A skinny white guy in a suit of some synthetic taupe-color material drops his pack on the seat next to me and gets back off. I’m immediately nervous. An abandoned bag can mean only one thing. It’s a bomb. Left next to the one American in the bus. It is how we think now isn’t it? Many last minute boarders with big bags. Where’s the guy? How could he know there’d be an American on this particular bus? He really didn’t look very al Qaeda-like; his suit jacket was that of a wine-sipping European and he was clean-shaven. Ah ha, a new disguise—spy first, then those other explosive duties as assigned. I report the bomb…I mean bag…to the bus driver. He looks at me oddly and says the man will be back because he has a ticket. Yeah, like that makes a difference. But he is back before anything blows up.
Rwanda to the border
On the road again…
It’s raining and very green as we climb out of the valley and low hills of Kigali. We’re driving on good roads in a comfortable bus through banana plantations and orderly villages. The spy’s on his cell phone. He has dark lanky hair, sharp features and speaks softly; all I can hear from his language is that its foreign! When he opens his bag I see some clothes and books, no weapons of destruction—but hey I’m an American and we know to look for bombs everywhere. Maybe he’s a German spy…has a LeCarre look about him. He is texting a lot. The spy and I are in the front seat behind the driver—which I booked in advance, not considering the dangers lurking in the most innocuous of places. And I could not possibly know the bus driver would talk loudly and constantly to his assistant for the next six hours all the while driving as though pursued by demons–a ride worthy of Hollywood.
Cool. Rain. We keep climbing. I don’t eat or drink before long bus rides therefore eliminating the need to eliminate so I’m always comfortable. It is an uneventful ride to the border. Past fine houses in the hilly suburbs, tiny villages dotting the banana-growing hillsides, people walking, biking, always with bundles. Black children in blue uniforms in red schoolyards. Red mud-brick houses, blue-painted concrete storefronts, green and yellow bananas. Nice. Gauguin-esque.
Never to far from home
In an hour or so we cross the border with little hassle. I haven’t gotten a visa in advance and am told I must get it at the tourism office when I reach Bujumbura. I cannot, I say, because I will return to Kigali too early. Then I must bring $20 and the paper the border official has just filled out in long-hand to this office on my way back. I agree. We smile.
Soon a stop but I haven’t changed money and I don’t have to pee so I don’t get out. Beautiful African urchins and their big brothers and sisters are selling candy, cookies, rolls, bags of rice and tins of oil, bananas, mangoes, papayas and loudly-objecting chickens.
Chicken didn’t come along
The spy changes into a black t-shirt at the border and seems more relaxed, ready for a bit of conversation. Turns out he is Russian which is even more spy-like. He lives in Rwanda and works in computers. He claims. He’s coming to Buja to visit his friend, a French water systems manager. So he is a gay spy. Not very Bond-like…who would be the gay equivalent of Pussy Galore? Since my spy is an IT guy I ask for advice about my next communication device. He advises me to get a droid, not an I-phone. Says droids are the future. And he should know for god’s sake; he is, after all, a spy. He talks about his wife and kids in Russia. So he’s a bisexual spy. Wow.
Upon arriving in Buja and thanking Ivan or Serge or Vladimir or whomever for his valuable information, I take a cab to the Novotel because he said there are no ATMs in Buja but Novotel will take credit cards. I did not peruse or bring with me the Lonely Planet pages for Burundi. Where, in Buja, had I been better prepared, I could have had a fine hotel room for just a little cash.
Turns out this Novotel isn’t really a Novotel; the franchise has been cancelled undoubtedly due to its state of musty decrepitude. Besides rooms are more than $141 per night and they only take cash.
“Can you recommend a hotel that will take credit cards?”
“Maybe the Source of the Nile.”
“Where is that?”
“Just walk around the corner and up the street by the school.”
“Can you call them to see if they have a room?”
“I guess so.”
I feel a little less carefree then previously because of my temporarily worthless credit cards. However I am not a twenty year old who can sleep in any old corner on a dusty mat and make it an adventure so if I wind up at a luxury hotel I really can’t afford…it’s only for a night! I walk about three blocks past a park-like stretch to a fancily shabby and quite large hotel set back from the road in pleasant green surroundings. It is the Source of the Nile the sign announces.
“No, we don’t have any rooms.” Oh dear, I put on my tired little old lady face, well, actually it is already on, and say in my most basic English, “What do you think I should do? Where should I go?” An Egyptian flight crew is checking in, a rather demanding bunch…but my guy looks worried for me. Imagines I’ll just sleep on one of the lobby couches if he doesn’t do something and how would that look. “Wait, we’ll fix you a room.” Hundred plus on my AmEx but I’m happy. I motion that I will go and eat while they prepare the room.
At this moment it is 6pm in Bujumbura, Burundi and I am very happy. I did it. So I’m not Marco Polo but explorers come in all sizes, shapes and ages. All around me people are speaking Kirundi, French and Swahili; the words pour over me like afro pop without guitars. I am served une omelette parfait, browned nicely, not one of those nasty stateside omelets, all puffy outside and runny inside, with two glasses of fine red wine. I must be back at the bus by 9 am so I go to my room which is large and business-bare. I think it doubles as a meeting room in the day but it has a big sliding door and balcony, AC/fan and large flat-screen TV and I can look out at the mountains and the moon over Buja. A creamy sweet amarula is my celebratory nightcap. I have just enough Burundian francs to get to the bus in the morning and buy some kind of a souvenir before I board. Life is fine indeed.
Buja at midnight
Buja in the morning
Poolside for breakfast. First some really beautiful old guys come poolside, dressed in casual business clothes and discreetly, with the use of large towels, change into their trunks and leap happily into the water. They have noticeable pot bellies and sagging man-breasts, those universal accoutrements of aging, but it is true that the darker one’s skin the less visually distressing the aging process. Eventually some middle-age ladies in modest swimsuits join the guys. They all swim laps and chat and laugh and enjoy a warm rainy morning in the pool with friends. It has the feel of a Rotary club breakfast meeting and makes quite a charming tableau.
