The Agrinautica

Thursday, July 30th,
Labe, 0700 - Ibro, Damba, Daniel, driver Mamadou and I got started bright and early on our trip back to the capitol, leaving the hotel promptly at 7. Monica had gone back to the village she's posted to the day before to pack for her upcoming trip to the Peace Corps training village near Conakry (to welcome a new group of volunteers), and had told me she'd be waiting by "the orange sign" by the road junction to Doumba -- which I knew well because last year's project had been in Doumba. She estimated it would take us about 45 minutes to get there. Also I only realized in the morning that while Monica and I had come up with this plan we hadn't really shared it with the others apparently, so it was news to Ibro we were giving Monica a ride.
   The morning was clear and quiet as we sped down the road past the lsat buildings of Labe, over a small river, past foliage and bush ... and twenty minutes later we were rocketing through the Doumba junction. "wait wait wait!" I exclaimed, "we're supposed to meet Monica here!" I made them turn around and go back but they were very doubtful she would be there, saying it was nowhere near Sintali, where she's posted, and after one return pass we were on our way, me wishing I had had Monica tell the plan to one of them so they'd have had a clearer understanding of it.
   Continuing to text with Monica via whatsapp we established she might actually have meant a different junction that also leads to Doumba and we got there closer to the predeicted 45 minute travel time. She wasn't there, and we were just about to go continue on to the nearby town of Pita for breakfast and then come back when I saw her coming up the side road in a taxi. So she joined us, and now with six people we were a spot crowded. But hey, I think we counted 13 (THIRTEEN) people in one of the local taxis (a regular sedan style car, with three people in the front, four in the backseat, two more behind the back seat, and four people actually riding on top). Apparently Conakry has no bus system, so to get from Labe to the capitol as a local your only option is to pile into one of these overcrowded taxis for the 350km trip, and breakdowns are the norm.
   Stopped in at a little shop for breakfast. We were after omelettes but the guy "didn't have eggs," which was kind of a mystery since there were literally people selling eggs all around us. We discussed the oddity of that people in Guinea will often decide they "don't do" some type of business, like buy or sell eggs, and no matter how much business sense it makes can't be budged. Or if you buy a coke or something and it comes in a glass bottle you can't leave the shop with it because they get cash back for the glass bottle -- which is good that they're all about recycling but annoying you have to finish your drink there. So you offer to pay them more so you can take away the glass bottle and sometimes they might go for it, but sometimes they might insist that no you simply cannot take the glass bottle away from their premises no matter how much you offer.

Mamou, 1400 - After several hours of winding through the green mountains of Guinea we came to the town of Mamou and dropped Damba off at his house, tucked into a backstreet of Mamou. A gaggle of little girls (nieces?) ran up to hug his leg as soon as they say him. From there we proceeded just to the edge of town to where the college of forestry is tucked away in a way that somehow makes it feel like you're not near a large town at all but just in a secluded grove. Here we found another landcruiser identical to ours, with the Organization's logo, waiting. We had met up with another project and Ibro would be hopping from us to them. The American volunteer in this case was an old professor with spectacles, working on some kind of occupational survey. After a short chat with them we were off! Now with only four in the car: Daniel, Monica, myself and the driver.


