May 4 – Mama Africa

Lungi’s last Africa blog:

So this is it, we’re leaving the mysterious African continent and all the scary stories I had been told or that I had built in my mind (dangerous, dirty, poor…) originally made me quite nervous, but after 2½ months of travelling through it, I’m not really ready to leave. Many of these perceptions are true; most of the people are very poor, the cities are often dirty and obviously some places can be dangerous but for some reason I feel connected to Africa and rooted here as though I belong. I really connect with the flow, the rhythm and the beat of the culture and people.

When I think of everything we experienced and the local people we have met, the feeling that I get is the same joy and happiness as when I would receive gold medals in skating or learning that I was chosen for a job I had applied for. I don’t know if I’m taking any personal gain back with me or if I‘ve changed as a result of being here but there are certain things that I have definitely been touched by just from observing everyday African life and watching the people.

First, when I compare the richest person I know to the poorest person I have met or interacted with here in Africa I realize that no matter where or who you are, everyone desires the same thing…happiness. Even the poorest person here had such an incredible amount of pride regardless of what they possessed. For example, the little old man that would walk around offering to shine people’s shoes, he was so proud of his little foot-stool and of the service he offered - he even wore a torn and dirty blazer with a bow-tie.

Second, I‘ve noticed that for the most part, African’s are hard workers, both mentally and physically. Everyone here seems to be an Entrepreneur such as the women that walk through layers of traffic carrying piles of hard boiled eggs or bread on their heads to sell the commuters and bus passengers. At home, if I’m tired or sick, I just take a personal day from work and take it easy for the day. But this doesn’t seem exist here – if you don’t work, your family probably won’t eat that day.

Finally, despite the difficult lives that many people lead here, they remain so happy and upbeat even the beggar who lives in the streets. They still have huge smiles and when they hear a song that they like, they start to dance like the music takes priority over everything else regardless of where they are (and I’m pretty sure that most of them don’t care what they look like when they’re dancing).    

I guess it’s expected when travelling like this that we will return home with a greater appreciation for our lives. What I’ve realized is that the things I will appreciate the most back home is not necessarily the clothes, money jewellery or material objects. These are things that I already appreciated and I knew how lucky I was to have. Rather it is the small things like cleanliness, electricity, personal safety and a seemingly endless supply of water from my kitchen tap. Something else I have taken for granted is the civilized world that I live in, knowing that if I pass out in the subway, someone will help me and that I’ll be taken to the hospital. Or knowing that if a dead body is found, it will be looked after immediately, not only once someone has paid for the fuel that is needed to come pick it up.

In North America the sky is the limit. Whatever you choose to do, there are so many resources available to you. In Africa, there are none (or very few) and almost everything is a struggle especially without assistance from the government. If I had even half of the drive that the African’s have here, with all the resources available at home, I believe that anything that I put my mind to would be a success.

Jacob’s last Africa blog:

It’s our last day in Africa and looking back it’s been quite an experience; an African wedding, swimming with great whites, feeding Hyenas, avoiding pick-pocketers, walking with lions, sleeping in the desert, removing dead bodies from the ocean, witnessing a country beginning to rebuild itself after civil war, etc… There have been times when I loved being here and times when I wanted to just get on a plane home. Travelling through Africa is not necessarily difficult but it could be very tiring. We’re always on guard for our personal health and safety, always keeping one eye on our belongings and pockets, and virtually every purchase is an intense bargaining session (I thought I was a good negotiator before but by the time I get home, I’ll be ready to hammer out the next middle-east peace agreement with my eyes closed). On top of this, we’ve been covering a lot of ground in a short amount of time so we’re constantly trying to figure out how to get to our next destination, a difficult task in countries where roads and rail are dysfunctional and air travel is surprisingly expensive and sometimes unreliable.

