Moving to URL Randomgypsyramblings.com!

Okay Gang, we’re moving!

I’ve decided to take my travel blog to it’s own URL and overhaul it into something even better. If you’ve been following my blog or just drop in from time to time to check it out please subscribe to the feed at Random Gypsy Ramblings.

Thus far my blog has been some random vignettes from 15 years of travel around the world. Recently I was informed by Chris that he’d like to see more. He feels it doesn’t go deep enough. He’ll just be getting into a post about a place and then it ends…. So I’m going to work on that.

But the other exciting change about going to Random Gypsy Ramblings is that I’m going to start a new stream of posts as well that are going to be about planning for our next big adventure. Our sailing trip around the world.  While this is still a good 4 years off there is a lot of preparation and discussion taking place on the subject.  I wanted to allow you to take part in the planning phase because you will take part in the trip as well!

And another stream I’m toying around with for Random Gypsy Ramblings is to keep you current on the latest happenings with my international real estate adventure. I’m going to start working with my friend and amazing Realtor, Dawn Williams.  This is a new and fun project and it starts in 5 days in Costa Rica!

So there’s going to be a lot of great things happening on Random Gypsy Ramblings.

Come over and play! I hope you’ll stay!

Leah

Adventure in Our Own Backyard

Travel adventures in my life have usually meant taking off for exotic locals, sailing around islands, jumping off bridges or scuba diving in tropical reefs thousands of miles from home. Just last week I was lamenting the fact that I was missing travel, while at the same time trying desperately to get settled in.

Saturday morning, Chris surprised me and reminded me that travel and adventure can happen in just a day trip right in our own “backyard.” Not all trips have to be comprised of months of backpacking around the world.

When the alarm clock went off at 5 am on a Saturday I was smacking Chris to turn it off. I thought he’d left it set from the day before.  Instead he sat bolt upright in bed, a completely uncharacteristic reaction to an alarm clock for him,  and said we have to be on the road by 6am. Often he talks in his sleep though usually it’s some unintelligible language that must only make sense in the dreams he never remembers.  I thought he was sleep walking and talking.  He said, “Nope I’m awake and we have to get moving. We need to be on the road by 6am.”

Yeah right. As he got into the shower I put the pillow back over my head and was thinking, “You better not be trying to take me on some kind of sunrise bike ride.” I only learned how to ride a bike a few summers ago, and I’m still not so confident on one.  I have to be mentally prepared to go on a bike ride, and surprising me at 5 am on a Saturday is not my idea of preparation.

It soon became apparent that he was not sleep walking but was serious. Begrudgingly I got up, asking what I needed to wear. “Are flip-flops okay?” He said he was checking the weather and it sounded like it would be chilly, I should put on walking shoes. Great not a bike ride but a hike?  My first thought was perhaps this surprised included going to pick up a puppy since I’d been asking for one for a while….and he did forget to get me a birthday present…which I’d been reminding him about for the past 3 weeks.

He kept saying we needed to get on the road early because of traffic and we started heading north instead of south. I honestly had in my mind that maybe we were going to a breeder to pick up a dog, but I figured it would be south. As we headed toward Alexandria my next thought was, “are we going on a hot air balloon ride?” Don’t know why I thought that, but it was early and my mind was crunching. I was still tired and he said, that I’d have time to sleep.  Time to sleep? Are we going to a day spa? Couples massages? (Really not his style but hey it could be mine!)

We pulled into the Huntington Metro Station and got tickets. I just loaded my SmartTrip card so I really didn’t know where we were getting off. As we headed toward DC I figured maybe it was a day of exploring the city since this was now going to be so close to our new home at least for the next couple years.  As we were ridding on the metro  I said oh, “You meant a little nap on the metro as we headed to our destination.”

He just looked at me and said, “Yeah that’s what I meant.” When we got off the metro at Union Station I headed for the daylight and Chris took a sharp left toward the Amtrak lines….okay now I was confused…where are we going?

Chris picked up tickets and we sat in a strategic spot where I couldn’t tell what train was coming into the gate. This was actually becoming fun as I was now sipping my Starbucks and waking up a bit.  I began to realize this was quite a thought out surprise adventure we were on. He kept making references to cutting it close so I knew there was a time-table for whatever it was that waited at the end of the line. As we boarded the train at 8:20 am I now knew we were on a train bound for New York. But it also stopped in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Jersey just to name a few stops.

To throw me off the trail Chris said, if we were going to New York we would have flown…this was really fun, what did he have up his sleeve? Now I really understood his comment about time to sleep after we passed from state to state to state on a 3 plus hour journey through 5 states. But come on, I couldn’t sleep! I was trying to figure out what was going on! As we traveled by train, I updated my facebook friends who were following my Saturday morning surprise. The speculations were funny someone even mentioned carriage ride proposals in Central Park (Yeah right, that would be far too out of character for Chris.)

As we got closer to New York, Chris tried to throw me off track by saying there was more movement to go, and even said we were going to Canada…but I knew this was just a day trip so Canada was just a bit too far out for that. I do always carry my passport though so that really wouldn’t have been a problem.

I was starting to get wise to the surprise, but I didn’t want to spoil the fun, however I did say, “Canada huh, how about Africa.”

As we got of the train in Penn Station in New York City and started walking we found ourselves in Times Square looking up at all the Neon. Chris took out his iphone GPS and was trying to figure out where we needed to be, it was now noon and we were standing in one of the busiest spots in the city where as just hours earlier I was sound asleep in the suburbs of Woodbridge Virginia. We headed to the middle of Times Square to get a better view of what was around. While Chris was looking down at his GPS I was looking all around me and then I said, “Is that what you are looking for?”

And we were here. The Lion King on Broadway! The show was incredible. While the adventure to New York was to see a Broadway show, it wasn’t just any show, instead I was transported to Africa and to places I lived for 7 months.

When I lived in Africa I felt very grounded. There is something magical about Africa; it is a place where history began. The land, the soil and the people are so rich. The tribal undertones of some of the music from Lion King brought back memories in vivid recollection of time spent in an amazing land. For me the show was more than just a show, but also a conduit back to a place and a feeling which centers me on a level that’s hard to explain.

While New York isn’t exactly in our backyard, it is compared to an actual trip to Africa. It was an amazing day put together by an amazing man and just the journey I needed with all the crazy changes going on in our lives lately.

Feeling Like Turkey (Not a Turkey)

I’ve been remiss in writing about travels lately.  I can’t quite explain why, but I think it’s about trying to get settled in to my new digs.

Whenever I pull out my  journals to travel back in time to adventures and world trekking I find myself longing to be back on the travel road. With our recent move to northern Virginia I find myself trying to get settled in and find my rhythm. Two pretty opposite feelings.

I remember when I first was getting settled in to Turkey after spending about 3 months in the middle East and a month in Greece. I hit a point where all I wanted to do was hibernate.  I had just flown into Antalya, a small city on the Turkish coast. It was beautiful there. A great little sea port surrounded by shops and tourism as you wound your way up into the hills.

I couldn’t get into it. I was feeling like I needed to nest, I hung out on the rooftop of the hotel reading a book for days. I was tired from months of travels through Israel, Jordan, and Egypt and I needed to recharge my battery.  I feel a bit like that after our move from Norfolk.

There were months and month of anticipation about this move, we thought we were moving two other times before but each time it never came to fruition. As soon as I decided to start my own business, Blue Gypsy Inc, we finally got orders to move…so now I’m here and most of my business is there. I’m in a position where I need to start building my network here. So I’m digging in and figure it all out.

I’m trying to find a balance here and it’s not quite working yet. I know I’ll find my foundation but for now I feel a bit out of sorts like my first weeks in Turkey.

What A Difference A Decade Makes

Traveling back 10 years ago almost to this day, I remember sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s condo emptying the pots out of her cabinets and crying my eyes out.

I wasn’t anywhere exotic, I was in West Palm Beach Florida. My grandmother had just died and I couldn’t believe I was packing up her entire life, deciding what to throw away, what to give away and what to put in the pile for various relatives.  I felt so old. I was so tired, I was working hard on a liveaboard dive boat in the Cayman’s with a captain that didn’t particularly like me too much.  All in all I’d say it was a pretty terrible 30th birthday.

Now with only days until my 40th birthday I’m packing up a house again. But I’m not sitting on the floor crying into pots and pans. Instead I’m excited about the possibilities. Earlier this year I’ve embarked on the journey of owning my own company, Blue Gypsy Inc. A company that could be operated from anywhere.  I’m shaking the kinks out with my phone system, and I’ve got my email set up for various clients. So now we’ll see how this test run works to Northern Virginia.

I look forward to maintaining my contacts here, while working on a whole new network up there. I’ve got some big plans afoot for Blue Gypsy Inc and hope that the coming year will see some exciting new starts.

While 30 was dreary, 40 will be fabulous!

Inner Journeys in Africa: Reflections of “I Can’t”

Many inner journeys happen while traveling on outward adventures. Today I’m flipping through a dark blue notebook I picked up in Africa. During my second trip back to teach again at Sodwana Bay in South Africa I encountered a woman who had defeated herself before she ever got off the ground…or under the water as the case may be.

Morning Meditations. Different ideas began to free flow through my mind as I moved through my Tai Chi poses out by the pool today. The words, “I can’t” float around in my head.

I love starting my day with Tai Chi it helps me think and clear my head. Today I breathe deeply and exhale any negativity I’ve picked up from my encounters. I send it up in smoke and I am left with a feeling of peace and clarity.  I think about my student JoAnne so adamantly telling me, “I can’t,” as she chocks with tears and slightly ducks her head below water level. She barely tries, and already abandons the idea because of the discomfort of something new.

I try soothing words and stories of my own fears. I reassure her this is a normal reaction to learning something new. She says she wants to scuba dive, but she just can’t, and she knew she couldn’t before she came. She proceeds to tell me that everyone else back home knew she wouldn’t do it.  So she sat there, near tears, telling me two contradictory concepts. In one breath she said, “I can’t.” and in the very next she said, “I really wanted to.”

The words, “I can’t.” in my mind really means “I don’t want to.” It may be a simple, this is not what I want to do, or it could be a more complex game we play with ourselves. It could be that we’ve bought into what others have told us we can and can’t do. And therefore we accept those artificially imposed boundaries on us. Or it could mean we allow fear to stop us before we start.

So many different fears can come into play in these types of situations.  It can become a complex web of self-justified reasons that become so intricately entwined.  In the end, it’s nearly impossible to untie the knot and set ourselves free from our own fears. Self-doubt, what if I fail, what if I look like a fool,  what if others can do it better, why can’t I, what does one more failure do to my overall belief of who I am? What if I’m not perfect, what if people laugh. My heart is pounding and I can’t pin point which fear it is that is causing it.  I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I must quit because I know I can’t…. to me these things all say, “No, I don’t want to.”

But really what people are saying is, “I don’t want to fail.” And if you don’t try, you can’t fail. Or we are saying, “I don’t want to look like a fool. Why is everyone else getting it besides me?” These things are all excuses we make to ourselves.

I remember years before, pushing and pulling a huge coil of line into the lazarette of Lettie G. Howard. It was big and awkward, it was cumbersome and heavier than me.  I kept saying, “I can’t move this!” As I wrestled and pushed with my arms and legs, I repeated my “I can’t” mantra while I kicked it into submission into the corner I had deemed its new place.  Nick, the skipper, laughed while showing a bit of annoyance with me. He told me I had this strange habit of saying I can’t while I continued to do something until it was done.  It was only then that I realized that I used that word a lot. The realization made me more conscious of it and allowed me to almost completely drop it from my vocabulary.

In a way I was padding my bets. I figured if I said I can’t and then failed I could say, “See I told you I couldn’t.” Then somehow I didn’t look like a fool and thus didn’t really fail. Well, because I already told you I couldn’t! No harm done. I tried. On the flip side, if I succeeded it must be impressive because it really wasn’t something that I could do. Now give me the praise and support I deserve. Back then, my existence was then built, to some degree, on other people’s approval.

But it doesn’t quite work that way. People get sick of praising you and encouraging you if you are always asking for praise. They get sick of assuaging your insecurities. It can be draining to deal with someone who is always saying I can’t. After a while if you keep telling someone you can’t, they’ll agree with you to shut you up.

JoAnne had bought into all the “can’ts” that everyone else in her life had given her. It was a programing so strong, and probably something that had existed for so long, it wasn’t a simply task to break her barrier of  “I can’t.” In the end, her “I can’ts” deprived her of seeing some of the most beautiful ocean in the world.

For some they’ve built up limitations for themselves and bought into the “I can’t” mentality. I always say, “If you hear me say the words I can’t, it really means I don’t want to.”

I’ve Lost India….

Holy Crap, I’m missing some of my travel journals! I have 8 colorful journals sitting on my book shelf that I thought were all my travels. I was feeling kind of India today, I wanted to grab my journal from India and float back in time…. but it’s not here!

I kept grabbing journals leafing through and realizing that not one of them was the right one, and then I was trying to envision what the journals I used for my 18 month journey around the world looked like. I’m hoping they are still sitting on my book shelf at Fiddler’s Green.

I can find Africa journals, and Central America Journals, I can find Australia and New Zealand Journals, I can find sailing Journals and Caribbean Journals….wait…here is my Greece to Turkey Journal…but The journals I wrote in form India, Nepal, Hong Kong and Japan are nowhere to be found…  I’m hoping they are at Fiddler’s Green.

Ahhh I’m out of sorts. Perhaps I’ll just show you some of India since I can’t find the words…

Lost In The Mist In Hogsback With Man’s Best Friend

I have dogs on the brain… an old high school friend posted a picture of a great dog needs a home because his owner is being deployed. I’ve been wanting a dog desperately but it never seems to be the right timing.

When I was on the travel road, it was definitely not prime, however I remember several great…and not so great dog encounters while traveling. I’m one of those people who grew up with dogs…big dogs, so I never thought I’d make it this far in life without one.

Stray dog encounters happen a lot while traveling, simply because many countries do not have the affinity for dogs that we have.

While traveling India dogs were all over the place. Mangy and malnourished, many of the dogs caught my heart.  Christof, my boyfriend at the time, would give me hell because it seemed I had more compassion for the street dogs than for the people.  I don’t think that was entirely true, but in India it’s hard to know who is really in need. Many people make a business out of begging and they even maim their children in order to be more pathetic. After a time I became numb to them. Maybe it was something necessary in order to deal with the sights, sounds and smells.

I distinctly remember saying, “The dogs don’t have a choice.” Though really the longer you spend in India the more you understand that the very poor people don’t have much of a choice either.  It’s difficult to move out of poverty and squalor.

When I changed countries from India to Nepal, the scenery, the people, and the dogs changed. I was trekking in the mountains of Nepal where I had an amazing interaction with a stray.

I’d injured my foot and rather than go over the high pass with Christof, I decided to limp back down the way we came. I didn’t have a Sherpa so I was weighted down with my own pack. Christof  and I had agreed to meet back down in Kathmandu in 7 days.

As I was on the first leg of my trek back down the trail, a Tibetan Mountain dog stayed with me from village to village. It was almost as if he was looking out for me. Every time I’d sit down on a rock to rest he’d come up and put his big black head in my lap and look up at me with compassionate brown eyes. The tan markings above his eyes gave him a quizzical look as if he was asking if I’d be okay. His floppy black ears rimmed in white fluffy fur perked, listening for intruders as his long tail wagged with reassurance.

By the third village I found a Sherpa to help me the rest of the way back down. Just as quickly as the dog appeared, he was gone. It’s as if he knew I was going to be fine so he no longer needed to look out for me.

While in Nepal I felt totally protected by a dog. The total opposite was the case while living in a small village in Guatemala. The dogs were pack like. They weren’t so bad during the day. But the night was a different story. It was not unusual to walk home in the dark, or walk around early before the sunrise. If you were alone in the dark and were not careful, you could find yourself too close to a  growling and snapping pack. More than once I found myself afraid of being torn to pieces. Flashlights were a must. As soon as the beam of a light caught them, they’d fade away into the shadows. Whiners instead of warriors.

Backpackers always seem to want to adopt dogs and travel with them…I almost did when a litter of puppies was born under a friend’s house in Utila Honduras. Eleven puppies and I fell in love. I’ve seen several travelers do this, however reality sets in quickly at the first boarder crossing.

Instead we often find ourselves “borrowing” a local dog here and there.

The misty trails of Hogsback and the Dog

I remember staying in a small town in South Africa called Hogsback. This is supposedly the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I wanted to go for a hike through the renowned walking trails, creeks and waterfalls. But even on a good day I get easily lost. That day was thick with mist shrouding the trails and creating a mystical magical environment which could make you believe for a moment in fairies, magicians, and hidden gold rings.

The proprietor assured me  that his dogs knew their way back to the backpacker backwards and forwards and in the dark. the mist would be no problem.  So we set off on a 2 hours walk that turned into a 5 hour journey. The dogs did eventually find their way back but I’ve got to tell you, as I was fording creeks and walking across shaky bridges, sometimes I wasn’t so sure.

The dog from the hostel reminds me of the picture of the dog my friend is trying to find a home.  It brings back memories of all these dogs and so many others along the travel road. And it has me longing for a dog.

Motivation: Why I Traveled Around The World

I just found the root of why I never found my travels very impressive.  People often told me I should write a book, but I would tell them I’m not unique there are other people traveling around the world and I’m nobody. Who is going to read my story?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve started writing several books over the years, and their unfinished carcasses are in folders on my desktop.  But I never really knew what my hook was. In the following journal entry from April of 1995 I was 25 and I was at the beginning of  what would turn out to be nearly a year and a half’s journey around the world. By this point I’d already spent 3 month traveling in Australia and New Zealand on a prior trip in 1993 and I was just 10 days into the start of this one.

When I left on this journey I was trying to get magazines to publish my travels so that I could make some money from writing and photography while out on my adventures. I’d sent out about 25 letters to travel, adventure, and women’s magazines. Mademoiselle actually responded. But instead of a travel tale, they wanted me to write an article about my motivation. What was my motivation for traveling?

I received their letter only 4 weeks before I was scheduled to take off to Greece. My relationship was falling apart, yet again. I’d been in an on-again off-again, push-pull yo-yo ride for 3 years and I believed him to be my soul mate. At the time, I really didn’t understand myself all that well, and why I so desperately thought he was the one. But isn’t hindsight always 20/20?

Add to my love life woes that I was terrified that my mom’s depression was going to “catch-up” with me some day. Every time I’d call to cry about the ups and downs of my relationship she’d say, “See a therapist, you are depressed, it’s hereditary!” My mother’s life was full of, “I wish I had done’s.” She’d suffered from deep clinical depression for about a decade and she continued to inadvertently foist it upon me with her claims of heredity.   Her depression was my own ticking time bomb and I was racing to beat it before it went off.  I was pushing myself outside my comfort zone because I didn’t want to ever look back on my life and say, “I wish I had done.”

My parents kept telling me I was running away from my problems.  I kept arguing that I was running toward something, an adventure, exploration.  I was not willing to admit that I was also running away from things. Now, 15 years later there’s a different level of clarity and understanding.

So yes, Mademoiselle, what was my motivation? Was I really going to tell them I’m getting as far away as possible to escape a fear of depression and to hope my boyfriend, who I was convinced was my soul mate, would miss me desperately… nope.  At 25 I was not likely to bare my soul in the pages of a magazine explaining things I hadn’t yet admitted to myself. The subsequent article I did write was killed instead of published. It probably had no life and depth, but I’d convinced myself it was because my travels were not out of the ordinary. That was the start and end to my magazine writing career.  In my journal entry I’d obviously let the magazine defeat me.

I’m not making some monumental walk around the world like Steve Newman, and I’m not the youngest woman to single-hand a sailboat around the world like Tania Aebi. I’m just Leah.

I’m traveling like other backpackers and I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary…am I? I mean Mademoiselle Magazine didn’t publish my article because it wasn’t anything they hadn’t heard before. There must be a dime a dozen ’round the world travelers from their point of view. But as of yet I haven’t met them.

Many people say I’m brave, many say they admire me. Lots say they’d never do what I’m doing, and ask me why I chose such an unconventional path. I really can’t say why. Sometimes I think I’m on a quest, but for what  I really don’t know. A greater meaning to life? A solution to the world’s problems? I just don’t know. I’m just a Wandering-Jew reverting back to the gypsy past of my Hungarian roots, and maybe the world is my desert until I can make a greater sense of it all.

Other times my parents’ words pound on me and I wonder if  maybe I am running away from all the decisions and realities of my life back home. But I know I’m not just doing it to give space to a boyfriend.  I could move to any other state and have nearly the same effect.

There’s something about traveling the world looking for an answer, yet not knowing the question. How do you explain this to someone? There doesn’t have to be a reason. Maybe curiosity is a reason? Does it matter if my motivation does not fit into a neatly tied package?

In looking back at this journal entry I think It’s more like a cake, there are many ingredients that make up the reasons why I wanted to travel. I was craving life experience. I wanted things to write about. I was escaping my mother’s depression. I was hoping a boy would miss me. I had a great curiosity about the unknown. I wanted to get away from suburbia. But most important, I never wanted to find myself looking back and saying, “I wish I had done.” Knowing the world through experience not just books and other people’s opinions is a completely different view and I wanted to prove to myself that if I could dream it, I could do it.

Motivation can come in many forms and we may not want to, or be capable to, identify all the moving parts at a given time. I’m glad I didn’t dwell too much on the why because the whys changed as I continued to travel. Even throughout a particular journey motivation changed.

I’m a Tigger, I Bounce: The Mad Truck Dash Across Africa

When I was living in Zanzibar, one of the many overland truck tours from South Africa to Kenya came through. I know Zanzibar is an Island, how did a Truck drive to Zanzibar…

These trips that take tourists to all the sites from Cape Town to Nairobi in a little over a month remind me of the college kids who tour 17 European cities in 6 weeks after graduating. It’s not my way of traveling. You spend most of your time on a bus or at least that’s how I envision it. After all we are talking about a distance, as the crow flies, of over 2500 miles. Anyway, there are always alternate side trips that you pay extra for, that get you off the bus for a day or two. Hence we had a lot of tourists travel through Zanzibar that very way. Whirlwind double dive day and boom boom, cross that one off your list you’ve now been diving in Zanzibar.

That particular day however it was nearing the end of my 3 month stint working for the dive shop and I was contemplating ways to get back to South Africa. That day, instead of the typical sunburned tourists from the truck tours, we had the actual operators. That’s where I learned that the trucks go northbound full, and then fly break neck speed on the southern route empty back into J’burg to pick up a new group. This was an intriguing way to hitch a ride back over to SA without having to fly. Or to pay much money.

So I made a deal with the driver and in a couple of weeks when they passed through Tanzania on the way back I was to meet them at a restaurant near a cross roads outside of Arusha. Kind of risky because if I missed them they weren’t going to wait, and it was not a sanctioned trip by the company, (Hence the reason there are no names or links in this post) but worth the adventure.  The following are some observations from my journal during that journey.

Yesterday’s long hot wait at a dusty restaurant on the road to Arusha finally saw my green knight in shining armor. The safari truck, pulled in just as the sun was making ready her plunge.  They were a few hours later, due to blowouts and border crossings. I was beginning to fear I’d missed them, and I’d have to figure out an alternative for my return to South Africa.

Now I feel like a Tigger as “we bounce, we bounce!” This is a good preview for why I don’t want to take an extended truck journey in Africa. Hours and hours of having your guts shaken by poor roads and shocks isn’t my idea of fun, and I can’t even imagine day upon day of it, in a packed hot truck of tourists.  But then again the trip did have its perks. Last night I slept on top of the truck under a blanket of stars (But a real tourist on one of these trips wouldn’t have that option). Our 5am wake up still saw Scorpio and Capricorn dominating the darkened sky.

Today has been a montage of scenery as I’ve watched Tanzania go by through the dusty bug spattered windows. Last night, as the sun went to sleep, the mountains were dotted with fires. If the cooks’ flames were not so orange they could have been mistaken for stars as they blazed their way up to the clear planetarium.

Today the hills scattered with rocks reminded me of Fallen Jerusalem, an island in the British Virgin Islands that looks like the ruins of a city destroyed 7 times over. The greens of corn fields and the watery greens of rice fields stretch out as we climb two thousand meters up into the mountains in the early morning. Mist dances around the trees in a mystical glade. The red clay earth contrasts with the greens and provides the building blocks of each thatched hut village we pass through. Giant sun flowers wink at us from across the fields all golden in the morning.

We climb and bounce our way to the Zambian border. Boarder crossings are always an interesting event and the Zambian border was no different. It was very official. The border authority took out 3 rumpled pieces of carbon and placed them systematically between a white, lime green, baby blue, and florescent yellow receipt. I was assured in quadruplicate that the $25 exit fee was official.

The Zambian sunset was by far the most spectacular I’ve seen in Africa. It was a rainbow color display that lasted for an hour and a half as the sun made her decent through layer upon layer of cumulonimbus. If I wasn’t bouncing along in this truck I would have taken pictures. A lightning display followed the sunset.

The four-day trip was a whirl wind of colors, breathtaking views, animals by the road, and amazing scenes that I knew I wanted to come back and take in at a slower pace some day. But not by overland truck trip, at least not filled with other tourists on a set schedule dictated by a tour.

Feeling Africa: Freedom of Flight Over the Indian Ocean

I’m feeling Africa today and thought I’d post something from my time in Zanzibar.

The sun is just rising up behind me as I sit on my front porch, the sand, and listen to the ocean’s music. The full moon has brought the spring high tide nearly to my door. The fishermen are already up and readying their Ngalawas before the tide recedes leaving their vessels high and dry.

Two butterflies flit by in a playful dance as I watch the morning fishing ritual unfold.

The skipper swims 50 meters out to his anchored dugout trimaran and gently poles it up to the shore’s edge like a Venetian gondolier with two lovers as precious cargo.

As the stern touches the soft sand, 3 crew members hop aboard into the narrow hull of the vessel. One man, perhaps the sail-trimmer, carries a neatly folded and tied bundle of canvas on-board. The fishermen actually use a hybrid boat –Ngalawa hull with the lateen sail used on Dhows.

They push-off again from shore negotiating the gentle swells out to flat water. The sail-trimmer poles through the water. The other two crewmen take spade-like paddles to steady the boat and face her into the wind.  Then they raise the yard, a long pole on a single block and tackle system only loosely lashed around the short forward raking mast. They haul it up over the top of the mast repositioning it to the port side of the canoe.

As these maneuvers takes place, the rear man — sail trimmer and possibly helmsman too–prepares the rudder. He drops it down over the pointed stern and then assembles the tiller by inserting a long rod.  I’d love to see the assembly of this rudder and tiller close-up to see if there is any kind of gudgeon and pintle assembly.

Now that the sail is tied on to the yard, they let fly the canvas and the yard becomes the leading edge of the sail as three crew members haul the yard to the top of the mast.  With the wind behind the sail, it looks like a ghost’s white cloak with still a tie or two remaining near its center.  The man who provides the counterweight on one side of the trimaran balance beams out to the edge of the pontoon with the running stay and brings it in tight. He ties it off to some invisible point on the outer edge of the pontoon to ensure the mast does not snap as the wind fills the sail.

Now the sail is completely unfurled and has a life of her own, she dances as she catches the morning breeze much like the two butterflies playing a game which takes them nearby the water’s edge. The sail shimmy’s as the wind sends ripples across her untrimmed wild surface. Finally the sail trimmer tames her by bringing in the leeward sheet. He sheets in to the center line of the vessel and now the sail falls into her intended place.  This unusual tilted triangle carries the roughly crafted dugout trimaran off like a paper boat skipping across the water.

This same ritual has probably taken place off this very beach in Zanzibar for over 1000 years. I watch intently, drinking in the beauty of the maneuvers. These adept sailors go through the motions as old as time as they sail off across the sun-kissed early morning waters.

Perhaps the spirit of long gone fishermen, those two butterflies cannot escape, nor do they want to, the freedom of flight over the Indian Ocean.