Zanzibar. It's a real place.

There is little about the literary, historical or mythological accounts of Zanzibar that I need to relate here. Partly due to my ignorance of them but mostly due to their lack of fidelity in describing the modern exoticism and allure of Zanzibar.
If any of you are looking for a destination that is accessible, beautiful and with a thriving and independent local culture that seems to span ethnic groups, continents and centuries, this Tanzanian archipelago must be put on your list.



There is little for me to write. What's there to say? Tell you about how I took a traditional dhow to tiny islands where I was the only person and swam in the amazing, blue water and snorkeled with dolphins? How I walked around Stone Town, visiting the mosques and bazaars without seeing another tourist for hours? Maybe I could talk about how I fed giant tortoises at an abandoned prison island. Or watched the U.S. and England draw with a large group of British fans. I'm not sure. You'll just have to go for yourself.

...

Ha! I'm a bastard. But truly, I was pretty sure that everyone but me sucked for the five days I was on Zanzibar. Here are some photos for you:

South African Phone Number.

Hi, folks. I have a new phone number now that I'm in South Africa:

+27-073-045-2508

I'm in Cape Town at the moment, and will maybe write some entries about my time in Tanzania and the worst game (England-Algeria) of this (already pretty unexciting) World Cup. That I paid money to go to. Yea!

More to come later.

- Jon.

Blog List

A few blogs that all of you should read with the fervor of the religiously converted.

The Unnatural Disaster: Are you the type most call crazy? Do you have plans to start a business involving door-to-door sales, pit bull puppies and meth? Do you have a fifteen-minute story for each of the seven teeth you're missing?

Then Ryan Boyd wants to talk to you. And write about you.

Ryan has taken up the smoldering torch that Burroughs and Kerouac dropped long ago, exposing the great, vast unknown middle of America as the country's true cultural gold mine. Just think: When was the last time you saw someone kicked in the head by a man in steel-toed boots? Were you in New York? Fuck no you weren't.

Let Ryan remind you that the wild and extravagant is just one layer beyond the mundane world of your local streets and alleys.

Andrew Slaton Photography: The phrase 'greatest photographer I know' probably isn't worth a lot coming from me. But that's what Andrew is. He's also a really nice, creative and enjoyable gentleman. You can go see a lot of his photography (for free!) on his Web site, and then swing over to his blog to see what the life of a working photographer is like. Apparently it involves going to Wyoming a lot. And sleeping in your car. So... equivalent to being a long-haul trucker. Except, you know, with worse pay.

Lucky's Corner: If you woke up this morning with an insatiable (and oddly specific) desire to read about modern philosophy, cosmology, art criticism, video games and college football - and to not have to navigate multiple pages to do so - then, my possibly mentally unbalanced friend, I have the perfect site for you. Ross Lucksinger – whom my family took from a gypsy camp as a baby after murdering all the adults as initiation into the Illuminati – writes on all things important and unimportant, leaving the semi-important to the uninspired, insipid novelists of the second half of the 20^th century, whom he regularly writes circles around. (John Updike and J.D. Salinger both died this year of embarrassment at the moral ambiguity and lack of decisiveness in their work after reading the first draft's of Lucky's Corner.) Let these mercurial musings of a gypsy orphan teach you the things you should have been talking about at your last cocktail party.

My Phone Number.

Here is my phone number until I say otherwise:

(+25)0782274147

Feel free to call me at odd hours and say, "Hey man - aww, are you asleep? Wait, what time is it over there? Wow, I so forgot the time difference. That's hilarious!"

I'll be so happy that you did.


[Quick addendum: Some people told me that it is perhaps easier to dial (011-25) than (+25), as not all phones have the + function. To use +, check the bottom of your keypad. It should be next to the # and * keys. Hold down the button and a '+' should appear on the screen. Then dial the number. If your phone lacks that function, 011 should do the trick in place of it.]

The Art of Moto-Taxi Riding

In East Africa, transportation is an odd art and often somewhat inefficient.

This is known as a 'good traffic day' in Kampala.

There are taxis, mutatus (mini-buses), full-size buses, motorcycles and bicycles. These all combine to form a massive solution of metal and flesh that flows through the pathways of the cities, clogging up at bottlenecks and backing up for miles. This is just like in the States, although you should remove traffic lights, traffic laws or emissions controls.

