Oh, Africa!

June 30, 2002

There is still much more to be said about Sierra Leone. I wish you all could go there, to see what I have seen, to hear what I have heard, to feel what I have felt.

Besides incredible suffering there is incredible beauty. In its beaches, its mountains, and especially its people, this small West African country has much to offer.

If Sierra Leone is more than you can handle, Ghana is the place for you. I  was in awe of the modern freeways and office towers, the Beverly Hills-sized homes of Osu, and the wide range of restaurants and hotels for tourists.

But the most interesting thing about Ghana is its people. The people of Accra, Ghana, set new standards for friendliness. After meeting me for only a few minutes, everyone wanted to be "my best friend in the whole wide world". This was especially true of men much more than women. My driver from the airport, Kwame, stopped the car halfway to the hotel so that he could write his address and phone number for me. Also, whenever I want "to do business" in Accra, I am supposed to contact him. After leaving Kwame in front of the hotel, my waiter at the hotel restaurant, Felix, asked me lots of questions and would respond with "Oh, that's great!" no matter how I replied. He also wrote his contact information for me, and demanded to know mine. And this process was repeated over the next four days countless times whenever I would meet someone.

In addition, a lot of people had some strange ideas about my personal possessions. "That's a nice watch.  Can I have it?" a man asked me after just meeting me 30 seconds prior. A taxi driver wanted my toothpaste; another man wanted my umbrella. I don¹t know if I was having cultural difficulties, but it seems odd that people would just ask for these things out of the blue.

They also seem to think that I carry a healthy supply of U.S. Immigration Visas in my pocket, ready to hand out at any time. I guess it's no surprise a lot of people asked me for visas, because more than any other foreign country I have been to, the people of Ghana show a great love for America. Some taxis had American flags, and a lot of people had names such as Cosby, Washington, and (my personal favorite) Elijah New York.

Besides their love for America, the people of Ghana have interesting ways of getting your attention on the street. People called me "Master" and "Bossman", but more often they would hiss at me. This is common in Ghana when you want to get someone's attention. Everyone does it, and even I found myself hissing at my waiters in restaurants by the end of the trip.

The only thing I did not like about Ghana was the taxi drivers. Given that there is no public transportation available to tourists, taxis were my only option. Most of them are driven by 20 year old boys in old Soviet clunkers with no clue about where things are in Accra. This was incredibly frustrating for me, because in my past experience with taxis I could just tell the driver where I was going and he would take me there. The first taxi I took the driver had never heard of my hotel (and it¹s a major hotel) and had no idea of how to get there. After wasting an hour of my time, I gave up on the guy and wandered to the hotel myself on foot. After that ride, I learned my lesson and always took my Accra map with me when I needed a taxi.

Despite my frustrations, there is no denying the fact that I have come to love West Africa (and so will you if you go). Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Senegal, Cote D¹Ivoire. Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria. Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger. A land where the foreign aid money often flows right past poor people and into politicians' Swiss bank accounts, where food should be abundant and yet millions are malnourished, where tourism should drive the economy but is completely underdeveloped. A land so filled with contradictions and wasted potential that it is impossible to ignore the cry of the people: "OH, AFRICA!"

Serious Consequences and Sleeping in a Coffin

July 7, 2002

Somewhere over Mongolia I filled out my Chinese entry form. Unlike the references to United States law found on U.S. forms, this one simply says that providing false information will result in "serious consequences."

This gave me a small feeling of fear about the place I was about to visit, because it was my first visit to a totalitarian state. Upon arrival, I gained a new fear because hardly anyone spoke English. I took the airport bus to the city, on the way asking the driver to drop me at my hotel by repeatedly pointing at the place on the map where I needed to go. Along an unknown freeway in East Beijing, the driver stopped the bus and pointed for me to leave. I did, but I had no idea where I was. I just stood there for several minutes, not knowing what to do. Luckily, a friendly Chinese university student who spoke English noticed me and took pity upon me. She showed me to the subway station. Then she really surprised me by paying my fare and riding with me to my stop. Things got even more surprising as she then walked me to my hotel, helped me through the check-in process, came up to my room and made sure everything was OK before leaving. This was an amazing act of kindness, but I don¹t think she would have done it had I been of a different gender or nationality.

And that was only the beginning. Everywhere I went in Beijing, I was stopped by Chinese university students (95% of them women) who wanted to "speak English" with me. Many of them wanted to have a drink with me, but I only accepted one invitation. Even more surprising, at least three times during my stay random girls would come up to me on the street and ask to get their photo taken with me. It was like being a celebrity, and since I am treated like a leper by the women of Washington DC, I must admit I enjoyed it very much.

But there was a lot more to my visit to China than meeting girls. In downtown Beijing, I visited Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Great Hall of the People. The Great Hall of the People (a.k.a. Congress) intrigued me. The Chinese government is quite opposed to dirty floors in their buildings, so upon arrival you must attach a bright blue plastic shower cap to each of your shoes. Young, old, Chinese, American, everyone who visited Congress with me was united by wearing blue shoes. Our blue shoes took us to the lavish conference rooms (there is one for each of the 34 provinces), and to the main meeting hall. But no one votes in the meeting hall; Chinese laws are made in back rooms by a select few.

The next day, I took a Chinese tour bus 50 miles outside Beijing to the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China. I have never seen something so impressive. This particular section was in the middle of 1500 ft mountains, but that did not stop the builders from stringing the wall along the upper portions of the peaks. The wall rises and falls dramatically, and bends left and right. I was exhausted climbing even a small portion of it, no wonder it was so effective for so long. To go back down the mountains, I decided to cheat and take the cable car. Given that the cable car was hung several hundred feet above the ground and descended at a very steep angle, I was really freaked by whole ride. After leaving the cable car thankful for my life, I had a new problem: my Chinese tour bus was nowhere to be found. The driver gave us detailed instructions, but of course they were in Chinese and I didn¹t understand a word of them. All I knew is that I was supposed to be back at 2. So there I was again, stranded by the language barrier. Fortunately, I found a Chinese-American guy and he was able to direct me to the 919 city bus back to Beijing. On this bus, the driver drove an old converted VW van like a maniac on steep mountain roads. And I was the only non-Chinese passenger, once again repeatedly pointing to where I needed to go. This bus also just stopped in the middle of North Beijing. This time, everyone got off. After some confusion, someone was able communicate with me through pointing that I now needed to take the Number 5 bus.

Incidents like this made my visit difficult, but overall it was an amazing experience, a great first experience in Asia. But my trip around the world was still not over, it was time to move on to the final stop: Tokyo.

I didn't have much time in Japan, but I managed to get a sense of the place. Tokyo is ordered chaos, with no real downtown and mostly unlabeled streets. However, you can¹t help but loving the place, with its clean streets, beautiful public parks and comprehensive subway system that is at first quite hard to figure out. I enjoyed riding the Tokyo subway, and loved the chimes (when the doors close, it sounds like you the beginning of a video game). One big tourist attraction in the city is Tokyo tower. A larger, redder version of the Eiffel Tower, I took the elevator to the cheaper, lower observation deck. It was quite a humid, hazy evening in Japan but the view was still quite impressive. I then ventured to the ³happening² part of town, Roppongi, where I ate my dinner. Part of me wanted to experience the nightclubs of this exciting area, but after a month on the go, I was just too tired. I went to my hotel, but this was no ordinary place. In Tokyo, since space is at a premium, sleeping in a ³capsule hotel² is a cheap alternative to the norm. I left my bag at the front desk, took a shower in the shared bathroom, and went to sleep in capsule #5070 stacked among others with a diameter of 3.5 feet and a height of 6 feet long. It was like sleeping in pile of coffins. Before falling asleep, I heard other guys climbing into their capsules above and to the sides. Actually, I enjoyed the experience. For $39, I got to stay in downtown Tokyo in a nice, clean hotel. The fact that I couldn¹t stand up in my room was of no concern to me. I managed to save a great deal of money; Tokyo is probably the most expensive city in the world!

On Friday, July 5, I crossed the Pacific and returned to the United States, happy to be home again. I am so filled with gratitude about this experience, because one could not ask for a more powerful, educational, and most importantly, fun trip around the world.