Change In Plans

[Note: Written on 7 January, but only published on 8 January]

Greetings from Upington, South Africa.  This short post is about our trip from Cape Town, and our short stay in Upington.

Our flight was delayed about 20 minutes, but eventually we boarded a bus and rolled out to the airplane.  Except for us, everyone on the bus was speaking Afrikaans.  There were no children, and no obvious tourists.  A man about my age asked, in English, “Are you lot really going to Upington?  Are you sure?”  I guess there is a reason that there is only one flight per day.

Stepping off the plane in Upington was like walking into a wall of heat.  It was just over 40 degrees Celsius, or 105 Fahrenheit.  Welcome to the desert!  As they say, “It’s a dry heat.”

Upington International Airport is about the size of a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment.  Occasionally flights land from Namibia or Botswana, giving it “International” status.  The Cape Town flight must have been the last of the day, because as soon as we had collected our luggage, and walked out to the parking lot, the airport staff all left and locked the door behind us.

There is a row of six small sheds which house the representatives of six different rental-car companies.  We found Gustav, from Hertz, and he checked us in to our Isuzu 4×4 pick-up truck (invariably described as a “bakkie” in South Africa).  I asked Gustav if it had been busy during the holidays, and he said that we were his first rental in the last seven days.  My guess is that Gustav gets a lot of reading done, and/or has an awesome Facebook page.

We stayed over at a guest house called Le Must.  When I called for directions, and I described where I was, Natasha, Le Must’s manageress, said, “Ag, you are too far away for me to tell you how to get here.  Call back when you see the Absa Bank on Schroder Straat.”  Literally ten seconds later I was in front of the bank.  Sixty seconds after that, we were driving past a series of curiously named guest houses along the Orange River: “The Hadeda,” “The Burger House,” “Biki B&B,” “Nirvana.” And sixty seconds after that we were in the driveway of Le Must.

Upington is a dusty, old-fashioned, South African town.  The streets are still all named after Afrikaner settlers, and the stores carry the necessities of living in a hot, dry climate.  90% of the population is mixed race, what the apartheid system used to classify as “coloured.”  Virtually everyone speaks Afrikaans.  The biggest building in town is the Dutch Reformed Church. It does not appear to have changed much in the ten years since I was last here.

Le Must guest house, rated the best in Upington, was small, and comfortable, and unbelievably inexpensive.  The total cost for two rooms, including breakfast, was about $50.  Hallelujah!  We went for a short swim, then drove back into town for a heavy but good dinner outdoors at Le Must’s restaurant.   The menu warned us, “You are in meat country.  The fish has been frozen.”  By 9pm, we were all in bed.

Leaving Cape Town seems to have been more traumatic for Tallulah and Zola than we had anticipated.  Tallulah has been clinging to three Barbie dolls as if they were a life raft in a stormy sea.  At dinner she sat under the table for most of the meal, playing with the dolls in the rocks and sand.  She insisted that this was OK, because “Sienna’s daddy said it was OK in Cape Town.”  That night she tossed and turned and talked in her sleep.

Zola has been moody and uncommunicative since we left for the airport in Cape Town.  He was sorry to leave Winston, our Llandudno neighbor and his constant companion of the last week.  Also, as we have realized, Zola likes stability and predictability.  Having a “home” in Cape Town, and having some semblance of a daily rhythm really suited him.  Now he is alone and in constant motion again.  We hope he will cheer up once we get out to Tswalu (also familiar turf for him), and we start tracking animals.

India is in high spirits.  She loves game drives, and she loves the desert.  She is ready to get moving again.  As usual, I am somewhere in the middle.  We had gotten very comfortable in our little home by the sea, and in our vacation-bubble faux normalcy. 

It is getting hot again, and we need to get on the road.  It is a three-hour drive to the gates of the Tswalu Nature Reserve.  The bakkie is loaded, and we are ready to go.  Tot siens, Upington.

Greetings from the Cape Town International Airport! We are sitting in a giant air-conditioned tent at the edge of the runway. This is the temporary domestic terminal for the next several months, until the big, new, state-of-the-art terminal gets completed. We all hope that they finish before the Fifa Soccer World Cup starts in 2010.

This short post is about our (temporary) departure from the Llandudno house, as we go off for a few weeks to the Northern Cape and then to Namibia.

Fortunately, we are returning to the exact same house at the end of January. The owner was kind enough to let us store ‘a few things’ in the garage while we are away. What we discovered is that during our four stationary weeks in Cape Town, we have somehow accumulated a colossal amount of stuff. We are traveling reasonably light for the next few weeks, but we have stowed more stuff in Llandudno than four average college students would take to furnish their dorm room. We will purge and ship boxes when we return to Cape Town.

We spent most of the morning packing, but Zola, Winston (his new BFF) and I got in one last boogie-boarding session on Llandudno beach. Zola tried using flippers for the first time. In the words of the surfer turtle dude from “Finding Nemo,” the flippers were “Like, totally awesome, dude.”

This afternoon, we are flying to Upington, a small town about 800 kilometers north of Cape Town. Tomorrow morning we are picking up a rented 4×4 desert vehicle, and driving about 3 hours to a private game reserve called Tswalu, in the Kalahari Desert. India and the kids went to Tswalu last January, and they have all been anticipating the return trip eagerly. The plan is to go on a lot of game drives, ride horses and hike, shoot bows and arrows, and feast in the desert. It should be a great few days.

On Saturday, we are driving from Tswalu through the Kalahari Desert. We will cross into Namibia through one of the seldom-used desert border crossings, and then camp for a few days in the desert. For about two weeks we will be driving all around the country: to the old German port towns on the west coast, to the huge orange sand dunes neas Sossusvlei, and to the Etosha National Park in the north.

India and I did similar long drives around Namibia four or five times in the past, but neither of us has been since before Zola was born. Someone told us that it hasn’t changed much, but now there are fancy places to stay.

My father and step-mother visited us in Cape Town the year before he died. My Dad loved Namibia, in part because its German colonial heritage reminded him so much of his own childhood. I still get teary eyed watching the videotape that he shot in the Namib desert, and listening to his voice on the goofy commentary.

Our time in Cape Town has been truly wonderful. Even if we didn’t have to retrieve our stored luggage, I would be thrilled that we are going to have another week here at the end of the month. On the drive to the airport, India said, “Next time, more butternut lasagna and more hiking. That’s what I’m talking about!”

In the meantime, desert adventure and long drives await us. Go Namibia!

ONE OF THE GREAT JOBS

Greetings from Cape Town.  Many South Africans are going back to work today: the old, European-style, four-week summer holiday seems to have gone away in the post-apartheid transition.  This has made Zola and me think about some of the truly terrible jobs that we have observed in our travels.  

In a clumsy parent psychology way, I am sort of trying to have Zola make the connection between doing well in school and not having one of these awful jobs.  Of course, in many places (including South Africa) the unemployment rate is so high that any job would be better than no job.  Also, I’m sure there are many truly terrible, dangerous and physically demanding jobs (eg, in Indian agriculture) that take place away from tourists’ eyes.  This list is only a sampler.  By a global standard, any of us who get to work with our brains, in a safe and comfortable environment, are incredibly lucky.

In no particular order, these were the lousiest jobs that came to mind for Zola and me:

Tannery worker in Fes, Morocco -  These men stomp around in big open-air vats, mixing pigeon feces and dyes into animal skins.  It is a brutally hot, tedious, and physically demanding job, hazardous to the health, and it smells terrible.  Within reason and legality, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

Punkawallah in India (largely obsolete) - “punka” is the Hindi word for a big fan, and the punkawallah was responsible for fanning the maharajah or other important person, to keep them cool.  It is a fun word to say, but must have been a terrible job.  Most of the royal punkawallahs were also eunuchs, which would be a definite negative.

Head-tote porter in Kathmandu - for some reason, it seemed that Nepal uses a lot of human labor in moving heavy things around.  Loads that would be carried by donkeys in a few countries, or by some wheeled vehicle (motorized or not) pretty much everywhere else, are carried on the backs of Nepalis, attached by a rope to their foreheads.  I think the rope is called a tump line.  This would be a terrible job.  We met a tiny girl carrying a heavy load of wet laundry this way, and Zola tried, unsuccessfully, to strap on the basket and walk 20 meters.  

ZOLA AS TUMP-LINE PORTER

Escalator Greeter in Japan - Many escalators in Japan have two greeters, one at each end, who bow as you get on and get off the escalator.  Standing and bowing appear to be the extent of their responsibilities.  This job is safe, indoors, and physically easy, but pushes the concept of monotony to a new level.