Breakfast includes trays of avocado-green avocados, thinly-sliced tomato-red tomatoes, translucent-white and green onions and cucumbers and fleshy orange papaya. Only the bread products are bad—how un-French-like. I consider the long bus ride ahead and only nibble.
At a nearby table Frenchmen are smoking, talking, smoking, eating, smoking, gesturing, smoking. Other side, another table, the Chinaman. This guy has been damaged by the infamous air of whatever Chinese city he is from. He coughs and hacks and chokes catching his germy mucus in the big white handkerchief. Cough, hack, spit into the hanky, flip flops flop loudly as he circles the food table; another Chinese guy joins him who looks embarrassed by the unsavory sounds of his companion. French and American pop music serenade us.
Breakfast over; it’s on to the bus station. What can I have for my remembrance of Buja? How about a shiny plastic bag with Barack on one side, Michelle and the girls on the other.
Home. My seat companion is African this time. We smile a lot at each other but cannot even share any words of French. She falls asleep slumped against me, but in African space it’s okay. And shares a cake with me later. Back to the neatness of Kigali. While Bujumbura isn’t quite as modern and spiffy looking as Kigali it is a fine African city I am pleased to have visited. I have learned some things; I’ll never make it as a writer of spy thrillers—my imagination just doesn’t extend to the part where there is actual sex and violence—and I know to get a droid when my cell phone contract expires in February. Oh yeah…and I have a NEW STAMP IN MY PASSPORT.
Catching a ride
Buja bus station
New Mexico? Really?
Traveling
Way there
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on the way to Zanzibar.
This visit happened in 2010 but was left out when the book was published so I will launch 2011 with some of my favorite images from any journey so far.
The Friendly Bookstore Ladies of Zanzibar
Zanzibar should really be shared. I like to travel alone—but only part of the time—and today wasn’t one of those times. Well, not true in the beginning. As I walked in the warm dawn light the few blocks along the waterfront to my Zanzibar ferry I felt quite adventurous and proud of myself. On the ferry I sat outside with the wind blowing my face, sun light-tipping the water and hardly any tourists about which always makes me feel good.
Freddy Mercury’s namesake bar
Okay so I’m a little homesick. Still how awful can life be when you land in Zanzibar and stop for spiced coffee (odd to say the least) and mango crumble at Freddie Mercury’s bar and restaurant. He’s from Zanzibar it seems. I had him confused with Freddy Fender for a moment who was NOT the lead singer in Queen. Oh well, I was sitting outside looking over a bay of interesting boats with a few hours ahead to wander aimlessly.
First, Zanzibar’s Stone Town is not an atypical beach town in some ways—a more than average number of funky restaurants, souvenir stands, inviting waterfront walkways and green spaces but there the similarities end. Zanzibar was a critical trading post, ruled over, among others by the Sultans of Oman and the British. The mosques and grand homes of the Arab traders are well-preserved (Stone Town is a UNESCO World Heritage site) and put to interesting uses with surprises all along the winding and narrow streets.
I am reading two books about Zanzibar, one The Sultan’s Shadow (Christiane Bird) about the Omani family at the heart of all Zanzibarian affairs for many generations. The Sultan was Said Al Busaidi and he had a wayward daughter, Salme, who is the central character in the book. I was wildly excited to find the Sultan’s Palace near the beginning of my walk. It was a delicious feeling…like falling asleep while reading and waking up IN THE STORY. Spent much time there.
A palace living room.
The other book is Zanzibar by Giles Foden who also wrote The Last King of Scotland. Unfortunately I am through with neither…work got in the way there for awhile. Now I’m leaving for Rwanda to which I am carrying these two unfinished books!
About books. My second big discovery was a really great bookstore! They’re everywhere it seems! Of course I lingered a very long time and left with quite a large bag of books. Not terribly smart since I have one country to go. But I have no control so I pay dearly with my back and shoulders as my suitcases gather weight.
Finished my day with a nice Zanzibar dish. Intentionally (I think) half-cooked vegetables with a great tomato and onion based sauce—which I usually hate but somehow this ‘Spice Island’ does seem to make what I don’t like in Italian food quite delicious in Zanzibar. No damn oregano maybe. And a Kilimanjaro beer.
Okay, I guess the day wasn’t so bad! But I did feel lonely all day. Missed my sons actually. They’re nice travelers and they love food and would have carried the book bag for me.
Zanzibar apple.
Now I must pack…I’m having another Kilimanjaro and bag of Lays potato chips for dinner. It is so damn exotic out here on the road.
Sorry. This is sort of a quickly put-together effort. I am tired.
LIONS. Big tawny strongly-muscled beasts whose babies make delightful characters in children’s books, whose pelts were sought by Teddy Roosevelt, whose deaths by spear were important to young Masai seeking their manhood…and who are usually asleep when you visit the zoo. Therefore you must visit them at home!
The great ocher female lion pulls the gutted wildebeest several paces, stops and pants because the big unwieldy carcass weighs as much as her. She crunches her deadly teeth back into the carcass and pulls on for the next few yards, repeating over and over. Meanwhile, under the solitary green and bushy tree toward which she appears to be heading, three cheetahs lie in spotted camouflage, their long slick bodies stretching comfortably, although one has raised her head, peering lazily at the approaching intruder. Lady lion pauses, pulls, pauses, pulls, a few yards at a time and, yes, her trajectory is definitely toward that one spot of shade. The cheetahs all raise their heads, ears pricked, one sits, two just lie there. Then they all sit up. And stare.
Where to eat?
Looks like a cool quiet place.
Lunch will definitely be hearty and flavorful.
The lion pays no mind. Drag, stop, drag, stop…this is one heavy wildebeest. Now all three cheetahs are on their feet and one moves a short ways out of the shade. As the queen of the plain draws ever nearer, the cheetahs treasured bit of shade is abandoned. The move is not made hurriedly nor do they seem particularly upset by this unfortunate (if you’re the cheetah) turn of events, but the ranking in the feline power structure out here on the Masai Mara is clear.
Okay…..we’re out of here.
After her long haul, the queen of the cats lays down in the shade, her bounty just at her front paws, and rests, assured that lunch will be plentiful. The cheetahs move toward more distant trees, frequently glancing back in what appears to be profound annoyance but with neither great fear nor cowardice—it is just the way it is out here on this African hillside.
Relax. Savor.
Can’t find that scenario at the zoo!
What was surely a dramatic kill preceding that tree-based power play and an earlier mating ritual attest to why Nature and Animal Planet, etc. shows about big cats are oft-repeated and much loved. Lions are glorious beasts but the bright kingly orange of the big ruffed male and slightly smaller and less flashy tone of his mate misrepresent the importance of the roles they play. It is the female who actually does most of the hunting while the big beautiful boys laze about. And now we watch while the king stalks and advances and the queen gives in for a moment and then slaps him away. Just like TV. Cameras click.
Never say Never!
For many years, I have consistently listed four things of no interest to me: Marriage, home ownership, cruises and safaris. After three very special days in Masai Mara National Reserve (Kenya’s extension of the Serengeti Plains), I must take the latter back. I am just hoping that I won’t wake up at 90 in the nursing home wanting a husband and a house and begging my children to take me on a raucous singles cruise down the Mexican coast.
Wildlife replaces dance for a few days.
A Masai Mara Safari
From a meeting in Nairobi, two colleagues and I set out for Masai Mara, driven in a big safari jeep by a remarkably-knowledgeable guide named Joseph, The road winds through the lush rolling hills that so attracted those famous and infamous British settlers onto the scene. Some things never change it seems; Prince William just proposed to his girl Kate on the slopes of Mount Kenya. Laura, who planned this trip, made a wise and socially conscious decision to book at Basecamp Masai Mara, an ecologically-friendly safari base of the first order. It is owned by a Scandinavian, managed by some very wise and socially-aware Kenyans and a delight to both senses and ethics to visit. It is profusely described and praised on-line so no need for further description.
An evening walk with the family.
The King…Long live the King.
Curiouser and curiouser.
We jeeped through the plains and hills and along the rivers twice a day for hours at a time—watching the big cats and prehistoric hippos and curious giraffes, the secretary bird whose office-appropriate ‘outfit’ and lipstick, our guide found worthy of many chuckles, and the assortment of antelopes in all of their graceful golden brown, black and white intricately horned beauty. Everyone has their favorites though…mine the herds of wildebeest and zebras frequently co-mingled—the goofy bearded nursery rhyme-characteristics of the wildebeest nicely complimenting the most-beloved and unbelievable member of the horse family, the fancily and fancifully-stripped zebra. You have the feeling zebras cannot be real, that if you walk up and rub them the stripes will come right off. And finally, wart hogs and hyenas, the underappreciated denizens of these plains. Not a lot of beauty about which to rhapsodize but they do much to lend that fantastical quality to Africa’s animal kingdom.
The pretty one.
Two references from Art History 101 and all those years of Sunday school (finally I found a use for them) come to me as we bump about the trails or pause for long silent observation. First Edward Hicks painting “Peaceable Kingdom” with the ox and the lion and the goat and the leopard sitting ‘peaceably’ together and then the biblical: The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. (Isaiah 11:6/King James Version). Maybe it’s not quite like that, surely the about-to-be-savored wildebeest probably didn’t feel like the kill was a peaceable moment and the ‘lying down’ part was about being eaten—still my sense of awe in seeing all of those near-mythical beasts living a balanced and semi-friendly co-existence was palpable.
They do the great trek across Masai Mara and the Serengeti together.
Musings
Since it would be impossible to make a description of any one animal or sight that was fresh and original, here are a few of my personal musings as I awoke to a myriad of bird and monkey voices in the morning or sipped wine in the tree-thatched dining room as sun set….
Home for three remarkable days.
- I have been thinking about adopting a cat…and I’ve decided. Yes, I will get a cat. They are so slinky and graceful and independent and touchable. My desire to touch the ones I saw on safari pretty much confirmed my decision. “The Cat is one animal nature pretty much got right the first time… Beautifully engineered from the start, cats have merely honed their structure over the past 34 million years.” – National Geographic. OR. “It is striking how similar the thirty-eight cat species are: Enlarge a domestic housecat and you have a leopard, elongate it for a speed to yield a cheetah, add a mane and roar to build a lion and so on” (paulgross.com) I can almost feel my miniature leopard snuggled against me as I drift off to sleep.
Kitties.
- Next time I walk along the Rio Grande and hear the animals in the zoo coming awake I will be sad. Albuquerque has a good and always improving zoo. However, it is a zoo. Not the plains of home. The voices I hear are contained, constrained, confined. I will think of them waking up on the Masai Mara, the Serengeti, in Kruger Park and silently apologize.
- I have a renewed appreciation for my childhood in northern Minnesota and the pleasure on visits home when a black bear crosses the road in front of me, a rare lynx or moose sighting occurs, the coyotes and wolves sing all night, deer and skunks and porcupines abound, sometimes as road kill, but usually alive and well. While none of these Minnesota creatures rivals the hippo or giraffe for sheer exoticism—although the porcupine does come close—they are as valuable to our existence and, Sarah Palin and her gunship to the contrary, we need to cherish them.
Ah yeah. Those glorious traditions.
Go on safari. Shoot with your Sony Cyber-shot. Marvel at how you’re in the container and they are not. Spend sunset with a group of young Masai who serenade, do the Masai leap and tell a few tales around the campfire—since cattle-herding and a blood and milk diet is a fading lifestyle. But don’t romanticize the loss of these distinct cultures around the world without remembering traditional cultures were almost NEVER good for women. Do romanticize wild animals in their natural habitats while there are some left.
And always vote DEMOCRAT.
Democrats plant trees and are interested in the world…usually.
The moments after the moments
Hotel El Farouk
Crankiness is a basic travel mood as anyone who has ever read Paul Theroux knows. Ah yes, there is that first euphoria of discovering the fabled River Niger flows by your window and the smells and sounds of an African city are just outside your door. (That would mainly be exhaust and honking horns but who’s counting except for these bad mood moments). Remember I thought I would be in Timbuktu these days.
Yesterday—the morning went well. I worked, I looked out my window. I read. I went down for café au lait and good crusty rolls. So far so good.
Danse l’Afrique danse billboard near my hotel
I took a walk. Exercise is where it gets a little iffy for travelers who fall halfway between being gym people or slothful types who sit on big couches reading books and sipping wine all day. A person serious about exercise would FIND A GYM. The other kind would just order dessert to be brought to the couch in the lounge while finishing that last chapter. I’m in between. I just need to walk and that is hard here—a difficulty in many western US cities as well but unless you find the right part of town here in west Africa walking is truly a chore. My hotel is on a fast roadway or if you head toward the markets it is crowded and trashy and the mid-day heat moves toward 100 F.
Cross with care or run like hell
But determinedly I walk. Avoid being killed by motorbikes…tell the plentiful ‘guides’ no in French as in Merci NO (it is great to be bilingual in 7 phrases)…wish I had small change so I could take photos of the little roadside stalls (tomorrow)…give a kid quite a bit of money after a security guard chases us both away from sitting on a bench outside some sort of police station…and so it goes.
Where’s the Circle K?
Obligatory Cute kids photo #1
Obligatory Colorful Clothes in Market Photo #1
Back to the hotel, order a very expensive dinner because I can’t find a food market on my walk. I forget to appreciate my neighborhood 7-11 or Circle K until I’m out of the country and desperately want a yogurt or some saltines! Do I sound like a whiney American or what?
The afternoon squall
A rain squall makes the river dark, I nap, and then having lost all ambition I turn to my books. Brought some bad choices. Hate when that happens. The three that disappointed me last night were Not Untrue, Not Unkind, a tough guy, war correspondent takes on the killing fields of Africa—but with a Garrison Keillor as Guy Noir kind of voice. I continue reading Monique and the Mango Rains, which is actually quite pleasing, a peace corps volunteer writing about her two years working with a midwife in a Malian village. Last night though I wanted something different so for much of the night I read Sara Wheeler’s biography of Denys Finch Hatton, Too Close to the Sun. Wheeler is a good writer (Terra Incognita about the South Pole) but there is only so much one wants to know about Finch Hatton, a rather shallow unsympathetic if very glamorous guy—I bought the book because Meryl Streep’s voice was whispering in my ear about him. All three books annoyed me in the sleepless night. Now I have given the first to the maid so she can hopefully sell it for a few CFA’s for herself to another sleepless English speaker. The others may go her way tomorrow. Fortunately I have a few choice remaining until I get to Kenya and English language bookstores. Besides I have much work to do now that I’m in a better mood?
Bridge at night taken with my cheap camera!
There, my kvetching in Mali is done. All will be brilliant from now on. One evening and blog of complaining per country is all that is allowed.
Here to There
In 36 hours I went from my apartment in one low-to-the-ground, brown, sprawling river city to my hotel in another low-to-the-ground, brown, sprawling river city. Albuquerque to Bamako. From walking the green Bosque of the Rio Grande to looking down at the great green trees on the River Niger. I AM SO HAPPY. My brother and I talk about how we miss the highs and even the lows of youth. How our emotions and passions seem to live along a satisfactory but not particularly exciting median. But then I arrive in Africa, this time in Mali, and I look out my hotel window at the RIVER NIGER and the flat line effect is gone, disappeared by the event of travel to Africa.
Kettly Noel, festival organizer
I am in Mali for 8th edition of Danse l’Afrique danse!, a magnificent series of festivals held biennually throughout the African continent and supported by each country in turn, by the French government and by various African and European government agencies and corporations. Here are a few cogent words from the Ministre de la Culture du Mali, Mot de Mohamed Elmoctar. (Why can nearly every country in the world have a ministry of culture except us? Just asking!)
Young dancers warming up for festival time
The Minister says:
Dear choreographers and dancers,
Today Africa is in Bamako, through dance and in dance.
This is the appointed time and place for you to express the many facets of Africa, as you project them into the world, a reflection of your art.
Show us this choreographic art, as you create it here and now.
Shape what we see; make us travel and dream; take us with you in the performances of your respective artistic creations.
Show us the creation’s path and let us share your disturbing works, perplexing to our novice eyes.
Show us how you create, so that your artistic approach finds its place on the continent and the world. (Italics mine: they express so clearly what GLOBAL DANCEFEST is meant to be)
Marion Stalens, festival documentarian
Antoine Tempe, festival photographer
Dance from Mali, Congo, Madagascar, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Benin, Nigeria, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, and Ghana. Companies, solos, experience, emerging, men, women, explosive, contemplative. It is a feast, a true feast for the eyes and ears and heart and brain. Did I mention I feel so very lucky to be here?
From the Sublime to the Mundane
I had to get here—ah yes ‘there’s the rub’ as the expression goes. You must fly. In a dirty airplane frequently. I am thinking of submitting a suggestion to the airlines—500 frequent flyer miles if you clean out the seat pocket and another 500 if you pick up the trash along the edge of the floor, no I think that’s a free round trip to Vegas, it’s nasty down there. At least it was on Delta to Paris! And the food. OMG. Food on all US airlines is quite awful—of course I’m talking about overseas flights since there is no more in-country food—which is really just as well.
GOOD food–on a plane!
Thank you Air France
But on a long overseas flight food is a good thing to keep us from getting too cranky or bored. Passes the time, provides a break in the monotony, etc. HOWEVER. I just had two comparable meals. Vegetarian pasta and vegetarian risotto, salad, bread and cake on Delta to Paris and Air France to Bamako. There were no more expensive ingredients in one than the other. Delta’s meal was INEDIBLE. Air France’s actually enjoyable. On the latter, the mushroom risotto was creamy, not dried out and hot only around the edges; the little pasta tomato salad contained no wilted lettuce and the bread was a crusty baguette with real butter. I broke my ‘no drinking on the plane’ rule by celebrating French food with some nice French red wine.
In defense of US airlines. They are cheap. Comparatively. So…will it kill you to go eight hours without food!
I am here. It is Africa. I am content. From the Hotel El Farouk on the banks of the River Niger. A lovely poem.
Description of the Geni Baana from Gibbal’s Genii of the River Niger
He is afraid neither of God or of
the Prophet… Neither is he afraid
of lightning bolts nor of lightning,
because he is their master and
unleashes them at will. He comes
during times of storm, dressed all
in black. He announces the tempest
following him. When the storm
explodes, he is crazy with happiness.
He screams facing the sky, against
which he is seen in profile, his two
arms outstretched. One of his favourite
slogans is…“Baana, if the sky rumbles,
it is because you have unleashed the
lightning by beating your chest.” And,
people add “If the rain falls, it’s also
thanks to you, Baana.”
River Niger
Earning a living
The River Niger (All of this River Niger info from Panda.org and Wikipedia. Org)
In the floodplains and delta wetlands along the river, a specialised flora has evolved that is adapted to extreme fluctuations in water levels. These communities also support a wide variety of fascinating animals. Black-crowned cranes, a regional symbol of beauty and authority, rely on floodplain wetland habitat throughout the basin. In addition, the braided wetlands that form Niger’s “Inner Delta” in Mali support hundreds of thousands of transmigratory birds. Manatees can still be found in several pockets of suitable habitat that still remain along the river. Mythology indicates that these gentle giants appeared on Earth when a woman bathing by a river was startled by strangers and jumped into the water to hide. Hippopotami and crocodiles are still present in the Niger, and can sometimes pose danger to those who trespass unaware. The river’s true delta in Nigeria contains West Africa’s largest mangrove forest.
Pulse of West Africa
The Niger River shapes a corridor of productivity that has, for thousands of years, provided people with dynamic and rich livelihoods, and has made human survival possible even in times of desolate drought. People have always followed the rhythms of the rivers flow, which can sometimes vary dramatically from year to year. Within the harsh and frequently unpredictable Sahelian climate, people wove their productive activities together in patterns that were compatible with the environment and mutually reinforcing. Floodplain pastures of bourgou grass supported livestock, wildlife and nurseries for fish. Harvested rice fields were grazed by livestock, which in turn fertilised the fields with their manure. Farming of millet, vegetables and rice; livestock herding; fishing, hunting and gathering of wild plants to use as food and medicine co-existed, waxing and waning in response to changes in climate and river flows.
The Niger River system has also sustained remarkable biological communities. The river harbours 36 families and nearly 250 species of freshwater fish, of which 20 are found nowhere else on Earth. Eleven of the 18 families of freshwater fish that are endemic to Africa are represented in the Niger River.
To travel widely is to feel at home in the world—at least this is the effect travel is having on me. Growing up in an isolated cabin in the snows of Minnesota apparently instilled in me a deep desire to connect with the rest of the world—to areas as different from Koochiching County as possible such as the African continent—and to places quite similar such as Norway and my heritage—then on to every country in the world…!
Cousins
Arne & Aslaug
This summer I reveled in the Scandinavian traditions of family in South Dakota and Minnesota. Now, this fall, a very special treat has come my way—a visit from Norwegian cousins. Arne Neset, my second cousin, and Aslaug Neset, his beautiful wife. Arne is a retired professor and a writer (Arcadian Waters and Wanton Seas: The Iconology of Waterscapes in Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Culture) and Aslaug is a retired public relations official. They are very smart and funny and well-traveled. How absolutely lovely this visit has been. It is further connecting me to the world, to my heritage and to a warm and interesting and accomplished new family. It is exciting to have African friends and Norwegian family.
New Mexico cell of the Norwegian mafia, guy on right is the son of one of Arne’s best friend–met by chance HERE.
ROBERT AND MARSHA IN GRAND RAPIDS
The intent was to write a warm and fuzzy profile of my brother and sister-in-law with whom I spent a lovely late August week. Alas…I did not get it done before this very busy time and big travels that begin later this month. Instead…here’s a photo album from my week with Rob and Marsha in green and summer-lush Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Next there will be a visit to the old home and the old neighborhood. The Life with Robert story will be a future blog installment.
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- The very nice but unappreciated Minnesota house (It’s not in the Florida panhandle)
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- Robert and Marsha
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- The Woods
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- Street berries
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- Special Minnesota log
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- Troll food
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- Gold gold mushroom
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- Baby butterfly
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- Logs
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- Buddy…the SPECIAL dog
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- Marsha
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- Bro Rob
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- Lydia, Marsha’s mom
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- Home Sweet Food
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- Woods
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- Rob and Marsha in one of their stranger moments
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- Strange leaf
Audrey
This series of blog posts is all about my sentimental summer journey—as you may have noticed. Home and family. Two or so more of these and then I move on to Bamako, Mali and dance and, if I can figure out how to get there, Timbuktu. But for now, back to Summer 2010.
FAMILY HISTORY
I’m on my way to my cousin Audrey’s on dad’s side of the family—Audrey’s mom, Helen, was the youngest sister, born in Minnesota, a few years after the family journey from Norway. Audrey my childhood hero, a teenager when I was only a scrawny 7 year- old. She loved riding horseback and took me with her although I was pretty disappointing as a horsewoman—I really only liked to read about horses, not actually hang around with them. Mom got pretty black Queenie for me when I was seven or eight but I just never connected with her. Audrey took me bareback riding on her pinto or on Queenie. Apparently I liked to run around the warm summer farm in my faded little hand-sewn dresses without underpants because I have one of those snapshot memories of Audrey refusing to take me riding until I put some pants on!
Queenie’s Twin
Aunt Helen seemed very glamorous to me as a kid. When I stayed with her I got to read the True Romance magazines of which she had many and eat store-bought breads. While my mother’s breads and cinnamon rolls were suburb still…they were homemade. And while Helen could bake with the best she did keep those Bismarcks around that, for me, had that city-aura attached to them!
Audrey was beautiful. Robert and I thought she was the most beautiful and the most fun person we knew. When at age 17, she married Otis, we were devastated. Felt like an old guy (after all he was all of six or so years older than Audrey) had robbed us of our best friend.
Audrey and Otis have led eventful lives. I have stayed with them many times from early days when Otis worked in the wood and the kids were little and Audrey baked chocolate cakes all dark and moist with strange ingredients like tomato soup and mayonnaise. I think I was supposed to help with the kids but really I just wanted to hang around with my idol. There were years of moving back and forth to Montana, Washington and Alaska with Helen and Lloyd and Delores (also my cousin and Audrey’s big sister) when Audrey was a kid and then years of lumberjacking, ranching, gold-mining, farming in Alaska, Wyoming but mostly Minnesota after she was married.
Audrey and Otis bought the farm at Gemmell where Randy, David, Linda and Terri grew up. Otis had a perfect lawn bordered with the offspring of Mom’s white, burgundy and rose-pink peonies and a glorious raspberry patch. He wrote two books about his Alaska adventures and built all manner of wooden crafts when he retired. Audrey worked with developmentally disabled adults in Northome nursing home’s ICF-MR program before ailments from those camp cooking, horseback riding years forced her to retire.
Physically the farm got to be too much for the two of them and they were forced to move out of their beloved north woods where wolves howled nearby, bears with cubs trailing behind crossed Highway 71 every now and then within sight of the house, and it was easy for Otis to get up to his fishing spot on the Bigfork River and Audrey to go drink coffee with Violet. They wound up in the pleasant little Canadian border town of Roseau where Terri, the youngest, and most settled child lives.
I spent a lot of time with Audrey and Otis over the years, once living in a tiny bedroom in their Gemmell house with my worldly possessions, mostly books, a giant old computer and border collie Max crowded in about me. This was a lost time between my San Francisco, Minneapolis and San Diego lives—all taking place during the ten years between my Albuquerque lives! It was a favorite time; I wrote and wrote and lived on bread and raspberry jam and Otis’ pancakes or, best of all, those deep-fried golden flaky breakfast walleye. Eventually I had to go back to real work and move on but it truly was great while it lasted.
Food of the gods
THE PRESENT
Heading North
August 2010: That was then. This is now. Driving north from Sioux Falls, hugging the Minnesota-Dakota (south and north) border but staying on the Minnesota side. It is pretty much all corn all of the time with soybeans for variety. Nice, neat stereotypical farms. Like farms are intended to be. This is not MY Minnesota of woods and lakes but I am happy just to be here. It is truly a good thing to be a Minnesotan I believe.
Roseau is a fairly typical small town known primarily as the birthplace of the snowmobile and Polaris industries. You can take a tour of the plant responsible for many of the world’s truly obnoxious additions to forest trails, winter or summer, if you so choose. Or you can just appreciate the fact that Polaris may be almost-singlehandedly responsible for the economic well-being of this area and appreciate the process if not necessarily the product.
According to the official City of Roseau website this is called an environmental transitional area where the north woods of poplar and spruce meets the prairies of the Red River Valley and the tamarack bogs which stretch north into Canada.
Audrey lives in a retirement apartment complex; Otis nearby in a nursing home. Years of hard physical work have taken a toll on their bodies and Otis has some form of Alzheimer’s or dementia that is slowly taking him into another fog-filled kind of world. However Terri and her family are always about and the other kids visit when they can.
It’s good to be here. We spend happy hours times talking about the pleasures of aging, about the dastardly deeds of Republicans and about our kids and my brother and her sister.
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- Good dog
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- Trigger’s grandchild perhaps
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- Summer evening
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- All the pretty horses
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- Clara
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- Clara
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- Clara
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- Clara
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- Viking princess
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- Clara and Landon
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- The blondes
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- Niki and Landon
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- Terri and her kids
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- Terri and Brian
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- The old goldminer
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- Audrey
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- Audrey
A treat that I always hope for on my trips up here is the walleye dinner out at Terri’s. Huge platters of the world’s greatest fish (I may have already said that once or twice in this blog!) and a chance to see the babies and horses that have arrived or grown since my last visit. What a lovely bunch they are. Teri’s kids are well and happy and prospering and daughter, Niki, has her own two babies, Landon and Clara. MANY pictures of Clara are included here because she is a sort of magic child, looking like baby Viking princesses must have looked. Clara does have a healthy dose of Scandinavian blood and her grandma and mom are north-country blondes so she’s obviously following in their footsteps. Terri and husband, Brian, are serious horse people so three sleek steeds in shades of black, red and cream occupy the green pastures surrounding their comfortable ranch home.
And a lovely time was had by all—especially me. Tomorrow I will turn south into the woods and lakes leading to Grand Rapids. And brother Robert and sister-in-law, Marsha.
ART DAY in Sioux Falls
Tiger and Cub
Green Pastures
Reading Magic
MORNING WITH SCULPTURE
Phillips Avenue is busy this morning—what with the kids blocking foot traffic to stroke the tiger and her cub, so deceptively friendly—before she pounces. Funny she’s not interested in the sheep so close by. Probably waiting to attack the kid just lying there in the middle of the street reading, she’ll only have to carry her prey down the block to feed her baby.
Canteen Lady
Historical, whimsical and mysterious characters greet us as we stroll along Sioux Fall’s main street. Canteen Lady only takes us back to WWII but Robert the Bruce recalls times of yore and then Abel offers something for the faithful and Bacchus for wine lovers. Cabin Fever is me as a kid and it’s January in Minnesota.
SculptureWalk is a politically-correct mix of representational and abstract sculpture with many pieces that do not quite fit either category. In the nonfigurative category, I am thrilled to find two pieces by Albuquerque artist Joe Sackett. Joe is an interesting and eclectic guy and his work reflects those qualities: Twenty-Seven (China) is a cube made out of 27 steel handlebars of Chinese made bicycles around a hub of smaller bike parts and Persona offers a personal statement about core personalities constrained by societal expectations and regulations.
Joe Sackett’s Twenty-Seven (China)
SculptureWalk must be unique in the US; a deliciously diverse collection of sculpture by artists across the country who loan the pieces to the exhibit for one year. Anyone can vote for the “People’s Choice Award” which is then purchased as part of the City’s permanent collection, and a number of the sculptures are purchased by the various sponsoring businesses for display at their sites.
Melt
It is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. August; sunny; friendly, admiring and amused pre-lunch strollers in a downtown trying to hang on like so many others all across the country. The stores sell quality-of-life kinds of things such as boutique clothing, antiques, souvenirs and books; the restaurants become jazz bars in the evenings and I’m told there are new apartment buildings as well, all hoping to attract youth and life back to a low-key but potentially lively city center.
Cousins Vivian and Marty (Richard’s wife’s; she was the Register of Deeds in Sioux Falls for many years and one of my mom’s favorite people in the world) and I eat ordinary sandwiches and then go to the sweet shop for extraordinary desserts of caramel and cheesecake and oozing chocolate topped off with giant cups of coffee. Back to the car, stopping to pat one of my favorites, the friendly musk ox, Tundra, patiently waiting to get the year over with and get back to—the tundra. Although the artist is from Maryland so maybe he’s always restricted to city streets. No wonder he appears a little sad.
AFTERNOON WITH CREATURES
Time to leave the heart of artful Sioux Falls and head west on I-90 to Montrose and the Porter Sculpture Park. In an article in the Argus Leader, Peter Harriman describes the park like this: …”dozens of quirky metal sculptures constructed of old farm implements, water tanks and railroad steel plate.” He also says meeting the artist, Wayne Porter, is “…like running across Michelangelo at Wall Drug.” (Wall Drug started out as an ordinary drugstore in a very small South Dakota town and grew into a sort of shopping mall/western heritage museum, etc. about 60 miles from the Black Hills. It is primarily famous for its many billboards throughout South Dakota and beyond which, like Burma Shave signs, became an experience onto themselves.).
The Porter Sculpture Park is on a prairie hilltop so the visitor is always viewing the quirky creatures birthed in Porter’s fertile imagination against the backdrop of grazing lands, fields of corn and the occasional farm—or perhaps that’s the lair to which these strange and engaging beings retire at night. This is one of those magical places, like Christiania in Copenhagen or the Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo where everyday experiences and things aren’t welcome.
There’s a golf cart for transportation or you can walk. Not many people. Wander. Connect with your inner child or inner demon or inner photographer.
Marj and the neighborhood dragon
Marty, the Prairie Nymph
The signature creature is a Bull Head which Porter says represents “an extinct Egyptian Long Horn…made mostly out of railroad plates welded together.” Bull Head is huge, overseeing the I-90 traffic, sympathizing perhaps with all the beef cattle within his purview that will soon be somebody’s steak, guarding the entrance to this netherworld of odd companions.
Coming down on the train from northern Minnesota when I was a kid, Sioux Falls represented THE CITY and the little house on Van Eps, the cousins, mom and aunt Mabel being sad with each other—unfaithful husband or hard times on the Minnesota farm stories, big meals with jovial uncle George teasing me, the smell of the Morrell meat packing plant where some relatives worked. I had no idea that in the future South Dakota would mean land of George McGovern and Sioux Falls would mean ART.
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- Baltic, South Dakota, Mom’s hometown
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- Floren farmhouse (formerly)
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- Mom’s childhood home: the farm Ole Floren built
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- Pioneer Cemetery, Baltic, SD
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- Intruder? Pioneer?
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- A Pioneer Cemetery neighbor
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- Wonder if he found them?
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- Floren
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- Me and Grandpa and Grandma
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- Aunt Mabel and Uncle George
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- Vivian’s daughter Linda
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- Cousin Richard, killed in a tornado
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- Grandpa Floren, mom’s dad who died when she was 2
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- Grandma Floren, mom’s mom
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- South Dakota cousin Vivian
BACKROADS
August 22nd. Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Cousin Vivian’s guest bedroom which I share with an overabundance of Elvis memorabilia. It’s so sticky stifling hot in Sioux Falls…not the cool rainy weather for which I am always and forever longing. The fan runs, it is four am, have slept myself out in the 30 hours since I arrived.
ABOUT FAMILY
This is a Family trip. Family is Family and blood is probably thicker than water. I’m proud of us. Solid working class immigrant stock. No one ever became rich or famous—not that that would be a bad thing. But what a lively collection of bakers and bus drivers, gold miners and lumberjacks, cooks and farmers, highwaymen (the kind driving snowplows and MNDOT vehicles) and enlisted men and policemen, ranchers and roustabouts. I have friends with amazingly intricate and even illustrious family backgrounds and histories. Their stories are fascinating, like visiting a foreign country. In comparison my family is so straight forward, so uncomplicated. Working class Americans and okay with that. They did what immigrants were supposed to do—and are still doing, working hard for little money. The old American Dream was alive and well with them but apparently there was no gene pool of great ambition, no longing for mansions or lavish lifestyles. The kids went a little further in school with each generation…and the Nesets and Florens and Tacks and Wolfes and Hahns and Lowreys and Gingeriches (no relation to Newt) moved ever so slowly into the lower middle class of teachers and nurses and managers, white collars overtaking blue, and there was migration from the Minnesota, Dakota and Montana bases. Now there are new ethnicities and races and languages in the family, another result of the American dream. College degrees are proliferating and the new and next generations already or soon will include engineers, social workers and entrepreneurs. Even now there may be a grandchild or great-grandchild among us with dreams of corporate takeovers or huge political victories but she hasn’t been identified yet.
COUSINS
The two cousins I will visit, one from my mom’s side of the family, one from my dad’s, nicely represent the first-born American generation. One worked at a bakery for more than 30 years; one cooked and baked in Yukon restaurants and Alaska gold mines and then worked as a caregiver for mentally disabled adults. One had two unsatisfactory husbands; one just one, mostly satisfactory. Each had two girl and two boy children who mostly do well or very well, except for one death. Most of the kids from that generation went to high school—only a few all the way to college.
So—in a neighborhood just hanging on to respectability in Sioux Falls SD and a retirement apartment on the almost-prairies of Roseau MN—they live their lives. Day to day it is all about family, friends, the weather, doctors, grocery and discount stores. From time to time it’s about war or politics or crime or natural disasters like tornados and floods. In other words they’re pretty much like everybody else. One sincerely believes all politicians are corrupt and barely tolerates my need to check in with CNN occasionally. She is a Democrat, or at least this is what I choose to believe, because she does not actually say anything good about either party. Like most working class older Americans she leads a modestly comfortable retirement thanks to the party of Roosevelt and Kennedy and Johnson! The other cousin, an outspoken Democrat, does pay attention to the political news and is more than a little disappointed with Obama, figuring that some of his pronouncements or lack thereof are handing the next election to the evil ones. She is also quite angry about the mosque being located near the world trade center site, first because she thinks it is just the wrong place at the wrong time, and also because she thinks it is yet another thing the Republicans can use against Obama. Whatever their misgivings about the political world, both cousins (and my whole family) appear to be generally free of the racism, nativism and general meanness that fuels the Republican Tea Party. People of the far northern plains and forests are a slightly different breed than the mid-Midwesterners—more of a frontier mindset. They have less of a quarrel with those who are ‘different.’ Maybe because the lumber camps and northern wheat fields were largely settled and worked by misplaced and misfits, wanderers and outlaws of every color and belief, from every part of the world.
I will have lunches and dinners with some of the children and grandchildren. Jobs, babies, colleges, horses, walleye, mashed potatoes, Grain belt beer, pie and coffee and coffee and coffee, old photographs. Family. So grounding, humbling, reassuring. I take great pride and pleasure in it all.
AUGUST 22 – 24. MOM’S SIDE/SOUTH DAKOTA
Vivi and I visit the Floren and Wolfe family graves at the Pioneer Cemetery, just outside of Baltic, my mom’s hometown. This cemetery walk, paying tribute to our elders, is a biannual tradition. Grandma Magnhild Strom was born in Sweden on October 18, 1873. The family came to America, to Madison and then Baltic, South Dakota when she eight years old. She eventually married Ole Floren who came from Norway. (Dad always claimed Mom’s stubbornness came from the quarter-Swede blood.) Grandpa Ole Floren built their farm in the rich bottomland of the Sioux River Valley and then dropped dead of a heart attack when his baby, my mother, was two. Everyone said he killed himself working morning, noon and night. They are both buried here. My cousin Richard is here too. He is the cousin with whom I fought and argued from the time we met until the last time I saw him before he was killed when a prairie tornado upended his truck on a highway just outside of Sioux Falls. It’s not that we didn’t like each, those battles were just so much fun and the competition to win was fierce although I don’t remember either of us ever admitting defeat. Cousin Vivian’s daughter, Linda, is buried here—dead from devil cancer. We pull a weed here and there and amble about the top of this windy hill, visiting the neighbors including Berthine B. Fersdahl, the daughter of John and Kirsti Thompson, according to her gravestone “The first white child born in Minnehaha County.” Whether that was a good thing is probably still debatable among the Lakota, Dakota and Sioux who were already being born here.
Sometimes we also go by the farm Ole Floren built—which my mother probably loved better than any place on earth. Her idea of how people should live was formed here. Work hard, worship god, take care of the land and the animals, and ‘do onto others as you would have them do onto you.’ The sturdy white house and big barn, sheltered by a healthy grove of cottonwoods, nestled among the corn fields, near the green-moist banks of the Sioux river. How could it not breed and sustain all of those good Midwestern, immigrant, and farm family values? Nothing is ever as it seems or should be though, is it? Ole died young, Magnhild kept the farm as long as she could but mom’s siblings Olaf and Mabel did not take to farming, the hired men drank, and eventually the farm was lost to the bank. Family farm good. Bank bad. Unfortunately most people who knew that truth deep in their bones and could vote accordingly are old or dead.
My route on the way home to Minnesota was carefully selected to avoid the land of commercial/corporate farming as much as possible so all through Nebraska, South Dakota and eastern Minnesota I traversed ranches and farms that at least give the appearance of not having fallen under the total control of Wall Street/Bank Street/Realtor Street. Although apparently all of the crops are planted with seeds genetically created, altered, controlled by the big guys like Cargill. Should I make a disclaimer here? My first job after high school was at Cargill’s Wayzata headquarter as a board marker—I was one of the girls, fresh into the big city, who wrote the grain quotes coming off the ticker tape machines onto the big blackboard for Oscar the grain buyer. Has the same ring as being a Rosie the Riveter doesn’t it? Out of a history book. I suppose I am old.
It is so comfortable here with Vivi. She is doing well, fairly happy and fairly healthy. Goes to her weight watchers weigh-in weekly and has largely banned Hershey bars from the house. She cares for her blind dog and glossy black cat. Bookkeeps for one son, worries about the other and talks daily to her daughter, a long-time employee of Caterpillar, who is truly the family financial success story—making serious money by any standard and roving about the world for the company. Vivi may be the kindest person I know. She is also the first person I ever heard say the word ‘fuck’—undoubtedly referring to one of her no-good husbands. And the only person in the family who can still make mom’s special brand of chicken and dumplings.
Ovidia’s Chicken and Dumplings:
Cook the chicken in boiling water in a pot filled with carrots and celery. When chicken is fairly tender, put it in a frying pan with BUTTER and brown. Then cover it with CREAM flavored with allspice and simmer until it is fall-off-the-bone tender. Meanwhile make dumpling dough and drop into the pot of chicken broth and veggies. Dumplings should be chewy NOT all light and fluffy.
“EAT.” “The dumplings are too heavy aren’t they?” “I’m glad you like them, eat more.” “No, you have to eat more than that.” “Don’t you like them…you only had one helping?” “Eat more, we don’t want any leftovers.” “EAT.”