To circumvent this mess, there is only one proper method: The moto-taxi. This is the only real way to travel in a city in the region. It works quite simply: You wave down some guy on a motorcycle, then you haggle over a price ranging from 25 cents to two dollars, hop on behind the driver, and he takes you wherever you asked to go as quickly and often as dangerously as possible. In Rwanda they give you helmets. Other places, not so much.

These drivers are impressive in their ability to take a motorcycle through traffic, onto sidewalks, into ditches and around speed bumps. To do all this at high speeds as a passenger on the back can be both frightening and quite fun. At times, you might become concerned that you will die, but it's important to remember that many of these drivers have dealt with more difficult passengers than you:

Oh, it's a real photo. Welcome to Uganda.

And yeah, you can quote facts like "five people die on boda bodas (moto taxis in Uganda) in Kampala every day," or "that driver is wearing aviators at 3 a.m.," or "many drivers are drunk/high after 9 p.m.," but these should never cause you to consider not using moto-taxis.

Just hold on and have fun. You probably won't die.

Things to Note.

Here are a few links that I would like y'all to be aware of.

Run Like Crazy: Tristan is from Melbourne, Australia, and he has decided to run 52 marathons in 52 weeks in every part of the globe. I met him after he ran the Kigali Marathon (I did not run.), and he is a very nice guy with a very good mission: To raise money for UNICEF. Please check out his website, and if you can, send a few dollars to the cause.

Rwanda Trading Company: Here's the answer to the common question, "So what does Matt do over there?" He works for these guys, managing the day-to-day operations in Kigali. He is nominally head of finance and acquisitions, but every time I went to the factory, he was in the machine shop or installing equipment on the floor.

Axe Cop: Many or most of you have already seen and read Axe Cop, but for pure joy, there are few better things on the internet. This has nothing to do with Africa.

Methodist Mission Cyangugu: Your Grandparents' Lake House for Under $10 a Night

After a six-hour drive through some of the windier and bumpier roadways I've seen, I did not want a cold shower, a dinner of crackers and a bed made with linens and scabies. But that's what I thought I would get. The city of Cyangugu is not (to my knowledge) a major center of hospitality.

However, after passing through the town and driving over two bridges, each made of four halved tree trunks, we came to a gate that apparently takes you back to somewhere around 1957.


The Methodist Mission in Cyangugu operates a hospital for the local population on the shores of the southern parts of Lake Kivu. They also have several bungalow-style guesthouses that were built in the 1940s and seem to have defied normal rules of space-time by not moving relative to the rest of the world. They are firmly entrenched in a previous era where people had full bars in their glove boxes, cigarette holders were monogrammed, and sunscreen was for weak people who wanted to look ugly.

America. Before the damn liberals ruined it.

They are complete houses with classic kitchens and bathrooms, a living room with wooden beams running across the ceiling, and an old, ill-fitting screen door that leads to a concrete patio perched on a cliff that overlooks one of the larger lakes in the world. And it all costs around 10 dollars a night.

And they cook you meatloaf.

Meatloaf.

So, if you're ever looking for a quaint bit of nostalgia with lovely views of the Democratic Republic of Congo, I know just the place.

Park Nyungwe: Monkey-less

Park Nyungwe sits on the ridges of the mountains bordering Lake Kivu to the west and Burundi to the south in the southwestern reaches of Rwanda. It is known for its large population of chimpanzees and monkeys, with nine to eleven different species of native primates. (The number depending upon which local person, informative display or guide you query.)

Most visitors make the trip down to this somewhat removed part of the country to track the chimps and rare monkeys that populate the forests in the higher elevations.

For this experience, the Rwandan tourism organization will charge you $40 per day. This is damn expensive in a country where, according to the U.S. State Department, per capita income is $370.

But hey, you get to see monkeys and chimps, right? I mean, with all the years that guides have been taking groups around the park, and the way many of the primates have become habituated to a regular human presence, there's no way that $40 will not get you a peek at some primates, right?

No. Not right. Because I saw zero monkeys in Park Nyungwe. I hiked all day and saw pretty much no wildlife.

But after we leave the park, what do you guess we saw on the goddamn road for free?

What's that? Did you say monkeys?

You're goddamn right, monkeys. All sorts of monkeys.