Domestic-route pilot in Nepal - this job is just flat-out dangerous.  The equipment is ancient, the routes are hazardous (mountains and weather), and the airport infrastructure is poor.  These planes seem to crash with alarming frequency.  Next time we will drive, thanks.

Elaborate-design craftsperson (Tangka painter in Nepal, stone-inlayer in India, mosaic-tile maker in Morocco, rug weavers in multiple countries) - the men and women who do these jobs may love the beauty of the finished products, and for the opportunity to approach perfection over their careers.  In many cases, these skills are handed down from generation to generation, performed by large families.  In each case, however, the work requires painstaking attention to tiny details, and endless task repetition, usually done in an uncomfortable position.

Anything cow related in India - the skinners of natural-death cows, and the collectors of cow dung are very low caste.  If anything bad happens to the cows, they seem to get blamed.  Occasionally, the dead-cow skinners are attacked by Hindu fundamentalists who think that the skinners killed the cows.  Cows are so weighted with religious and cultural significance that it seems best to steer clear of them generally.  

Shopkeeper in Moroccan medinas - this is another job where the tedium and the sense of unfulfilled human potential would be stifling.  Seeing a row of ten identical small shops, each with shopkeepers who have practically nothing to do, and no way to differentiate their products, was depressing.  Maybe the physical ease and the social element (everyone you know walks by) would be enough to offset the negatives.

We also saw many jobs which would be fantastic to have. Two of the best were:

Bollywood star in India - Indians seem to adore and cherish their entertainment celebrities far more than Europeans or even Americans do.  The biggest stars (eg, A. Bachchan) are treated like deities, rivaled only by cricket stars.  Doing the dancing and the wet sari scenes would be fun too.

Gulet captain in Turkey - less grand that being a Bollywood star, but this would be a terrific job.  The captains motor and sail their magnificent boats around in beautiful places, they meet interesting people, they have the on-board chefs and stewards to a lot of the more difficult work.  It would be a fun job, and only requires about six months of work each year, leaving time for something else on shore.

Now it is time to get Zola started on his math work, so that he ends up as a Bollywood star rather than a punkawallah, I guess.

TALLULAH AND SIENNA RUNNING ON THE BEACH

Greetings from Cape Town.  This short post is about a story I heard over lunch, which has made India and me think more about what we want to do with our lives.

After our morning routine (India runs a long way, Zola and I do school, Tallulah draws pictures, we pick up India on the road) we went down to Muizenberg to surf.  Conditions were good today: it was a tough high-tide paddle out to the back, but the waves were big and slow-breaking, and I had some awesome long rides back in. Zola took a lesson (www.surfshack.co.za), and India and Tallulah played on the beach.

The four of us sat at a beachside cafe for lunch, and India and I were counting all of the things in South Africa that have gotten noticeably better in the 15 years since apartheid ended.  Unexpectedly, Joel Alsfine, one of my friends from business school and from McKinsey, walked past us on the sidewalk.  Joel is South African, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but he lives in New York, and we had not seen each other in the last few years.

Joel sat with us for about half an hour, which was great.  During the course of the conversation he related a story about one of his elderly relatives, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.  

Apparently, in his dementia, Joel’s relative believes that he is perpetually on the Blue Train.  The Blue Train is a hyper-luxurious train from the 1920s, which travels the 24-hour route between Cape Town and Pretoria. (www.bluetrain.co.za) It is a big South African tourist attraction.  My mother and step-father took it once, when they were visiting us, and thought it was absolutely amazing.

At a recent family dinner, Joel’s elderly relative exclaimed: “That was a delicious dinner.  The food on this train just gets better and better all the time.  I should go and compliment the chef.”  

His daughter said, “Pop, don’t be ridiculous.  You know that Mommy cooked this dinner.”

The elderly relative said, “Amazing.  She cooked dinner for the whole train?”

A funny story, and well told by Joel.  It may even be true.

The conversation shifted to a hypothetical “where would you want your dementia to place you in perpetuity,” if that ever came to pass.  Joel and his wife have talked about Groot Constantia, a beautiful wine estate in Cape Town (and a long way from White Plains, New York).  India and I agreed that being perpetually on the beach in Llandudno and Muizenberg would be a great hypothetical dementia outcome.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Greetings from Cape Town.  This short post is about the first few days of the year. 

Favorite visual juxtaposition from the last few days: a young Muslim man walking on the street with a fully burqa-and-veil clad woman.  It wasn’t clear whether the woman was his wife, mother, sister or daughter.  The man was wearing a black t-shirt, with big white letters reading “SH*T HAPPENS WHEN YOU PARTY NAKED.” I guess the long arm of the Wahabbists hasn’t quite reached the Cape Town Muslim community.

On Thursday morning, India was determined to continue her January 1st tradition of running from Llandudno to the top of Chapman’s Peak.  Her planned companion cancelled, so I volunteered (unwisely) to join India on the 12-mile early morning run.  As expected, she was absolutely fine, and I suffered like an out-of-shape dog.  

Chapman’s Peak Drive is closed to cars these days, because huge boulders keep rolling down off the mountain and onto the road.  This spectacular stretch of road is left to the cyclists and runners and walkers. It was fun for India and me to talk about the times that we ran the Two Oceans Marathon, along that same route, and for us to just enjoy each other’s company.  The highlight, though, was finding a little waterfall next to the road.   With the South Atlantic splayed 500 feet below us, we drank from the mountain-stream and reveled in the glory of it all.

While we were gone, Su and Dave took all of the kids to the base of Table Mountain, for their third attempt at getting to the top.  For some reason, unlike December 31st, there were no crowds at all.  Within 20 minutes of arriving, they had parked, gotten tickets, and taken the cable car to the top.  India and I found them drinking cappuccino outside the cafe on the top of the mountain, after they had been hiking around for about an hour.  We were thrilled that they all were able to visit Cape Town’s most beautiful spot before they headed home.

“A-TRAIN” or “LITTLE A”     surfing nicknames              ”Z-BIRD” or “Z-MONEY”

That afternoon we got a final boogie boarding session in on Llandudno beach, and then (sadly), the Langdons had to leave us to start the long trip back to Maine.  We had a very fun week with them.

On Friday morning, we started to get back into the “on our own in Cape Town” routine.  India left for a long solo run, and Zola and I did schoolwork.  We picked India up on the road and went off to do errands.  

In the early afternoon we had a long and awesome surfing session down at Muizenberg.  It was one of the best surfing days I have ever had.  The highlight, though, was seeing Zola ride a wave all the way to the beach from about 100 meters out, and then step off of the board as casually as if he were getting off an escalator at the mall.  It was like watching him sit a horse for the first time, or ice skate, or sing in front of his school: a moment of great paternal pride.

DAD TRYING TO HANG TEN

On the way back from surfing, we went to Kirstenbosch Gardens.  This is South Africa’s huge national botanical garden, nestled into the lower slopes on the back side of Table Mountain.  

It is difficult to describe how beautiful the setting is, and how peaceful and utopian the gardens themselves are.  We hiked up the paths and across the soft, grassy slopes, with Tallulah leading the way.  This is where Zola learned to walk, and where we have had countless picnics and attended many outdoor concerts.  Before we had children, India and I ran through the upper gardens and into Cecilia Bos forest at least a hundred times.  Yesterday we followed the “visually impaired” nature trail rope through the woods, and stopped in the fragrance garden to smell the smells.  Zola and I talked about the Western Cape plant kingdom, with the unique and otherworldly fynbos.  We talked about the bitter-almond hedge that Jan van Riebeeck planted in the 1650s, to keep the rest of Africa out of his colony.  A big segment of the hedge is still preserved in Kirstenbosch, and yes, the almonds taste very bitter.

Eventually, India and I sat on the grass to talk in the sunshine, while Zola and Tallulah chased guinea fowls and looked for tadpoles in the stream.  Like so many other places in Cape Town, Kirstenbosch seems to get better with each passing year.

TALLULAH THE EXCITABLE TOUR GUIDE

We are laying low a little bit, enjoying our last few days before we start traveling again.  On Wednesday we leave for the Northern Cape, to go on safari for a few days.  From there, we will drive to Namibia for about two weeks, before we return to Cape Town.  This is a different, and very relaxing, type of family travel experience.

ZOLA AND DAD READING ABOUT JACKIE ROBINSON

Greetings from Cape Town!  We continue to have a fun and relaxing “vacation from our vacation,” so to speak.  With my sister and family here, we have actually been going pretty hard for the last several days.

 India has developed a foolproof method for getting us out of the house early.  She leaves at about 7:30 am for a long run, with instructions to “pick me up at 9 o’clock at XXX.”  We meet her, she changes clothes in the car, and off we go.  Cape Town is  unbelievably crowded, so these early starts have been hugely helpful.

Sunday - Aquarium Day.  The weather was lousy in the early morning, so we went to the Two Oceans Aquarium, down in the waterfront.  The aquarium did a big refresh in the last year, so it was great.  Tallulah, in particular, had a fantastic time, running from exhibit to exhibit.  In the afternoon, Andrew, Zola, Winston (our neighbor) and I went surfing in Muizenberg.  It was pouring with rain, the surf was big, and very rough, and it had kicked up a lot of kelp and sand in the water.  To my surprise, all three boys had a blast, shrieking and laughing in the surf.  The rest of the group went back to Rhodes Memorial, and also got drenched having lunch outside (probably less shrieking and laughing).  The weather cleared in the late afternoon, and we had a great boogie board session back over in Llandudno.

ZOLA AND EAGLE

Monday- Wine Country Day.  We started at the Spier Estate in Stellenbosch, which has an orphaned-cheetah center and a raptor-rescue center.  Again, getting there early was a big bonus: all of the kids got to pet cheetahs, cuddle baby barn owls, and hold an eagle.  When we left, the line was hours long.  We went to Morgenhof Estate for lunch, which has been a traditional favorite.  It was fun to sit outside, and the kids had a grand time wrestling and running around, but the restaurant has lost its way.  By the time we left, it was pouring rain.  We visited two other favorite estates -Kanonkop, Uitkyk- bought some wine, and drove back to the city.  The Cape Town wine country is so close by that it is an easy day trip.  After we got back to Llandudno, Andrew and Zola played rugby on the beach, and I boogie boarded until until long after sunset.

SWIMMING WITH PENGUINS - BOULDERS BEACH

Tuesday - Penguin Day.  We drove down to Boulders Beach as early as we could, trying to beat the crowds and catch the low tide.  At low tide, the beach is literally five times larger than at high tide, and the whole experience is easy and pleasant.  We got the timing just right (for the first time in three years), and had a great few hours swimming with penguins, taking pictures, and playing on the beach.  Boulders is the best.  In the afternoon, we drove up to Kalk Bay, and had a long lunch at Harbor House restaurant, overlooking the fishing pier.  The Indian Ocean waves crash dramatically against the (second-floor) windows of the restaurant, and the seafood is always great.

BIRTHDAY HIKE

Wednesday- for India’s birthday, she wanted to run from Llandudno to Lion’s Head (about 15 kilometers), hike up Lion’s Head, then run to the base of Table Mountain and hike up that.  We dropped off Tallulah to play with her friend Sienna, and a big group of us (including Zola) walked up Lion’s Head.  It was a perfect morning for that hike: sunny and windless.  India ran across to Table Mountain, but it was too crowded for us to get cable car tickets.  Foiled again on that front.  India and I will do both peaks next week, when Cape Town clears out a little bit.

We are having a relaxed rest of the day, boogie boarding at Llandudno beach, preparing a New year’s Eve feast, and generally slowing down for Su and Dave’s last full day in Cape Town.

Happy Birthday, India (the person), and happy new year to all.  This has been a wonderful, interesting, challenging year for all of us.  More of the same in 2009!

Greetings from Cape Town.  My sister and her husband and two sons have been here since Christmas Eve, and we have had a great few days together.  This short post is about what we have been doing.

Yesterday morning, Boxing Day, we made a valiant but ill-fated attempt to climb Table Mountain.  It was windy when we woke up, but nowhere near as bad as many other Cape Town days we have experienced.  Unfortunately, the cable car was closed, so our idea of “climb up, ride down,” didn’t work out.  We walked about two thirds of the way up (about 500 meter climb), but the responsible parents in the group figured we should turn around.  As we shuffled back to the car in the strong wind (Tallulah happily on my shoulders), with the clouds socking in the view from the top, we all agreed that it had been the right call.

On our way to lunch, we stopped at a little carnival, and all of the kids rode the ferris wheel, and did the bungie cord slingshot.  They seemed just as happy with this as an alternative to mountain climbing.

As the wind died down, we spent the late afternoon on the beach.  Zola and his cousin, Andrew, and I swam and bodyboarded in the cold Atlantic.  Everyone else played on the beach and watched a great sunset.

This morning (the 27th) we organized a large group to go down to the Indian Ocean side and go surfing.  The logistics were slightly daunting to me: three families (including our neighbours here in Llandudno), six surf instructors, a 45-minute drive in multiple vehicles, wetsuits and board rentals, and 90-minute lessons in the very choppy water.  It all went off surprisingly smoothly, and everyone seemed to have fun.  Being at the beach in the sunshine makes it all a little easier.

For a late lunch, we sat outside at La Colombe in Constantia, which was just rated the best restaurant in South Africa.  The food was off-the-hook amazing.  The best part, though, is that the restaurant is on a wine farm, with a lot of outdoor space, including a cricket pitch.  We sent all of the kids (plus a few kids from other tables) off to play cricket in the sun, while adults enjoyed peace and fine cuisine.  The kids came back, gobbled down their lunches, and went back out to play.  Very civilized approach to the three-hour lunch.

After a quick visit to our friends, Ryan and Paula, we ended up back down at the beach at Llandudno.  The wind had dropped to nothing, and the water was very calm.  Andrew, Zola and I bodyboarded for about 90 minutes (wetsuits help), and everyone saw another amazing sunset.

We were barely able to get the kids to eat bacon and eggs for dinner, before they fell asleep.  The house was completely still by 10 pm.

South Africa is a great place to be on vacation.  I think that Su and Dave and kids are having a fun time.

Greetings and Merry Christmas from Cape Town.  Despite a fair amount of economic gloom this December, this post is about a series of hugely encouraging signs that we have seen in our travels over the last several months.  

India (the person) gave me a copy of Tom Friedman’s new book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded” for Christmas. His basic thesis is that we are in a global crisis of environmental change, crowding, and increased consumption. We all (led by the U.S.) need to develop new, lower impact, ways of doing pretty much everything.

Reading the book got me thinking about phenomena that we have observed in our travels that could lead you to believe that Friedman’s “Code Green” revolution is already under way.  These phenomena are all sort of related, so it is difficult to put a good structure around them.  So, in no particular order here are some encouraging signs:

Proliferation of connectivity - cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet are changing the developing world. The old streets of Fes and Marrakesh are medieval, but the rooftops are swarmed with satellite receivers.  We have had cell coverage almost everywhere we have traveled, and we have seen handsets being used in the most remote places, and by people who are very low on any socioeconomic scale (eg, the Chinese Net fishermen in Kerala, India).  In South Africa and India, cell phones are used widely for commerce, for entertainment, as well as talking.  We have also had wi-fi almost everywhere, and have seen public internet access (eg, cafes) everywhere else.  I think this connectivity is inherently good: more informed choices, less scope for fundamentalism, closer societal bonds, more fun.

Alternative energy - India does not have much petroleum, natural gas, coal, or firewood, but it has plenty of cow manure.  We saw simple biogas converters everywhere: mix water and manure in an airtight box, let it sit in the sun, and pipe out the gas for cooking.  We saw windmills all over India and Spain.  We saw solar water heaters on every house on the Turkish coast.  These are all pretty small scale (except the windmills), but they seem to work well and are cheap.  Because air quality is so terrible in India, use of LNG/CNG buses and motor rickshaws has been mandated (and enforced) in many cities.  I don’t know what the economics look like, but they are probably not terrible, and have made a big difference.  The experimentation is probably most important.

Mobility of labor - sitting in Abu Dhabi airport in the middle of the night, watching the great Gulf States job swap, was amazing.  Thousands of South Asians flying to jobs, however humble, that are better than anything they could find at home.  Migration of people across borders creates challenges (my guess is that South Africa’s real population is ~20% illegal immigrants) as well as opportunities.  But remittances greatly support the weakest economies (Nepal, Zimbabwe and Malawi, undeveloped India), and middle classes get formed.  Moving around also expands horizons and aspirations.

English-speaking (and reading/writing) kids - even in places with cripplingly low adult literacy (Morocco, Nepal, parts of India), we saw endless streams of uniformed schoolkids.  Everywhere, the vast majority of kids over the age of ten spoke to us in English.  Every kid that Zola has interviewed could read and write, and had grand aspirations for his/her own life.  Parents we met made their kids’ education a huge family priority (eg, the dirt-poor Moroccan family on the edge of the Sahara, sending their 8-year-old son to boarding school 10 hours away).  

Local and global optimism - every country we have been to, including our own, has a lot of problems.  Outside of the most-developed countries (U.S., Canada, Japan, Spain), what we heard from the vast majority of people we spoke to was great optimism about the future.  India, Ireland, and Turkey, in particular, seemed to be bursting with self confidence and impatient enthusiasm.  The individual behaviors that we observed seemed to support these optimistic words: investing in new equipment, planting new crops, educating girl children, starting new businesses, protecting the environment.  All autumn we would get a daily dose of despair from the New York Times on-line, and then see exactly the opposite in the streets of Delhi, and Istanbul, and Pokhara, and Cape Town.

It is Christmas morning.  My sister and her family arrived yesterday (hooray!).  Stockings and presents are opened, and everyone is anxious to get to the beach.  Merry Christmas.

HO, HO, HO!

Greetings from Cape Town.  A few months ago, I wrote a post which tried to capture some of the vocabulary which had emerged from our traveling-family subculture.  Some of those expressions have endured, but many of them faded from use, to be replaced by a new generation of expressions in India, Nepal, and South Africa.  

Here is a sampling:

“Hey yuh, big boy!” - Tallulah started using this when we were around elephants in India and Nepal frequently, and it has now become a private joke for her.  She says it in a quick sing song, with the emphasis on “BOY!”  She has applied it to elephants, tigers, a large bus, her brother, one-horned rhinos, a snake, and now to waves as they break on the beach.

“Fat Sajak” - months ago, Zola heard this expression while watching “King of Queens” on a flight somewhere.  Julie and Doug get an automated transcript of their fights, and he counts the number of times she refers to him as, “fatty, fatso, fat boy, Fat Sajak.”  Having never seen ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ I’m not sure why Zola thought this was so funny and memorable.  It has become his catch-all for anyone who he thinks is overweight or unpleasant, as in, “That mean old man was a real Fat Sajak.”

“Excuse me …” - this is Zola’s preferred way to interrupt conversation and ask a question to any person.  It could be followed by something awkward with a stranger, like “Why do you only have one leg?” or something insightful, like “Why are the Iraqis fighting against the Iraqis?” or “If the son [Aurangzeb] wanted to be emperor, and he killed all of his brothers, why did he lock his Dad in the fort, instead of killing him too?” or something completely obscure, like “How do we know that Major Tom was dead, instead of his circuit just not working?”  Sometimes Zola unleashes a torrent of questions, touching the awkward, insightful, and obscure within the course of a few minutes.  When he prefaces a question with “No offense, but…” we usually brace ourselves for something horrible and hilarious.

“And you, and you, and you, and Happy Hallloween” - a few years ago, we were at Disney World for Halloween, and this was the song that the skeletons in the big parade sang about a thousand times as they danced slowly past us.  The tune is simple in 4/4 time: “C  F -  -, C  F -  -, C F - -, C G/F E/D C, C  F –, etc.”  For some reason, Tallulah and I find ourselves singing this to each other several times every day, particularly when I want her to do something, and she starts with “No you…” and I respond “No you…”

“Namaste” - this is the universal greeting in India and Nepal, so we all said it a hundred times a day.  I think it translates, literally, into “I salute all that is divine in you.”  Nice.

“Hello, ‘Hungry’.  My name is …” - this one is probably borderline child abuse, but I can’t help myself.  Every time one of the kids whines “I’m hungry” or “I’m thirsty” or “I’m tired” they get a firm handshake and an introduction by that name.  This cracks me up, which proves that I am becoming my Dad.  (”Hello, Becoming My Dad, my name is…”)

“Nahi” - this is the Hindi word for “no thank you.”  It was very helpful for us to have this word on the relatively few occasions in India (Khajuraho temples, Jaipur old city, Pushkar camel festival everywhere) that we had a lot of people trying to sell us things or begging.   

“So you’re the living goddess.  What’s up with that?” - on NBC.com we watched the Saturday Night Live Mark Wahlberg parody and the actual Mark Wahlberg guest appearance, and paraphrased this line.  It refers to the Kumari Devi, the prepubescent living goddess in Kathmandu.  Zola mentioned that she could not attend school, because this is what the other kids would say to her.  I love saying this about everything.

“Can I please have some butter naan?” - even without having diarrhea or other stomach upset, Zola lost about 10% of his body weight traveling in India.  It would have been a lot more if he hadn’t discovered that you can order flat bread dripping with butter.  Many nights he would have two baskets of butter naan as his main sustenance for the day.  Our guide, Indrajit, started calling him “BNB,” for butter naan boy.

“You don’t see this every day, do you?  This is very rare, isn’t it?”  - Zola went through a phase when he needed some affirmation that what we were seeing was extraordinary.  The phase started when we were swimming with the crown prince of Jodhpur.  He increased its use while we were in Varanasi, and it peaked while tracking tigers.  I guess things are getting dull for him, because he hasn’t asked very frequently since we left Nepal.

“This is C-R-A-Z-Y, Dad” - Zola would whisper this to me on many days in India and Nepal (particularly in big crowds, near bizarre religious ceremonies, or when things were very polluted).  It is self explanatory, if relatively polite for an eight-year old.

“Was I born yet?” - Since we arrived in South Africa, India and I have been boring both kids with stories of what we did when we lived here.  Tallulah frequently asks this question, which may just be an innocent request for us to shut up or talk about topics which are relevant to her.

As we have slipped into more of a stable, if not entirely normal, day-to-day existence in Cape Town, many of these  second-generation special family expressions are also fading away.  The intensity of the shared India and Nepal experiences seemed to breed the vocabulary.  Now the novelty has worn off, and the need is not so great.  Perhaps we will have a third generation of vocabulary when we leave Cape Town for Namibia in the New Year.

ZOLA AND ALEC

RUNNING TALLULAH

Greetings from Cape Town, early in the morning of the longest day of the year.  Rereading the post about Zola’s birthday, written early yesterday morning, I realized that it is barely coherent.  One reason for the incoherence was that a large bird somehow flew into the house, and spent 45 minutes bashing itself repeatedly against the skylights above my head.  Eventually I was able to shoo him out.  The more abiding reason for the choppy writing is that I am completely distracted, thinking about moving back to South Africa when we finish our trip.

India and I were very happy living here from 1991 to 1993, and again from 1996 to 2000.  In early 2000, for reasons that I can’t really articulate, I became desperately eager to leave Cape Town and move back to New York.  The basic motivation was some vague but deep professional/personal desire to be closer to the vitality of “the center” and to not be languishing on “the periphery.”  There was no real push factor, except some sense I felt that it was “now or never”.  In moving us back to the U.S. in late 2000, I subjected India to a fair amount of professional and personal disruption and anguish.

At any time in the last eight years, India would have returned to South Africa on a single day’s notice.  She loves her family and her U.S. friends, but this is home to her.  During each year’s vacation here, the topic of moving back comes up for more or less serious discussion.  But each year, there was some determinatively strong factor pulling us back to the U.S. - runup to partner election, trying to have a baby, having a new baby, just moved to New Jersey, just moved to a new job, planning to move to San Diego - and at the end of some number of glorious weeks in Cape Town, we packed our bags and flew home.

This year is different.  The appeal of Cape Town is very strong, particularly after traveling for most of the previous six months.  Even acknowledging that we are living a vacation, not a reality, we have all felt remarkably happy, relaxed, and comfortable.  In the midst of this place infatuation, even the practical challenges of living here (e.g., earning money, finding a house, putting kids in schools, getting immigration documents, ensuring safety) seem easily surmountable.

The draw back to the U.S. is also weaker than it has been in previous years.  I have some professional opportunities in the U.S. under discussion, but no definite job to return to.  By the way, the U.S. economy seems a little rocky at present.  We are legally resident in Tennessee, but haven’t bought a house, or committed to a school.  Our friends and our families are important to us, but a few months ago we had been committed to moving to San Diego.  Practically speaking, South Africa isn’t that much further away: we would get back to our families and to our Catskills cabin just as frequently.  

So what is holding us back?  Again, assuming that the practical challenges can be overcome, the main issue is me.  At the core of it, I wonder if am I ready to sacrifice my abstract desire to be close to the center in order for my family to live what would likely be a happier life?  

It is a big decision, and is obviously more complicated than I am making it sound.  That said, the idea has infected my brain like a virus.  I can’t sleep, it is hard to concentrate on reading, and (obviously) I can’t write coherently.  I need to find a way to put the topic on the mental back burner for the next two weeks, and to re-evaluate with some distance and perspective.  Maybe then it will seem like a ridiculous idea.  Maybe not.