I remember being in East Africa and telling Lungi that I was done here and that I just wanted to get a flight to Asia. The intensity, the dysfunction, the hygiene issues, always being stared at and touched and being the target of everyone trying to make a buck was overwhelming and it would make me angry. But these are now the things that I may miss the most, especially the intensity and the constant hustle of people just trying to make a living, to put food on the table and clothing on their children’s backs. I truly began to hate the vendors and touts that would surround us but as we continued our trip I realized that these were genuinely good people and as I got more comfortable I would joke around with them and converse about our country, their country, or explain to them why Toronto is so much worse of city than Montreal :) 

For the most part, the African people are amazing – they truly live life despite the little that they have. They laugh, sing, dance, argue, fight, love, embrace and all of this is very public and in your face. As a white North American, they often wanted to be my friend (which would also frequently come with some sort of financial request but a beer or a coke would usually suffice) and after spending time with some of them we noticed how friendly and generous they were.  

We’ve covered a lot of ground, from South to North and East to West. The difference between Arab North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa is huge and even the difference between East and West is very noticeable.    

Africa is a place we’ll never forget and will certainly return to. Here’s a compilation of pictures from some of our most memorable moments in Africa:

SOUTH AFRICA

About to start the journey

Cape Town's beauty

Climbing Lion Head Mountain

The sheep

The African wedding 

 

Cape Point with our family

Finding the penny that Lungi hid at Cape Point 20 years ago

The sharks

ZAMBIA



The animals



Cruising down the Zambezi

Flying over Vic Falls

Our first African bus ride

TANZANIA

The 3 day train ride

 



Giraffes



The craziness of Dar

Escaping the craziness of Dar

Zanzibar beaches

Stone Town

ETHIOPIA

Culture shock

Hanging out with Mr. Tadesse 



Long nights in bug-infested hotels



Feeding Hyenas

Lalibela churches

Exploring the village of Lalibela

Local alcohol in the middle of Lake Tana

Lungi getting hit on by kids

MOROCCO 

Riding camels...

...and walking in the Sahara

Getting lost in Marakech Souk

Driving through the Atlas Mountains

Hanging out with Soumia

The protest

 SIERRA LEONE

Lungi getting to Lungi

The first baby purchase

Private beaches

Dirty, dusty, sweaty Freetown

Lungi getting back to her roots

The children

Making friends

The villagers

GHANA



Easter celebration



Death

Slave castles

Letting loose at a 5 star hotel



May 1 – Castles and Alligators

From Big Milly’s we headed up the coast to a town called Cape Coast which is one of the many points where slaves were traded and sold to Europeans and Americans. The towns are home to large forts that temporarily housed thousands of slaves as they waited to be traded or sold to Europeans and Americans. Slaves were packed into rooms so small that they were forced to eat and sleep on a 6 inch layer of their own urine and feces, in windowless dungeons with many of their “cell-mates” dying around them. We visited 2 slave castles - one in Cape Coast and one further West in a town called Elmina.

 

 

 

 

little girl fell asleep on Jacob (also asleep) in the shared taxi

We took an organized tour of one of the castles and all of the other visitors were tourists from various African countries. The castles were very interesting (and eerie) but most of my attention was focused at watching the other visitors and their reactions as we progressed through the tour. In general, the African people are very lively, loud, playful and humorous but this was a real solemn atmosphere and they were all very quiet, some of them even crying as the guide explained the unbearable living conditions that the slaves endured before being shipped across the ocean like cargo. The slaves were a commodity, like cattle, being gathered, branded with hot iron rods and sold by one company to another.

To be honest I felt kind of weird being the only white person on the tour, as if in some way I was partially responsible for this or at least my heritage. One of the female tourists approached me and asked how I felt about what took place in these castles and I wasn’t sure what she was implying; maybe she felt the same way I was or maybe she just wanted the perspective of a white North American.

 

 

 

 

From Cape Coast we took a day trip to a Kakum National Park, one of the largest rain forests in West Africa but it was little lame and highly overpriced. We were told that we would see forest elephants and monkeys but I think the group of 50 teenagers on a class trip that entered before us scared off any wildlife; the only living creature we saw was a giant spider. On the way back we stopped at a restaurant which is built in the middle of an alligator infested pond. The staff would coax the wild alligators out of the water with pieces of chicken and for a small tip, we were allowed to feed and touch them - a bit scary considering these things are killing machines that can whip around in a split second and take off an arm. But we made it out in one piece and are now back in Accra to see a dance/music show and just take it easy before heading off to Asia in a couple of days.

 

 

 

 

 The African concert: