official languages, here are a handful of less obvious socio-cultural traits that set inhabitants of the Rainbow Nation apart from their U.S. visitors.

I guarantee that 5 out of every 6 people here ironed today

South Africans are committed to ironing their clothes. School uniforms, t-shirts, jeans. Women iron. Young men iron. Everybody irons. Whereas Americans have mastered the art of buying wrinkle-free fabrics, and are willing to risk looking rumpled when they don’t, South Africans still place an immense value on precision pleats.
A bullet hole to enhance the view

Americans carry guns to exercise their constitutional right. South Africans carry guns because they have a legitimate reason to be concerned for their safety. Regularly featured on lists of countries with the highest murder rates, South Africa is also struggling to contain climbing numbers for armed robberies, burglaries and carjackings. If you’re planning to join the millions of international tourists who visit each year, have a read of these smart safety guidelines issued by the British government so you can be armed with knowledge.
Unlike the dull walking (or standing, or walking and then standing) style of American protests, when South Africans want to demonstrate, they do a special dance called a “toyi-toyi.” Usually accompanied by music, toyi-toying is a peaceful form of protest, used when the masses want to draw attention to unfavorable government policies or social issues. And in this hilarious step-by-step instructional YouTube video, you can learn to toyi-toyi too.
I have absolutely no idea…

Despite temperatures that regularly hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit in many parts of South Africa, refrigerating dinner leftovers is considered optional. Americans fret over bacteria to the point of compulsiveness, but South Africans are more cavalier, leaving pots of chicken, rice and veg out overnight without a second thought.
Founded in California, and purchased by Facebook in 2014, the Internet-reliant, multi-media instant messaging service WhatsApp claims its largest user base in South Africa. So while Americans text away—either enjoying plans with unlimited texting, or free-text utilities like iMessage—South Africans, many of whom rely on pre-paid phone plans that charge for texting, have jumped on board so heavily that they’ve racked up a 78-percent user adoption rate, compared to 8 percent in the United States.
Hoot if you like strawberry!

South African motorists allow other drivers to pass them on the highway. In America, signs that read “Keep Right Except to Pass” go largely ignored. In South Africa, not only will drivers move to the shoulder if necessary to allow faster cars by, it’s standard etiquette for the driver who did the passing to flash their hazard lights twice to say thanks, something Americans can only dream about.

For all the South Africans reading this, PLEASE add on! I’d love to hear from you.

Travel: The Many Faces of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa

By Laura Zera 4 Comments

As if it wasn’t enough to build the world’s tallest building — 2722 feet (829.8 meters) — the creators of the Burj Khalifa took things a step further (because that’s Dubai’s unofficial tag line, really) and added a light-show facade. Hang around long enough (or have dinner at a restaurant that overlooks it and the dancing fountains, like my friend Andy and I did last month), and you’ll see all combinations of incredible colors and designs. And yes, my photos do cut the top off. It’s virtually impossible to get the whole thing in one frame unless you’re a mile away from it.

As for zooming to the top, you’ve got two options: For about $34 USD, you can float around on the 124th floor, but it will cost you 95 bucks if you want to go all the way to the 148th. (From what I’ve been told, it’s not really worth the extra money.) But the main thing is that you must *book ahead!* Otherwise, you may find that the time slot you want is sold out, plus tickets cost more at the door.

Here are a few shots of what it looks like to peer down onto a city’s skyscrapers. It’s crazy.

The Burj Khalifa gift shop is filled with loads of overpriced crap your brain wouldn’t even register as desiring, including this very phallic stuffed version of the building.

And finally, if you’re curious to see the renowned dancing fountains, I’ve got you covered there, too, and all without having to pay the $14 going rate (due to Dubai’s prohibitive liquor laws) for a beer on the restaurant patio. Don’t even think about ordering wine…

Travel Tips: South Africa Edition

By Laura Zera 11 Comments

Cape Town from the boat — Cape Town’s Table Mountain

I’ve been wandering the globe for 31 years, and I still haven’t got my packing procedure and checklist nailed down (my husband will have just sprayed coffee out of his nose if he’s reading this; let’s just say we have a different flow when it comes to travel prep). I’m currently “going around” in South Africa and Botswana, as they like to say here, and seeing how in my last-minute bag stuffing I grabbed my trusted traveler (Nexus program) card instead of my permanent resident card, I’m kind of wondering if America will let me back in later this month. Ah well, in the meantime, here are some info bytes for this incredibly hospitable region.

A dassie rat’s view atop Table Mountain

If you’ve got an unlocked cell phone (or one that’s eligible for unlocking), rather than buying an international plan at home, just pop a local SIM card in when you arrive. The carriers around South Africa and Botswana are slick, and it’s nothing to find a shop and get set up. The cost for a SIM card, enough minutes to call taxis and local booking offices, and 400-500 mb of data is between 13 and 25 USD.
Don’t bring old money. When you get cash out of the ATM or from the teller before you leave for your trip, sort through it and exchange any bills that were issued prior to 2013. Many countries treat currency as though it has an expiry date. I forgot about this, and was turned down in Gaborone when I tried to exchange a perfectly pristine fifty from 1996. ATMs remain the simplest currency-exchange solution.
After some fuss, we got the car.

If you’ve booked lodging and services online, you may encounter places that insist on taking an old-fashioned imprint of your card and getting you to sign it once you’re there face to face. The problem? The new style of American credit cards doesn’t feature embossed numbers (or they’re only just barely raised). Twice already I’ve had to stand around and wait for 15-20 minutes while they fiddled with my card, and a (major name-brand) car rental agency first said they might not even be able to complete the booking.
Shared mini-van taxis are the cheapest way to get around in this part of the world, but if that seems like less than fun, then never fear: Uber is in South Africa! (In Botswana, a similar app is called Hello Cabs. It functions like Uber, except you still have to pay with cash at the end.)
Oh, hai

For a South African safari, Kruger Park ain’t the only game in town. Based on a recommendation from an SA friend, we decided to try Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park (if you don’t sound like you’ve had 8 gin & tonics when you say it, then you’re pronouncing it wrong). It’s less built up, less crowded, and equally full of animals. It’s also the second-oldest reserve in the world, after Yellowstone. What I found to be a plus is that it’s only a 2.5-hour drive away from the nearest urban center/airport (Durban), whereas Kruger is a 5.5-hour drive from Johannesburg (though you can also now fly right in and out of Kruger).
That’s one well-horned rhino

I can’t help but throw in a clothing discovery. When the staff at the Seattle ExOfficio store told me last month that their underwear was a bestseller, I was skeptical. Though pricey, I bought a pair to try, as well as the even-pricier men’s version for my hubby. Well, I’m here to tell you that those folks weren’t exaggerating when they bragged about their knickers. They wick. They sink-wash and air-dry fast. They retain their shape. Best of all, they actually hold everything in place without hurting you. I will be buying more (when they go on sale).

Have anything to add? Don’t hold back!

Travel: Sandboarding in Namibia

By Laura Zera 18 Comments

If you’re standing on a sand dune in Swakopmund, Namibia and you’re in a George Mallory state of mind, what do you do? Yes! You put on a helmet, wax up a quarter-inch-thick piece of particle board, lay on it, and rocket down the slope at 80 kilometers per hour!

You think I’m kidding?

I’m not kidding.

Chris Jason and Beth Sarro were definitely channeling George when they founded Alter Action Sandboarding in 1996. In a country with a population density of 2.5 people per square kilometer, they found what they call “the perfect dune:” approximately five kilometers outside of Swakopmund, 100 meters high, and with six faces down which you can plummet.

In the beginning, the only method was face first and on your belly, but Jason and Sarro later introduced stand-up boarding, too—a tweaked version of snowboarding. A handful of other outfits are offering sandboarding in Namibia now, but when I went in 1997, it was Alter Action who took me out for a bit of high-speed insanity.

The trick to this extreme sport is simple: keep your feet up if you want to go fast, and keep the front of your board up if you want to stay on it. On my third or fourth run, in the midst of all my wheeeeeeee-ing, I let the front of my board drop. It hit the sand and stopped; I however, did not. A few sideways somersaults later, I got up and dusted myself off. Luckily, my worst injury was a couple of tablespoons of sand in my eyes, much of which remained stuck to my contact lenses (besides the helmet, we also had elbow pads and gloves). Once my eyes were clear, I climbed the hill again for the remaining runs, and dodged further disaster.

So what does 50 miles an hour feel like when you’re flat on the ground? Well, I’ll tell you. It feels like &*%^#%^%#%^ and %#%^^&*#@@(&%. You get going so fast that every last bit of adrenalin your endocrine system can possibly muster is flying through your body at the same speed or faster. You feel the bumps, and you get air time. You think, “Holy Mother of God, why am I doing this?” And then as soon as you get to the bottom, you want to do it again.

Have you ever tried any extreme sports? (Curling doesn’t count.) And would you try this?

Travel: Cameroon’s Far North Region

By Laura Zera 18 Comments

There’s no better time to go work in Cameroon than eight weeks after major surgery, I figured. With a fresh incision scar that went from belly button to pubic bone (a rather unwieldy thing had to come out), I got on a plane in 2007 and relocated to Yaoundé for six months, leaving my husband, dog and hot showers behind.

I went as a partner in the pilot of a telecommunications/microfinance program (the stories from which are so incredible that I’ve already done the outline for a future book). Fifty sites were chosen for this pilot, with half in what’s known as Cameroon’s “Far North” (also called the “Extreme North”).

If you can imagine what it must have been like to travel from the United States or Europe to the North Pole in the 19^th century, then you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of how hard it could be to get to the tip of this West African country. Trains, planes, trucks—none of them were reliable. And we weren’t just out there, we were WAY out there, in a skinny neck of land, sometimes a mile or less from the borders of Nigeria and Chad.

The landscape in that area has been called “lunar,” and the temperatures were purely “solar.” But despite the constant feeling of burning eyeballs and a bone-dry throat (and don’t even get me started on the damage to my hair), I was fascinated. Here’s why.

Cameroon’s Far North is a place where villages look like this: