Sunday 3/21/10 Gulu, Uganda

Four days.

620 miles

Top speed of 40 mph

One puncture

Three nights in three cheap hotels

One long day in the rain

Lots of thoughts of potential future motorcycle trips

*****

I got a late start, so late I started wondering if the universe, in some sort of subtle manipulation of time (Did it always take me this long to pack?), was sending me one clear message:  Don’t go.  Once I left—after the failed attempt at fixing my rear taillight, after the rain stopped, after I picked up snacks—a familiar exhilaration coursed through me.

Again I found myself time-rich and plan-less, situated neck deep in one of man’s most nourishing and unpredictable realities, the vast sea of the traveler’s unknown.  In this space, both euphoria and crippling fear sneak about; both hope and dread float in the breeze; both the ecstasy of discovery and the horror of disorientation intertwine to marry caution with excitement.  Having never set off on any sort of motorcycle trip before, this departure was laced with more anxiety than usual.  I knew (and still know) nothing about motorcycle maintenance.  I had no planned route; no map.  All I knew was that I wanted to head south, and I knew I only had four days to play with.  I set off on a Saturday morning knowing I had to be back in work on Wednesday.

As I pulled onto Kampala Road, that madhouse stretch of tarmac that connects Gulu and Uganda’s capital, I shifted into fourth—my bike’s highest gear—and pulled hard on the throttle.  I picked up speed and listened as the small engine beneath me raised its cry to a high whine.  Air whizzed by and into my helmet.  The greens of the head-high cassava plants and grasses of sugar cane at the road’s edge began to soften and blur.

Above:  A typical stretch of dirt road in northern Uganda.  This picture was taken as I approached a town, hence the extra pedestrian traffic.

I zigzagged down quiet dirt roads through the Ugandan bush.  I traveled for almost two hours before a motorized vehicle passed.  Everywhere around me, lean Ugandans were slamming hoes down into the rain-softened earth, preparing their land for planting.  Children, shy and giggling, dared one another to call out to me as I passed, or better yet, speak to me in English.  “How are you?!” they’d yell.  The road, a red winding artery through the greens of the land, was dark and puddle-filled from the recent onset of the rainy season.  I putted along on my tiny steed, swerving around potholes as best I could, but crashing the bike twice into the soft berms lining the road.  Fast I learned to fear mud.

When I reached Lira, a quaint town set amidst vast flat plains of swampy farmland, I checked into a hotel by the market.  For $10 US, I got a simple room with a window, fan, TV, and a mattress sheathed in rubber.

*****

Later that night, I took a bicycle taxi to meet a Ugandan friend and co-worker of mine—let’s call him Mark—at a small bar outside of town.  Bicycle taxis are everywhere in Lira, crowding the streets with not the swarms of motorbike drivers ever jockeying for position that we have in Gulu, but somber men and boys slowly gliding their way around town on squeaky bicycles.  When I entered the joint, Mark led me to his table.  A married man, he was sitting with six girls in their mid-twenties.  “These are my friends,” he said, leaning in close to me to be heard over the din of some pop song thumping through large speakers in the corner of the room.  I ordered a soda, and Mark introduced me to the people seated at our table.  A screen that stretched from floor to ceiling projected a Manchester United game to the bar’s patrons.  Dimly lit by the bar’s blue light bulbs, eyes darted around.

Above:  One of hundreds of bicycle taxis in Lira

His tongue already slowed by the night, Mark started explaining tribal differences between the Acholi, the tribe that calls Gulu district home and was famously targeted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army for decades, and the Langese, the tribe that is found throughout Lira district.  “You see, the Acholi will respect you, but the Langese will be nice to you.  Langese won’t always respect you truly, but they will be kind to you.  That’s the difference,” Mark said authoritatively.  And on it went.

At one point the owner of the place, a stocky woman with braids named Anne, sat down with us.  Anne was kind and chatty, but pushy when it came to advertising the bar’s adjacent guesthouse. (“Many whites have stayed here already.  You’ll like the rooms.  I’ll show you some before you leave tonight.  Very nice.  You’ll like them.”)

Anne did this thing where she would clutch her breasts every time she laughed, as if any good joke could trigger her body to jettison her breasts like a space shuttle ditching used fuel tanks.

The night wound down and sleep came for me.  Mark, Lira born and raised, was proud of his hometown and gave me a driving tour of the town before dropping me off at the hotel. Here’s our courthouse.  It’s actually larger than the one in Gulu Town.  And here’s our…

*****

I hit the road early the next day, only to be handed a two-hour delay after heading out of town.  The culprit?  A two-inch nail wedged into my rear tire.  Mark helped me track down a mechanic that came out to meet me by the roadside.  With the puncture patched, I traveled down flat, near-empty roads to Soroti, a tiny one-street town.  The afternoon sun cast long shadows on the ground around me, so I had a quick lunch before pushing on.

Above:  A taxi driver with two customers in Lira

Flat plains peppered with beautiful cylindrical huts and foraging goats and cattle gave way to rolling hills with a backdrop of jagged, shadowy mountains on the horizon.  The range that is home to the glaciered Mt. Elgon sits on the Uganda / Kenya border and gives the area an Ecuadorian vibe.

In Mbale, after checking into a cheap hotel, I made my way to a restaurant a taxi driver recommended.  All tables were full when I entered the place, and just as I was about to turn to walk out to find another restaurant, a young man waved me to his table.  Richard was a university student at Makerere University, Uganda’s most famous and competitive post-secondary institution.  Intoxicated with a mix of hope, knowledge, and greed, Richard talked incessantly about what his future held for him in Uganda.  He was studying Tourism at school so he could one day run his own business and get rich.  He talked about how Ugandans need to learn to help themselves, how people must stop relying on foreigners and NGOs to come in and save the day.

Above:  Soccer is huge in Uganda.  Most Champion’s League matches draw large crowds in all of the local bars.

“What type of business are you interested in starting?” I asked.

“Anything.  I want to start a business that attracts whites,” Richard said.

Minutes later, Richard was asking me if I’d be interested in working with him to start a hiking business in southwestern Uganda.  I told him I knew nothing about hiking in southwestern Uganda.  He protested, saying that I knew enough to help him.  I asked him to elaborate.  He explained that I most likely knew enough white people to make our business float, with the logic being that all my white friends would frequent the business enough to keep it profitable until word spread throughout the White Universe about Richard and Andrew’s Hiking Spot in southwestern Uganda.

Pause.

“So what do you do up in Gulu?” Richard eventually asked.

I told him, explaining what Invisible Children was all about and the types of programs we run.

“How can a guy like me get a scholarship with your organization?” he asked frankly.

“I’m sorry.  We don’t give scholarships to students who aren’t from the North.  We’re trying to help students who have been affected by the LRA conflict.”

Richard said nothing at first.  His eyes, steely and still, carried a new tension that wasn’t there before.  He looked at me and then picked up the scrawny chicken leg floating in a bowl of broth in front of him.  In between messy bites, he said, “So wait, I want to understand:  Do you give scholarships to students who are HIV positive?”

I told him we did, although the total number of HIV positive students in our scholarship program was small in relation to groups of students that represented other indicators for vulnerability; 90% of our students are orphans in some capacity, for example, whereas less than 10% are HIV positive.

“See I don’t like that,” Richard said, shaking his head.  “I don’t think you help Ugandans much by investing in people who are just going to die in a few years.”

Silence.

I didn’t know what to say.  I was saddened by the fact that someone so young had already managed to harbor such a raw callousness.

*****

When we parted ways later that night, I said good-bye to Richard in the way people say good-bye to one another when they think they’ll never see each other again; no empty let’s-keep-in-touch promises, just a firm handshake.  The next morning, as I was headed out of town, my cell phone rang.  It was Richard.  “I lost my bus money and don’t have enough to buy another ticket.  Where are you?”

I didn’t tell him where I was.  Instead I told him I was insulted.  “How dare you call me and ask for money after the conversation we had last night?” I asked, incredulous.

Silence.

After a few seconds, Richard said, “It is not like that.”  The call went dead.

*****

On the way back home, three hours or so from Gulu, I stopped at a small cluster of mud-brick stores by the side of the road.  I wanted to let the bike’s engine cool.  I approached one dusty general store with an arc of benches in front of it.  A few men were lounging on the benches, passing around a yellow plastic container to one another and talking.  I walked up and sat down, sore and sweaty from the hours I had logged on the bike in the past few days.  The men greeted me and smiled.  I opened up a bottle of water and stared out at the haze of heat rising in waves from the tarmac.

“How are you?  Hello, how are you?”  A tall man with his shirt unbuttoned to his belly button stepped into my line of sight.

“I’m fine, thanks.  How are you?” I asked.

He launched into a monologue of compliments, telling me how nice my motorbike was, how I looked like a skilled rider when I parked the bike, how shiny my motorbike helmet was.  I knew what was coming.  Finished with his flattery, he waited for my response.  I said nothing.  I instead gave him a deadpan, stone-cold look of indifference.  I was tired enough to be annoyed by what was about to happen, but also too tired to defend myself or scold him.

He leaned in close to me, propping his hand on his knee.  His breath was stale and spoiled with alcohol.  “Five hundred shillings for me, for some nuts or crisps,” he whispered.  “Just five hundred.”  He raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, That’s not too much for a white person, is it?

I looked at the other men sitting around me.  They were consumed in their own conversations and didn’t take notice of the man and his proposition.

“Why?” I said, turning back to him.  “Why should I give you money?  Why?”

“We’re friends.”

“No we’re not.  You don’t even know my name.  We can’t be friends yet—we just met each other,” I objected.

The man smiled and shook his head in disbelief.  “No we’re friends.  We talked much before.  We’re friends.  Only five hundred.  Please.” he said.

“You give me something, then I’ll give you something,” I said.  “Give me five hundred shillings and then I’ll give you five hundred shillings.  Friends should help each other out,” I said, annoyed.

The man turned and walked away.

Above:  A family I met at the side of the road.  They called me over to talk and asked me to take a few pictures of them.  The kids and adults started shrieking when they saw their faces on my camera’s screen.

Not but five minutes later, an even more intoxicated man approached me, and without any introduction or conversation of any kind, simply said, “Some small money.  Small money?”  The man held onto a bench to keep from falling down and extended one shaky open palm to me.  His eyes, watery and tired, were the color of plaque.

Without a second of thought, I said “No.  Why?  Who are you?”

The man just smiled.  It was clear he couldn’t speak English.

His drunken smile, for some reason, made me both furious and perplexed.  I turned to the other men relaxing in the shade on the benches across from me.  “Excuse me, can you please ask this man why he’s asking me for money?  I don’t know him.  Ask him what he’s doing.”

The men laughed.  They said something to the drunken man that made him recoil, made the smile dissipate from his face.  He barked something to the group.

“He thinks you should help him because you’re white.  White people have money, so you should give him some.  That’s what he said,” one of the men explained.  “But don’t worry, he is just drunk.  It’s OK.”

“No, wait,” I said.  “I want you to ask him something more.  There are lots of big Ugandan men in Uganda, lots of men with big fancy cars and nice clothes.  Why doesn’t he ever ask the big Ugandan men for money?  They have a lot more money than I do.”

The man translated for the drunk.

The instant he grasped the meaning of my retort, he again recoiled and snapped.

“He says that with you it’s different.  Surely those men would never give him money.  With you, the chances are good.”

*****

Before I came to Uganda, I was foolish with my idealism.  I naively thought all types of giving were good.  I saw nothing wrong with dropping a buck in a homeless person’s hat, or sending a container of clothes to a developing country. Those who have should give to those who don’t, I used to think.  Since spending time in an environment steeped in the effects of international charity, a place patched and painted with the goodwill of foreigners, with the agendas of missionaries and aid organizations, I feel completely different about giving now.

Above:  The altar of a Catholic church I passed

Before I go on and explain this shift that has taken place within me in regards to this issue, I want to know what you, Reader, think:  How do you justify dropping money in a homeless person’s hat?  What goes through your mind when you make a small donation to a charity?  Why do we feel the urge to give people a new school or a new religion?  How should we give people things and who should do the giving?

I know that these are very different questions, but the same feelings underpin the different situations they speak to.

Leave your response in the comments section of this post.

Done!  Me with the bike just after making it safely home

Innocent

19-years-old

Busoga College, Jinja

The younger kids were too small to jump across the ravine.  Afternoon rains had turned it into a turbulent moat separating them from their destination:  a large building that would provide shelter to hundreds of children for the night.  Innocent, barely 12-years-old at the time, said he did what anyone would do-he leant his hand.

One by one, children crossed the stream with his help.  When time came to distribute blankets and organize kids for the night, he and some of the other older boys helped orchestrate things.  Months rolled by, and night after night Innocent helped tired kids get settled in for sleep.  The one adult overseeing the place eventually decided that electing a head boy from the scores of night commuting kids would help things run more smoothly.  One night, he ordered seven or eight boys to stand in front of the rest; Innocent was called forward.

“The man told all of the children to stand behind the boy they wanted to represent them as head boy,” Innocent recounted.

In small groups, kids stood and slowly made their way over to Innocent.  Seconds later, a long line of children snaked away from him, raising the hair on the back of his neck in disbelief.  This single event, this response from hundreds of kids Innocent barely knew, pushed him down a new life path, one lined with opportunity.

*****

When the filmmakers showed up at the night commuting site, they couldn’t speak to everyone–there were simply too many kids.  The head boy was called forward.  Innocent welcomed them and told them about his experiences night commuting.  His composure–a type of calm that fuses easy smiles with an intense gaze–made an impression on the filmmakers.  After IC formed and became an organization, when it was looking for its first scholarship beneficiaries, Innocent was called in for an interview.  He found out he’d been awarded a full-tuition scholarship just as his family, broke and unable to pay his school fees, was contemplating pulling him from school.

Now, years later, Innocent is poised to start a Civil Engineering degree at university.  Running his own engineering business, he tells me, will allow him to pursue a parallel career in politics.

To understand how Innocent transitioned from a life exhausted by years of night commuting (he used to walk hours a day just so he could sleep safely at night) to one energized by the prospect of dual careers, one need not look further than the way Innocent spent his most recent school vacation:

In a single month, he molded and baked 13,000 bricks.  Yes, 13,000.  At a selling price of 80 shillings each, the bricks earned him hundreds of thousands of shillings.  Innocent used this money to buy five piglets at a price of 30,000 shillings each.  In a year’s time, he’ll be able to sell the males for 120,000 shillings and the females for 100,000 shillings.  Selling a few of his mature pigs will allow him to buy a dairy cow.  And on it goes.

Innocent did well with his recent final exams.  He’s eager to start university, though, and told me that the August start date for classes couldn’t come soon enough.  Although being home in Gulu allows him to see his friends, Innocent has had little time to relax because he needs to help his mother tend the family’s maize and cassava crops.  The oldest of five children, he juggles his studies with his responsibilities at home.  Much of what he made selling bricks went to his mother to help pay for things for their house.  This role–both full-time son and acting father–is not one Innocent takes lightly; when he stays up late studying, he does it because he knows his success is not just his own, not without effects on others.  So, then, it was rewarding when Innocent first heard his mother cite his work ethic when advising her children.

“She told them, ‘You need to be like Innocent.  Look how he studies.’  It was so great to hear her say this,” Innocent said, bashful.

I asked him about his interest in civil engineering.  Innocent told me about another lucky break he caught:  Patrick Munduga, IC Uganda’s Program Manager for Schools for Schools, met and befriended Innocent and, after some time, began mentoring him. [Innocent, like all of IC's scholarship beneficiaries, receives official mentoring from a trained IC mentor.  Patrick is supplementing this official mentoring with his own advice and guidance.]  This relationship has bloomed and fueled Innocent’s interest in engineering; Patrick has shown Innocent how engineering can be used to help people in need.  But Patrick’s engineering work isn’t the only thing Innocent admires about the man:  Patrick, ever positive, is respected by his peers and carries himself with confidence both in and outside of IC’s office.  In short, Innocent sees in Patrick the type of man he wants to be.

*****

Money is easier to squeeze from a city than a village.  Innocent, if he chose to, could stay in Kampala after graduation and make heaps of money at a large engineering firm.  I wasn’t surprised when he explained that this option wasn’t a feasible one for him.

“My services aren’t needed in Kampala,” Innocent said frankly.  “In the north we need renovations.  The people here need my help.  I want to do a lot for my community, because I have the opportunity to help.  Honestly, seeing how the filmmakers have helped us, it makes me think, If foreigners can travel so far to help the Acholi, why can’t I help, too?“

Listening to Innocent, I couldn’t help but be awed by him.  Overcoming incredible odds to shed adversity, to push on, and then emerge into a new chapter of life with an unyielding optimism takes a strong, unique individual.  I asked Innocent why he was so confident everything will work out for him.  He grinned and, with total sincerity, dropped a nugget of wisdom.

“Determination,” he explained, “makes your future.”

Gulu, in a few short years, is going to be a better place because Innocent has proven this truth to himself.

I didn’t know what to do. For 10 minutes I had tried to explain to him that I did nothing wrong by taking a picture of the Nile. And for 10 minutes he insisted that he was under strict orders to confiscate the camera of anyone caught snapping images of the river.

No one was around. We were standing by a bridge over the swollen Nile, foamy rapids roaring in the background.

“I don’t understand,” I pleaded, “I don’t see any signs around here that say people can’t take pictures of the river.”

“There is a sign. It’s over there,” the soldier countered, pointing to the opposite side of the river, just across the bridge.

“Really? Good. Then, with your permission, I’d like to walk my bike over there and take a look at it. I want to see what it says,” I said.

“You don’t need to do that. I know what it says. It’s my job to know what it says,” the soldier snapped, visibly frustrated. “Trust me–it says no pictures allowed.”

A car came down the hill and approached the bridge. I debated flagging it down for help, for witnesses. Just as I was about to wave, the soldier reached for my camera.

“Give me the camera. I told you the rules. No pictures allowed, give it to me,” he said, grabbing at the camera around my neck.

I pulled it to my side, out of his reach.

“Wait, wait a minute. Look, I don’t mind giving you my camera,” I said. “It’s no problem. But before I do, I need you to show me the law you’re talking about. Show me something on paper. Or show me that sign across the river. Just show me something in writing. Once you do, I’ll give you my camera.”

The soldier stared at me.

“If you don’t give me that camera, I’m taking you to jail. Do you want to be arrested? Do you want to go to jail?” he asked.

“No, no of course not. But I can’t just give you my camera without seeing some sort of official document that says I broke a law.”

The soldier looked up the road. He stared off into the distance and said nothing. The midday sun was warming the sweat-soaked shirt clinging to my back. Straddling my bike, I waited for him to say something.

“You, get out of here. Go,” he said, finally, disappointment smeared across his face. “Leave, now.”

I didn’t say anything. I pedaled away and didn’t look back.

Of all the people I met and greeted during my ride, that UPDF soldier was the only one who was anything but kind.

*****

The sky was so vibrantly blue, so checkered with wispy, bone-white clouds, and the fields of grasses and shrubs that stretched out to the horizon so blindingly green, so visibly pulsing with life, that the ephemeral brilliance of the place was impossible to ignore. Northern Uganda at the start of the rainy season is a landscape awash with fresh color. Rust-colored roads that blow dust up into the skies during the dry season turn deep caramel and copper once soaked with rain. Grass awakens and, chameleon-like, changes its hues before you realize what has happened, morphing from golden tan to lime green overnight. When the afternoon thunderheads bloom and billow at sunset, their purplish gunpowder gray faces bruise with pinks and yellows. Most nights, lightning fires in the clouds, scattering color across the skies long after the light of the sun has faded.

Above:   Dusk, near Agung IDP Camp

Riding through such a place on a bicycle unpeels it for you. When the scenery stuns you, paralyzes you with awe, you can stop and look at it more closely. When the kids run to the side of the road to wave wildly at you, you can stop to say hello. And when the rains turn the roads into puddle-pocked slicks of soft mud, you, soaked to the bone, can push your bike up the hills and know what the old man on the bike next to you is feeling; empathy has a way of reaching down to your marrow when the air is white with sheets of rain and your teeth are chattering.

*****

I waited too long to find a camp spot–the sun was slipping and stars were on their way. I approached the Agung IDP Camp, a cluster of a few hundred mud and grass huts crowded together atop a gentle ridge in the land. As I stopped my bike by the side of the road, kids and adults, smiling and waving, walked up to me to gawk. In minutes, a crowd of 30 encircled me.

I asked one man if he knew of anywhere I could set up my tent for the night. I told him, as I always do when trying to find a camp spot, that I needed nothing more than a flat piece of ground for my tent, that I had food and water and needed only a safe area to rest for the night. He waved to a path across the street.

“Follow that path to the camp health center. They will have a place for you, I think,” he said.

Above:  Church in Agung IDP Camp

I pushed my bike into a grassy gated area. At the center of the clearing were two strange looking concrete structures; amidst so many mud huts, anything concrete seems out of place. A tall young man came out to greet me. Ronald. We introduced ourselves, I told him about how I was looking for a place to sleep, and he quickly invited me to spend the night.

I set up my tent behind the main clinic building. As I did, more than 20 children, all wide-eyed, all wearing clothing stained and holed by the stresses of poverty, watched in total amazement at the oddities I pulled from my bag–a stove that burns on petrol, a tent, a multi-tool that I used to cut vegetables, a 10 liter water bag. As each piece of gear revealed its function–as the tent took shape around its pole, as the stove blazed to life–the children yelled and pointed. They laughed and whispered to one another inAcholi . The older kids passed around small bags of hydration powder to the younger ones, bags they get for free at the clinic. The kids poured the white powder into their hands and licked it off their fingers.

Above:  Kids I met at the health clinic

Looking at the children, seeing some with bellies so distended and round that the skin of their mid-sections was pulled thin and taut, I couldn’t help but feel gluttonous about my meal of vegetables and noodles. I was chopping carrots, onions, and potatoes, about to eat a meal bright with color, and these children were visibly hungry. Not a single one, though, asked me for food once the meal was ready. Not a single one stopped smiling and laughing with his friends as I set up camp and cooked. Despite their runny noses and bulging bellies–things about them that the health workers at the clinic saw as symptoms of one lurking illness or another–the kids at the camp were just like kids anywhere else:  full of the type of creativity that can turn a bottle cap or a plastic bag into a toy, the type of energy that makes running around on a muggy evening not only possible, but fun, as well. Watching Ronald interact with them, gently guiding them to and fro with his big palm cupped around the backs of their heads, I could see why a young 29-year-old man would choose to live hundreds of kilometers from home, away from the family and friends who know and understand him.

Over the noodle-and-vegetable dinner I prepared, once the children had scattered, Ronald and I talked. A thunderstorm brewed on the horizon. The stars came out in force, and the Milky Way grew into a thick bright belt that seemed to hold the sky in tight and close to Earth.  A full moon rose and blazed away.  Between the steady flashes of lightning and the light of the moon, an illuminated night enveloped us.

“Have you seen that the camps are not so crowded now?” Ronald asked, blowing on his noodles to cool them down.

“I have,” I said. “Each of the camps I passed today seemed like it was half-filled.”

“Here at Agung we are exactly half-filled right now. We used to have more than 4,000 residents, and now we have close to 2,000 or so,” Ronald said. “There are many good things about people returning to their villages, leaving the camps, but some people are sad about it, I think.”

“What do you mean? Can you explain?” I asked.

“Well, for the most part, it’s good that people leave the camps,” Ronald explained. “Living in the camps is not the best way to live. Because residents live very close together here, it’s very easy for disease to spread. When one child is sick, many get sick. Also, most of the adults have grown used to receiving food and other things from theNGOs . Over time, this has made them expect these things, to wait for these things. The main bad thing about living in the camps, though, I think, is that this lifestyle is unnatural. The people here are not connected to the land the way they used to be. The don’t have space for their family and fields like they used to.”

“But you said some people are sad to leave the camps?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. Some people really enjoy how easy it is to have friends here. Living close to other people, you can socialize easily. If you live deep in the bush, it’s harder.”

We finished our noodles and vegetables and watched the lightning storm swell and approach. Ronald declared, “It will start raining at 10:00 p.m. You will see!”

Ronald’s cousin, Jaclyn, invited us inside to have a snack of millet bread and beans. I told Ronald that I was full, but he insisted I join the health workers for their meal. In the health center’s main living room, a space sparsely furnished and with walls adorned with posters that said things like ‘Relax, Jesus is in Control,’ we ate and talked about Ugandan politics and life. A kerosene lantern flickered and threw shadows up onto the walls.

Half way through the meal, I heard the patter of rain start on the iron roof above us. I checked my watch: 10:05 p.m. I looked at Ronald. He smiled.

Ronald’s co-workers asked me about my impressions of Uganda and how life in Uganda compared to life in the states. They told me about their constant battle against the waves of malaria that seem to never cease washing over the camp. They talked about how the children have trouble shaking respiratory tract infections and bouts ofdiarrhea . Even though I said there were lots of similarities between life in the two countries, even though I talked about how hard it was to earn a living in the states, too, how we struggle with corruption in government and business just like Ugandans do, some differences–contrasts regarding things like waves of malaria and kids who come close to death because ofdiarrhea–make the similarities seem small.

After an hour-and-a-half, I thanked them for the meal and company, said goodnight, and got ready for bed.  I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain pounding like a million small fists on the walls of my tent.

*****

When I cycled through Alabama, a gray-haired, road-hardened cyclist with thousands upon thousands of miles behind him gave me some advice.

“Take pictures of roadkill,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much roadkill can reveal about a place. Each part of the world has different roadkill.”

He was right. Mexico’s roads were littered with dead, bloated dogs; some days I’d pass 15 or more. In Central America, I spotted iguanas. I saw snakes flattened into long ribbons in Colombia and Ecuador. In central Chile, for just one day, I saw a few hundred dead butterflies brightening up the shoulder of the road with yellows, reds, and greens, but in northern Chile, the driest place on the planet, I saw not a single animal–dead or alive–for almost a week. The pampas of Argentina? Birds. Southern states in the U.S.? Lots of cats, a few deer, and a handful of small snakes. And here in Uganda, near the entrance to Murchison Park, I spotted two things I have never seen before on the side of the road.

Above:  A lizard and a monkey

*****

Over the course of three days and 140 miles, I cycled past hundreds of fields. Farmers everywhere around Gulu were taking advantage of the onset of the daily rains and planting crops–cassava, ground nut, millet, and sorghum, among others. With metal hoes and not much else, men and women alike were overturning the earth. As many Ugandans are subsistence farmers, the fields people were tilling were small plots that surround their homes. The harvests they are going to reap are for consumption, first and foremost, with any surplus remaining available for sale. The bicycles that passed me on the road were loaded with bags of cassava root ready for planting, sacks of fertilizer, or bundles of farm tools. The handshakes I shared with folks by the roadside were gritty with fresh dirt. Over and over again in the field, women, some with babies tied to their backs, and men swung hoes down into the ground and then pulled back on their handles to rip apart the ground.

Nearly everyone I passed, though, whether they were working or relaxing, threw me a wave and flashed a smile. My short three day route through the countryside showed me a section of northern Uganda that is steeped in both stunning views and local kindness. I’m thankful that the town I live in is surrounded by such a place.

Above:  People I met by the side of the road near Opit

Above:  Me with some of the crowd that gathered as I got ready to start riding one morning

Above:  Grilling on Dean’s porch in Pretoria.

Saturday 3/7/09  Gulu, Uganda

**Taken from journal.  About my time in South Africa**

Not even lions and giraffes could keep me awake.  We had been driving for more than 10 hours and I couldn’t hold my head up any longer.  The two Czech climbers in the front seat of our car had, however, tapped into superhuman reserves of attentiveness and energy.  Like the predators they stalked, the climbers too scanned the horizon for animals.  For hours and hours, they looked into the thick rain-nourished grasses of Kruger National Park, one of Africa’s most famous game reserves.

“Andrew!  Wake up!  Wake up!  Five giraffes to the right!” one would scream.

I’d spring from my sleep and stare out the window.  Sure enough—five giraffes lumbering through the bush, a fleet of yellow necks and heads bobbing in a green sea of dense brush.

At first I felt guilty about nodding off during the drive.  My two Czech friends had eagerly explained the night before how Kruger was one of the highlights of their trip to South Africa, how they planned to drive for 12 hours in the park to maximize their chances of seeing as many animals as possible.  To them, my napping toward the end of our ride must have seemed fueled by uninterest.  Exhaustion, thankfully though, slaughters preoccupations and worries, and it soon left me unconcerned about what my two wide-eyed companions thought of me.  I was tired.  A relentless sun, music-less driving, and 10+ hours sitting in the same position left me spent.

South of a camp called Lower Sabie, for a magical stretch of road that lasted for about 25 miles or so, a thin band of black, baked pavement rolled over undulating stretches of tree-spotted savannah, verdant moss-green scenery brightened with outcroppings of rust-colored rocks.  The animals, apparently, also thought this part of the park was particularly beautiful and decided to congregate here.  Sometimes in a single clearing, we spotted warthogs, impala, an elephant or two, and a pack of buffalo—all grazing or drinking in the midst of one another.  All were quiet.  Even us two-legged animals in the car were left speechless.

By the end of the day, I realized I had seen my fair share of exotic animals because I stopped taking pictures.  When a pair of black rhinos 15 feet to the right of the car didn’t motivate me to pull out my camera, I knew it was time to head to camp and call it a day.

In a place like Kruger, a place so soaked in sacredness that the interconnectedness of all things is as easy to see as a lone giraffe in a field, I was reminded of my place in the universe, that I am no more or less a creature than the impala at the waterhole or the lion in the shade.  In the park’s diversity I saw time herself at play, a slow pulsing force that has used its long wake of passed minutes like a sickle to carve teeth into tusks, skulls into horns.

*****

Race emerged into conversations like a thick haze descending upon a valley.  Without any overt instigation on our parts, the R-word awoke from the soft safeness of our introductions, our anecdotes, and charged our sentences, pulling us fast and hard toward awkward moments of stalled conversation, moments when something honest flares and shuts up a crowd.  It was race that spun stories and blushed faces; it made the cooling of food pass unnoticed.

I wasn’t surprised.  In South Africa, a place long cloaked with the smothering rags of racial inequality, a country only recently exposed to the raw reality of newly unrestricted interracial coexistence, race was not something alive solely in the intellectual confines of the mind.  It permeated one’s essence.

Over smoking barbecues, hostel dinner tables, and long drives, I talked about race with South Africans.  Someone told me things were far better now for blacks, easier now, thanks to apartheid’s end; whites were struggling to fit in to a post-apartheid society.  In South Africa, this person explained, the government has installed a type of affirmative action policy that forces companies to meet ‘race quotas’.  Because of this pressure to have certain percentages of black and white employees, blacks are often favored when applying for jobs.  (One political party went so far as to post campaign posters that read ‘Too white to work?  Vote for us.’)

Someone else told me that these race quotas apply to universities as well, and because universities are accepting black students who aren’t necessarily qualified enough to attend the university, the university’s diplomas and its reputation are, in the words of the person I spoke to, becoming ‘watered down’.

One man asked me why I was riding in a local taxi van, a type of transport commonly used by only blacks in South Africa.  When I told him it was the quickest way to get to where I wanted to go, he didn’t totally accept my answer.  He became suspicious and stared at my face, looking for hints as to my real reason for being in the cab.  Two men later called one of these taxi vans a ‘kaffir taxi’, as in, “Why in the world did you take a bloody kaffir taxi?” (In South Africa, the word ‘kaffir’ is a pejorative word for blacks and is as strong or stronger than the N-word in the United States.)

One woman explained how happy she was to see whites and blacks finally communicating, finally walking down streets and working and eating together.  “We’ve come so far since the end of apartheid, it’s impossible not to be excited about the future,” she said.

One man, though, told me about how seeing interracial couples makes him sick to his stomach.  He said that when interracial couples have children, they’re being selfish:  ‘colored people’, people born to mixed parents, are ostracized in South African society; knowingly giving birth to a colored baby, this man argued, is nothing short of reckless and cruel.

Wrapping my brain around the different race issues affecting South Africa was challenging.  In hindsight, actually, I failed miserably at it.  Even coming from the U.S., from a place with a similarly race-loaded past, I still couldn’t figure out how racism was able to thrive in the South African psyche.  The black people I spoke to on the trip were just as kind as everyone else.  While taking various taxi vans around the country, it seemed like black drivers and passengers on the vans went out of their way to watch over me and make sure I got where I needed to go.  The black people I met acted…well…normal.  And in turn, I acted normal.  And we talked.  And when one black man I met at a bus stop refused to let me pay for my bus fare, I thanked him and started up a conversation with him.  And that was that.  Two humans bouncing a small kindness between them, doing what folks do.

How many more generations need to pass in South Africa before the truth that men are men triumphs over the fallacy of racism?

*****

I just wanted directions.  Nothing more.  I didn’t need a map, I didn’t need someone to hold my hand and walk me around—just directions.  When I got off the taxi and asked a barber sitting under his sidewalk tent, the one with pictures of smiling black people with fresh haircuts painted on the side of it, how I could get to a hostel 10 blocks away, he directed me to the police station, just up the road.  At the police station, immediately after I talked to the cop behind the counter, I knew something was up.

“Why did you walk here to the police station?”  the cop asked.  Tall and black, it was only his height that set him apart from the group of his peers working behind him.

“Uh, I don’t have a car.  I left the taxi van depot and headed here so I could find the hostel.  Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No, no, it’s just that we don’t usually get people who just walk in here like that,” he said.  By ‘people’, it was clear he meant ‘white people’.  He paused for a second.  “Let me look for a map.  I’ll show you where the hostel is and we can walk over there together.  It’s safer for you if I walk—”

Before he could finish his sentence, I heard a voice over my shoulder.

“Are you crazy walking around here with that backpack on?  Really, are you crazy or something?”

I turned around.  A squat white cop with beady eyes, small glasses, crossed arms, and a gun strapped to his hip stared at me with a furrowed brow, waiting for my answer.

“What do you mean?  We’re downtown—this area doesn’t seem too dangerous at all.  It felt—” I tried to explain, but the white cop cut me off.

“It’s plenty dangerous.  You walking around like that—it’s like you have a red spot on the back of your head.  You’re a target they can spot from miles away,” the cop said smugly.  He looked me up and down.  He pondered my predicament—being white in downtown in broad daylight—for a moment or two, staring at me, and I almost laughed at how silly the whole scene was.  I wanted to tell him that some of the seedy border towns I cycled through in South America would probably make his quaint beat seem like a particularly clean stretch of Sesame Street, but I resisted.

“OK, hey, I’ll drive you there.  Let’s go, I’ll take you to the hostel,” the cop finally said, surprising me.  “It’s safer.  If you walk there, you’ll never make it.”

I couldn’t help it—I smiled.  Fatalism, when completely irrational, can paint a grin on any face.  Fascinated by this fear-filled chap in front of me, I accepted his offer with hopes that we’d get to talk a bit in the car before we reached the hostel.  Turned out that I didn’t need to do much talking—the cop did enough for the both of us.

When we drove away, he began to explain the flood of warnings he unleashed back in the station house.

“Look,” he said, pulling his car out of the parking lot, “I don’t like black people.  Lots of people here won’t admit that because it’s not politically correct to say.  Lots of people would say they love blacks even when they’re scared to death of ‘em.  I’m just being honest.  I’ve had enough bad experiences with blacks to be able to honestly say I don’t like ‘em.  And if that makes me a racist, so be it.  So be it, really.”

He turned toward me to see what I thought about that.  I didn’t know what to think about that, so I just said, “OK.”

He continued, switching angles and trying to explain his black-people-fear another way.  “I work in the detective unit here.  I went to school for IT, for computers, but I couldn’t find any work because I’m white.  So I became a detective.  Anyway, that’s another story.  My point is that this city isn’t safe.  We have 100,000 people living here and 5-15 house burglaries a night.  All black burglars.  They want what the white’s have—the cars, the houses—everything, really.  It’s just totally out of hand now, I’m telling you.  The crime here is not a joke,” he pleaded.

We came to a red light.  I couldn’t resist telling him about the people I’d met earlier in the day.

“It’s amazing to hear, day after day, about how much tension there is between whites and blacks here,” I said.  “Maybe I just keep getting lucky, but I’ve only met friendly black people on my rides in taxi vans and buses.”  I knew I was probably coming off as naïve, as someone who is blinded by the ignorance that comes with a short visit to a place, but I didn’t care:  In the face of the cop’s racist negativity, to not speak of my positive experiences with black people just hours before would have been unfair to the people who had been kind to me.  When the black man a few days earlier had bought me my bus fare, he also bought himself the right to be defended in conversations.  “It almost seemed like people went out of their way to be friendly to me,” I added.

The cop shook his head, half in disbelief, half in disgust over hearing I’d spent so much time sitting in cramped vans next to black people.

“You got so lucky,” he said, shaking his head.  “Really, you can’t trust these people.  You were more lucky than you know.”

*****

It was hard to take the man seriously with the cluster of beer bottles sitting in front of him.  There weren’t many bottles—maybe three or four—but there were just enough to form a sort of wall from behind which the man bounced around and fired sentences at me.  He didn’t seem drunk, just energized, wide-eyed.  So when he started telling me about how he sees his Kruger Park wildlife guide job as a sort of advocacy post, one that enables him to deflate South Africa’s negative reputation from the ground up, one guest at a time, I at first didn’t know what to make of him.  As he spoke more and more, though, as he leaned over his wall of bottles and nearly exhausted me with the intensity of his stare, an unblinking fierce wall of a gaze, his words got sharp and heavy, cutting themselves into thick sticky sentences.

“So many guests come to South Africa and expect nothing more than race issues and violence.  They know apartheid, and they know about the murder rates, but they don’t know about how magical this place is,” the man said, smiling.  He had a neat circular goatee that changed into different geometric shapes when he pulled his smile taut or sipped his beer.  “When we’re staring out at a baby elephant rubbing up against its mother as the sun is setting on the horizon, I see that moment as a time to talk about South Africa and how amazing it is.  I don’t sit there and let them take pictures quietly.  I try to use the moments to communicate a message to them, one they’ll take home and tell their friends.”  He paused.  “Everyone loves talking about the murders and the racism, but making time to fight against that stuff and talk about the greatness here—that’s the challenge.  Luckily I’m in a position where I get to do that everyday.”

Later on in the night, when I asked the guide what was the most memorable scene he’d ever seen in his five years of driving through the park, he told me about the time he had seen one or more of each of South Africa’s five most dangerous animals, a group of animals referred to as the Big Five—lions, leopards, elephants, buffalos, and rhinos—drinking from the same watering hole.  “All five in one picture!  Man, the tourists were so happy on that tour.  Got some big tips at the end,” he said, laughing.

*****

As a white principal of an all black school, she baffled her friends.  They didn’t quite understand her.  They asked her why she drove ‘out there’ everyday, into an environment that was so clearly foreign to her.  These kids, she would say, deserve to be helped; without people fighting for them, black students in a post-apartheid South Africa would struggle to shake off the baggage their parent’s generation had heaped upon them.  She expected the job to be hard, but the ways in which her position grew complex shocked her.

“We lost two teachers last year to HIV, and three are sick now.  Three more out of a staff of 24,” she said, her voice trailing off and getting lost in the drizzle of the summer night.  Dinner was long over.  The conversation made room in its sentences for sadness, for honesty.  “And the sad thing is that the teachers won’t tell me their sick.  They’ll try to hide it—calling out sick all the time, leaving work early and saying they just don’t feel well.  Everyone knows who’s sick and who’s not.  It’s impossible to hide.”

She told me about how her staff bonded at funerals rather than teacher workshops.  How when a teacher gets really sick, all of the staff congeal into one mass of support that will surround a teacher stretched out on a hospital bed.  How one teacher was convinced that an evil spirit, rather than HIV, was ravaging her body and leaving her exhausted.  How, as baffling as it may sound, men and women at her school reveal inspiring amounts of motivation and intelligence during the school day, only to take huge risks with their lives at night.

When she told me how odd it sounded to her to listen to her teachers talking about their belief in holy spirits, how she didn’t understand how her staff could believe in such things, I couldn’t help but notice the irony in her remark:  She, as a Christian, someone who believed in the Holy Spirit, thought it was strange that other people believed in holy spirits.

After two incredible days with the principal and her husband, days filled with long drives over winding ridge lines and even longer nights filled with good conversation about traveling, spirituality, and all things South Africa, I bid the couple good-bye and headed for the taxi van depot.  Another long ride in a cramped van carried me on to Swaziland.

Wednesday 2/4/09 Near Lujan, Argentina

I laughed in the camp ground owner’s face when she told me how much it would cost to pitch my tent for the night.

“Sixty pesos,” she said.

I thought I misheard her. Sixty pesos was about $17 U.S.

“Did you say six or 60?” I asked.

“Sixty.”

I laughed. I hadn’t paid for a single camp spot in weeks because Argentina is full of free municipal parks, and the one time I did pay for a spot I paid $2 U.S. I didn’t want to waste time trying to figure out why she was attempting to rip me off, why she was taking me for a fool—the sun was casting long shadows around us. I turned the bike around and started riding, looking for the first inviting dirt road that came my way.

*****

With the bike bouncing under me from all the rocks and ruts in the road, looking for a camp spot amidst the surrounding farmland was difficult; avoiding potholes and jagged rocks demanded my full attention. I came to a quiet intersection where three dirt roads came together at odd angles. Towns and pavement were far enough away that no car horns or engine noise cluttered the sounds in the breezes. Leaves rustled in the wind. A dog in a neighboring field yelped and cried. I looked down the narrow dirt roads stretching out before me and tried to determine which would be most promising.

A voice called out to me.

“Hey! Hey what are you looking for?”

I turned to my left. There, a stone’s throw from the road, surrounded by a pack of dogs in a dusty yard behind a mold-painted house, a man sat in the shade. I hadn’t noticed him. He was shirtless, exposing a plump tanned belly, and wearing the thin canvass slippers you see all over Argentina. He waved me over.

“What are you looking for out here?” he asked in Spanish. Closer to him, I could see that deep, squiggly grooves zig-zagged across his brow, giving his countenance a stern intensity.

“I’m trying to find a camp spot for the night. Do you think it would be OK if I camped in this field of soybeans here?” I asked, motioning to the field across the way.

He laughed.

“Are you crazy? You camp there and you’ll be robbed. For sure you’ll be robbed! No, no. Camping anywhere in these fields will bring you trouble,” he said, shaking his head. “You can camp here tonight, behind my house. It’s safer,” he said.

“Are you serious? It’s dangerous here?” I asked in disbelief. The area looked like so many other peaceful rural areas I’ve visited on the trip. Nothing but fields and small farmers’ homes. “Isn’t it quiet out here at night? It’s all farmland around here,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s all farmland, but at night we get lots of people around here from the city, people who don’t live here. They run drugs to and from Buenos Aires out here. Lots of drugs. And there are thieves here, too. Horse thieves,” he said, holding my gaze with his bloodshot eyes.

I’d never heard of horse thieves, but I didn’t tell him that.

He continued, “Just last week I lost two of my best horses. We all lost a bunch. In total, 120 horses gone in a single week. One week!”

The man took a long swig from the large dented metal cannister in his hand. It looked like a cross between a coffee mug and a tea kettle. I assumed it was water or something cold, it being such a hot and humid afternoon and all. He cleared his throat and offered me the cannister.

“Wine?” he asked.

Sweat was stinging my eyes. “Is it cold?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.

“No, no of course not,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said. “It’s too hot for warm wine.”

The man thought for a second. “Well you like mate don’t you? You drink mate, right?” he asked, picking apart my excuse. “Mate’s hot. Mate’s hotter than this wine!” he said. Pause. “Well, it’s here if you want some,” he said, drawing the mug to his lips.

*****

Sallo [pronounced Sa-show] has only met two other men named Sallo in his life. “One was a dentist, the other was a doctor. Ha!” he said. Recently divorced, Sallo lives alone in a small dilapidated house at the edge of a two acre horse pen. He raises sport horses that he sells to polo clubs. He told me that he has 220 horses on a farm nearby and only uses the area behind his house as a showing area when prospective buyers want to see a group of horses before a purchase. Sallo carried himself in the horse pen in a way that revealed his decades in the business. He walked confidently up to a bucking horse and grabbed its mane to control it. He whistled and the horses all came from the far corner of the pen to their trough. When he gave a special grunt, a female horse stopped neighing and squeeling and stood still so a male horse could mount her. Despite looking disheveled, despite his tea kettle of wine, he was a firm master of his surroundings.

I set up my tent, filled my water bag and took it to a far corner of the property to shower, and started cooking dinner. Every once in a while, Sallo would approach and comment on how much he liked this thing or that among my camping equipment. “That’s a beautiful tent!” he’d say, or “With a stove like that, you can cook anything you want anywhere you want to.” I finished dinner and was cleaning up when one of his friends rode into the backyard on a horse-drawn wagon.

The man, a fellow farmer, donning the typical gaucho attire–floppy faded beret, loose shirt, embroidered thick waistband, baggy pants–talked with Sallo for a while near the back of the house. Sallo disappeared at one point only to emerge from the house a moment later with a set of clothes that mirrored his friend’s in every way but color. He mounted his horse and rode over to me.

“We’re going out for a while. I’ll be back later tonight. Make yourself at home, friend! You’re safe here, don’t worry,” he said. He smiled and turned his horse. He threw his legs out away from the horse and then slammed them into the animal’s sides. The thing burst into a sprint and bolted out of the yard. His friend slowly turned the wagon around and stopped to close the gate on his way out.

*****

Sallo stepped from his house into the damp morning air with a mate cup and straw in one hand and an old kettle in the other. Pouring hot water in the cup ever few minutes or so, he sat on a bench and watched me eat my oatmeal.

Above: A horse drinking water just after sunrise

“How’s that oatmeal?” he asked, passing me the mate cup, curious.

I pulled the bitter tea into my mouth, drained the cup, and passed it back to Sallo.

“Delicious,” I said.

“Oatmeal in the morning! You foreigners love interesting foods. Very interesting. You know what I eat for breakfast?” he asked me.

I was afraid about what he was going to say. Wine? The flesh of one of the most recent drug smugglers he’d caught and grilled up?

He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Meat. Meat! Here we love our meat.” Pause. Long pull on the metal mate straw. “Hey, you know what I eat for lunch?”

“Meat?” I guessed.

“Correcto,” he said, smiling. “And dinner? What’s your guess?” he asked.

“More meat?” I suggested, laughing.

“Correcto!”

*****

As I was pushing the bike out of Sallo’s yard, I rememberd to tell him about something I’d seen the night before.

“Last night I saw one of the dog’s with a chicken in its mouth,” I said. “It was a white chicken with—”

“Was it dead or alive?” he interjected, seriousness focusing his eyes and pulling his head up.

“Uh, dead,” I said. “Why?”

“Oh good. No, if it was dead, that’s OK. That means he just found it dead somewhere. That’s OK.”

“Oh. OK,” I said. We shook hands. I bounced back down the road and eventually found my way to the smoothness of pavement.

Above: Some video I shot in Sallo’s yard when I spotted the dog with the chicken. I’m a bit distracted at the start of this video because of the chicken-in-the-mouth thing. And yes, I look like a sweaty mess in this video–it’s hot here, people!

Above: Three scans from Gauger’s Saint Lucia journal. Taken from the ‘Roam’ section of NotesfromtheRoad.com

Friday 1/30/09 Lincoln, Argentina

Eric Gauger, the creator of the fantastic travel website Notes from the Road, recently posted some scans of his Moleskine journals. The scans, found here, are fascinating. He uses his journals much as DaVinci did: to document and give voice to his curiosity. They are filled with bright drawings of the birds and plants he spots on his trip, maps, watercolor sketches of vistas he sees, and notes from interviews he conducts. Scribbled and painted into the pages of his journals is the essence of why many of us travel–the intoxicating vibrancy of felt experience.

Check them out if you have a moment and are looking for some inspiration.

Above above: Kinsuke Kikuchi, wearing one of his company’s hats, tends the grill. Above: One of Kinsuke’s 5,000 live bee hives. The boxes all bear his family name, Kikuchi, on their bottom panels.

Monday 1/26/09 Realico, Argentina

Kinsuke plucked a bee from the slab of honeycomb that was bleeding honey onto the table. His fingers were sticky with honey from the piece of honeycomb he just ate, so catching the bee was simple. Pinching the insect by its wings, he held it to the surface of his tanned skin. The bee plunged its stinger into Kinsuke’s arm. He looked at me.

“See? Nothing. I don’t feel anything,” he said to me in Spanish. He grinned.

He flicked the bee away and passed me the honeycomb. I ripped a piece off, careful not to disturb the bees crawling about it, and shoved a piece into my mouth.

*****

Kinsuke Kikuchi, a 66-year-old man with silvery hair and a boyish face, likes to let other people do the talking. He listens when you speak, his eyes and smiles registering understanding, and then when you finish talking, he turns toward the window and looks out at his Japanese pear trees swaying the wind. He’s comfortable in the nakedness of silence. Everything I learned of him I had to extract with hooks of gentle questioning.

Kinsuke was born in Yamagata, Japan and moved to Argentina when he was 24-years-old. In the past 42 years of his life in South America, he has visited Japan seven times. All the techniques he uses in his trade, beekeeping, were learned in Japan and the United States. His business is now producing half the honey it did many years ago, and this saddens him. He spends half the year in his house in Argentina and half the year in the countryside with his queens, workers, and hives. He loved hearing about my impressions of life in Japan, about things I noticed in the Japanese psyche and things I missed.

*****

The chicken and squash sizzled on the grill and perfumed the air with the scents of their spices. Flies and moths by the dozens swarmed in wild orbits around the single light blazing overhead, creating a mad ball of life that Kinsuke said reminded him of how nice it was to be in the countryside during summer. Farmers, some from Kinsuke’s spread and a few from neighboring farms, came to the beat-up table, the one with legs made of old bee boxes, just after dusk to eat and talk. Their exhaustion unwound them in their chairs. They all knew each other and all ate with Kinsuke often; none felt uncomfortable gobbling up food from Kinsuke’s plates.

Above: The eating area and the grill behind the employee dorm building on Kinsuke’s farm

Manning the grill, carefully spreading coals under the cooking food to keep the sizzling steady, Kinsuke listened as his friends talked, occasionally interrupting them when something came to his mind. When he spoke up, they all quieted and listened.

“Hey, everyone, listen to what Andrew thinks about how clean Japanese cities are. Andrew, tell them,” he would say, out of the blue. Or, when the talk turned to food, he said, “Oh, Andrew, tell them about Japanese food, tell them what you think of it.”

Hearing my anecdotes and impressions of Japan reminded Kinsuke of the land he missed. He liked Argentina, even going so far as to admit that life in Japan would have been much harder, much more taxing, had he spent his life there instead of in his adopted Argentine homeland, but he openly complained about the aspects of Argentine life that irked him.

“The food people love here is so simple,” Kinsuke explained. “Meat and bread. Nothing more. At least in Japan there is healthy fish to eat. Right, Andrew?” Pause. I nod. He smiles. “See, guys. There’s fish there, like he says,” he continued. “Here, no variety. Here—only meat and bread. And people wonder why we see so many big bellies in Argentina! Ha!”

At one point, the conversation turned to the changing landscape, the ways in which the pampa, in her crops, was beginning to mirror man’s greed and laziness. I asked one farmer with a tangle of black curls atop his head to explain.

“The problem is that everyone is switching to soybeans. Everyone, every single farmer out there, wants to grow soybeans now. They’re easy to grow and sell for a good price. Farmers are giving up the crops their grandfathers grew just so they can make more money. I don’t even know what you can make with soybeans! How do you eat them?! Boil them? Do you crush them? I know my family and I don’t eat them, for sure. What about you guys?” The farmer motioned to the other men seated at the table.

Like the farmer, they too didn’t eat soybeans. Discovering this gave him a surge of energy.

“You see! You see this!” he said to me, pointing to the other men. “None of us eat this stuff that everyone is growing now. That’s the problem. We used to grow for us. We used to grow and raise everything we needed. Now we grow things for people in other countries, things other people eat. Why?” Pause. “You know that Argentina exports 90% of what it grows on its soil?”

I told him I didn’t.

“Ninety percent! Why? We have so much beautiful land here, land that can grow all we need. Instead, we use the land to grow things for other people, things that hurt the crops we love and use.”

Above: One of many fields of sunflowers I passed the day before I met Kinsuke

“What do you mean by ‘hurt’? How are the soybeans hurting you guys?” I asked.

“Just look at Kinsuke! He’s a perfect example!” the curly-haired farmer exclaimed. “He’s running 5,000 hives now. You know how many he had 20 years ago. when farmers around here were growing lots of alfalfa, a plant that the bees love? Ten thousand! His production is half of what it once was because there aren’t enough flowers for the bees anymore. Everyone is growing soybeans instead of alfalfa.”

“Yeah,” another farmer, one with wide old yellowed eyes, chimed in, “lots of things are more expensive now because we can’t easily get them from our neighbors anymore. If lots of farmers switch to one crop, we have to rely on other countries to give us the things we don’t grow.”

Kinsuke spoke up. “This is a problem, of course, but I think the weather is really hurting us the most now. It’s hot when it’s not supposed to be hot. It rains when it shouldn’t. I have that swimming pool over there because the bees don’t find enough water on their own anymore—I need to help them now.”

*****

I was hiding from the sun in the shaded patio of the gas station mini-mart. A short man approached with a soda sweating condensation in his hand. He asked me where I was headed. I told him. He asked me where I started. I told him. When I asked him if it was true what the gas station attendant said, that there was only one camping area in town—in the grassy field behind the gas station, he smiled. “No, there’s another area where you can camp: at my house. I have a farm near here. A honey farm. You can camp there tonight if you like. You can take a shower, swim in the pool, have your own bed if you like. Come on, follow my truck.” Without waiting for me to think over his proposal, the man walked over to his car and started the engine. I hopped on the bike.

*****

In the morning, after a bunch of us huddled around a table and shared rounds of mate, Argentina’s staple drink–a type of tea consumed from a communal cup with a special metal straw, Kinsuke loaded me up with a large jar of honey, half a dozen Japanese pears from his orchard, and his business card. He pointed to the phone number on the card, “This is the important part. If you have any problems anywhere else in Argentina, call this number. Also, if you want to stay with friends of mine in Huinca or Buenos Aires, just call.”

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Above:  Pius and Stefan after a dip in the mud volcano!  Colombia.

Monday 1/26/09 Realico, Argentina

Pius and Stefan, my riding partners in Colombia and Bolivia, have just finished their 20 month, 20,000 mile ride from Alaska to Argentina. Despite fierce winds that made urinating (among a million other things) difficult, Stefan’s broken front fork 120 miles from the finish, and long remote stretches of road in southern Patagonia, the boys pushed through the last few weeks to bring a successful finish to their ride: not only did they finish on-schedule, but they did so safely and in good spirits.

Congrats guys!

If you want to read about the big finish or see pictures and text posts from their ride, go here.

Tuesday 1/20/09 San Luis, Argentina

Meet Moto.

Motomitsu Ikemoto.

He’s 61-years-old and he’s on a two-month cycling trip from Buenos Aires to Santiago. Yeah, he’s a Japanese grandfather who’s about to cycle his bike over the Andes. Yes, he founded Japan’s only adventure cycling organization 30 years ago. And yes, he rode his bicycle around the world on a four-year-trip when he was in his 20s. But all of these things don’t make him so cool.

Moto is awesome because when I saw him, in the middle of a hot afternoon on a shadeless stretch of baked asphalt dozens of miles from towns in all directions, he was as positive and cheerful as anyone could be. He couldn’t stop smiling. Sure, he was hot and told how uncomfortable he felt in the relentless midday sun, but he didn’t let the oppressive heat taint his attitude. He reminded me how important the mind is in creating our experiences, in writing our memories and scripting our moods.

Moto is revisiting places he visited by bike 37 years ago. He’s going slower now, and, thanks to the warnings of his family and employer, he’s not camping anymore and is instead staying in hotels–”They wouldn’t let me bring my tent this time because they said I’m too old to camp in strange places anymore”–but he’s still going.  He’s still moving, still plotting, still working on projects and bike trips and newsletters.

He looks like he’s in his 40s and has the energy of a candy-fueled preschooler.

Interesting Moto fact: In the 1980s, he carried his bicycle to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa’s highest peak. I couldn’t figure out why he did this exactly–he admitted that he couldn’t ride a single inch of the route up or down, that he had to carry the bike the whole way, but I’m guessing he just really bonded with his bike over the years and didn’t want to leave her, lonely and unloved, down at the mountain’s base.

If you can read Japanese, check out his bike club’s website here.

*****

Where will you be when you’re 61?

What sort of smiles will you sport?

What sort of energy will you spill out into the world?

Above: Me with David and his family. Saturday 1/17/09 San Martin, Argentina

Flying along through the endless flatness of the Argentine pampa, lost in the weirdness of the lyrics of a Neutral Milk Hotel album, I was startled when I spotted a police van pull in front of me and slam on its brakes. I stopped behind it. Two cops approached me and asked me where I was heading, where I started riding, what I had in my trailer bag. I assumed I broke some law, that bikes weren’t allowed on the highway or something. It wasn’t until the questions ended that I realized I had done nothing wrong.

One cop, a massive wall of a man with a mischievous grin, satisfied with my answers, turned to me and said in Spanish, “OK! Let’s go! We are going to have a BBQ with some of the other cops and you have to come. Do you want to put the bike in the van or do you want to follow us to the station?”

*****

Behind the Special Forces building in the San Martin Police building complex is a recreation area that gets used every Saturday. Once a week, on and off-duty officers gather around the BBQ pit for a three-hour lunch. Pounds and pounds of meat sizzle on the grill. Cavernous communal bowls are filled with salad. A five-liter jug of wine, one that takes two hands to lift, is placed in the center of a long picnic table.

As the officers eat, they crack jokes and talk about work, local gossip, and, occasionally, murders that are baffling nearby police squads. Because I was the BBQ rookie at the table, and because I was from a country many of the officers had an interest in, much of the conversation involved me answering questions about this subject or that. At one point, one officer asked me for my opinion about Las Islas Malvinas, or, depending on who you are speaking to, the Falkland Islands. In Argentina, these islands are a point of pride and sadness, the struggle of their ownership between Argentina and England representing not just land or economic benefit but identity, as well.

David, the officer I met out on the highway who invited me to the BBQ, picked up his steak knife.

“Look here,” he said, digging his steak knife into the soft, old wood of the picnic table. He started scratching lines into the table’s surface. “This is Argentina. And these are the Malvinas Islands. Here,” he pointed to a small group of squiggly circles near the edge of the bottom of a squiggly continent. “And this here, this all the way over here, this is England.” He scratched a jagged oval 10 or 12 inches away to the right, far from the Argentina squiggles. “See how far away this country is from the Malvinas?” All the officers laughed. “Now, what do you think, who deserves these islands–Argentina or England? Who is the owner and who is the invader?”

*****

As lunch wound down, David asked me what my plans were for the afternoon.

“Well, I have lots of energy now after such a huge lunch,” I said in Spanish, “so I’m going to try to ride another 60 or 70 kilometers.”

David frowned.

“No, no. Come on, it’s Saturday! Relax!” he said. “Here’s what you’re going to do: First, you’re going to come with me to the museum in San Martin. The museum is in San Martin’s old house. You know who San Martin is, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yeah, San Martin was the guy who–”

“He was one of the most important men in Argentina’s history! And he lived here, in this little town!” David yelled, cutting me off. “General San Martin is responsible for liberating Argentina from European control. So you have to see where he lived. After that, I’ll take you to my nephew’s baptism. We’ll eat some more. Then, tonight you can come back to my house, sleep, and tomorrow you leave. After breakfast, of course,” he said smiling.

I had only done 50 kms. (30 miles) that morning and really wanted to put in some more distance before calling it quits for the day, but David was right: Seeing the sights in his tiny little pampa town was more important that traveling for a few more hours that day.

I accepted his invitation.

*****

David, 44, moved into his quaint home on a quiet street 20 years ago. When he sits in a chair on the sidewalk in front of his house–shirt off, glass of Coke in hand, eyes focused on the street and all the cars and people passing in the late afternoon heat–he does so like a mayor attending a local parade.

He waves to and greets the old man on the bicycle, the one with cartons of eggs in his front basket. (“He’s 92-years-old. Still riding!” David tells me once the man cruises past.)

He asks the two kids on bikes, the ones chasing each other in circles in the street, how their school year is going. One kid is soaked with sweat and David pours him a small glass of Coke. The kid sits there and drinks it, staring at the street, just like David.

His neighbor emerges from his house to get something from his car and David yells out to him, “Enrique, come here, meet this crazy guy riding his bicycle all over the place!” Enrique comes over and David tells him all the details of my trip, correctly recalling everything I had told him hours earlier.

*****

When it came time to sleep, after finishing off the last of the homemade pizzas David’s wife prepared for dinner, I started bringing my things into the home’s office. David grabbed my shoulder.

“Are you crazy? You can’t sleep in there. Here, this is your room,” he said, turning me around and pushing me in the direction of the room he shares with his wife.

“I can’t take this room, it’s yours!” I said. “Please, really, I don’t mind–”

“No, don’t be silly,” David interjected. “You’re our guest. Please, sleep here.”