The ENATEF school of Forestry in 2014

Kindia, 1600 - On our way to Kindia we passed a police checkpoint where they made our driver show them all his papers and even unload all the luggage in the back so they could confirm there was a fire extinguisher there. Meanwhile their rigorous safety inspecting didn't seem to apply to the taxis puttering by with piles of people on the roof. The driver grumbled that really they knew NGOs like us are always in complaince but were hoping we'd bribe them to get out of the hassle.
   A few hours later (these times are very approximate) we came to the town of Kindia and stopped for lunch. Just past Kinda there was a waterfall called the Eaux de Khaleesi -- "the waters of Khaleesi." Another volunteer last year had reported it was awesome so I had insisted we plan on stopping there. Just prior to the waterfall we made a stop, the driver announced his wife had come up here for her sister's graduation and so we'd be picking her up to take her back to Conakry. So we stopped by some buildings by the side of the road and picked her up, and let me tell you, I think she was one of the most gorgeous women I'd seen in all of Guinea. And she didn't speak any English but she seemed sweet. She works as a nurse. Driver Mamadou has definitely done alright for himself!
   It was just a short drive off the main road. At the location itself a nice looking little hotel was under construction, a number of bungalows seemed complete. We paid an entry fee of about a dollar a person and a guide with a hard hat took us down the trail. Despite the development of the site the first area we were led to had an entirely broken bridge we had to cross very precariously walking on just two planks. There was a fair bit of water crashing over a short falls here but I was kind of thinking "this is NOT as cool as the other volunteer had made it sound like" and was pondering whether we had time for me to drag the group to the "Wedding Veil Falls" I had visited previously -- I was still in kind of host mode trying to show Daniel the best parts of Guinea, and Monica as well hadn't been to the waterfalls. But then the guide announced "and now for the main suite!" and led us across a meadow to a locked gate. Unlocking it, he led us down a series of steps curving down amongst big mossy trees. Mamadou (driver)'s wife continued along with us even though she was wearing high heels! At the bottom of the steps the trail continued meandering maybe 100 feet along the gnarled roots and frequent little streams of water and then reached a small waterfall comign from a cliff high above and slippery rocks. Continuing along the base of the cliff we approached a growing roar and finally came to a large pool where a truly huge waterfall was falling. There was a wooden boardwalk positioned opposite the waterfall but the water level was unusually high and we'd have to wade to get to it ... which Monica, the tour guide, and I did. Because the boardwalk was exposed to constant mist the steps leading up to it were green with algae and so slimy I could get literally not traction at all -- I had to maintain three solid points of contact and have my foot up against a crack or something, practically crawling up the boardwalk. Once in the middle there was a dry space and now directly across from the waterfall we could appreciate that this was indeed an epic waterfall.



Conakry, 1800 - on the edge of town we came by the driver's house and dropped off his wife, and his two young children came running out to give him a hug. Then we continued on slogging through rush hour traffic. Conakry is a long peninsula and our hotel was at the far end of it. We could have been home in maybe half an hour if there was no traffic but instead the hours stretched on one after the other. At one point we watched a pick up truck practically DISAPPEAR into a pothole, that was pretty alarming. That thing had to be three to four feet deep and the size of a car, the unsuspecting pickup go one wheel in and went over, half in the hole with the bottom of its chassis resting on the edge of the pothole and its wheels spinning in contact with nothing.

Conakry, 2100 - On a quiet street just blocks from our hotel we came across a barricade across half the street that said "HALT" on it. The driver stopped and looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone around, there were cars driving on the other side, and this was the way he wanted to go. So after a minute or two of thinking about it he proceeded past it. Immediately there was a whistle and he stopped as a soldier came to the window and started yelling at him. Then the soldier asked to see the car's paperwork, and inspect our luggage. The driver was visibly grumpy with all this, and things seemed to escalate between him and the soldiers. Daniel says he saw a soldier slap him, and the driver later reported he could smell alcohol on their breath ... which is really scandalous in a muslim country where no one EVER drinks.
   We were hoping it would blow over but they took him into custody, making him sit on the bench with them, and continued to argue with him. I distinctly heard the words "500,000," presumably they were trying to get a $50 bribe from him. One of the soldiers talked to me in a friendly manner trying to say in very broken English that there wouldn't have been a problem except that the driver is being so argumentative. I'm sure he was hoping that by playing the good cop in a sort of "good cop bad cop" routine maybe I'd offer to give him some money to make up for my driver's argumentativeness and it would all go away. Daniel and I were told we were free to go, and I kind of suspected if we left they might release Mamadou since their hopes of a bribe would be over, but I also couldn't just walk away and leave him there. I intentionally didn't let on to the guards that I could speak any French at all, because if they can't negotiate with you they can't ask for a bribe. My phone wasn't working, reception is terrible in Conakry, but Daniel called Ibro, who called up the pipeline to USAID, which called up the pipeline to the US Embassy, whom I talked to briefly, and then they called someone in the Guinean military who called the garrison commander who called the unit captain... after awhile a person with military bearing but looking like he had just been called out of bed emerged from the darkness and addressed the soldiers in a posture of parade rest with his hands behind his back. His tone was not angry or chastising, just kind of "these are announcements" and the soldiers listened attentively. They all saluted and the man disappeared into the darkness. Shortly later, Mamadou was released and we continued on our way.
   In related news, Daniel mentioned that when he first arrived Ibro had told him "there's a police station down the block this way ... avoid it if you want to avoid trouble."

   And just ten minutes later we were at our hotel finally!

   Up next, the epic 89 hour trip home, complete with cancelled flights, being stranded in strange new African cities, violent bouts of puking, and maybe even a little romance!

Tuesday, November 3rd, Day 31, Kasese, Western Uganda - Have you ever found yourself on the edge of a lake in Uganda surrounded by hostile young men whose loathred for you even extended to your local guide? Well that occurred this day.

   Somehow, I managed to pry my battered carcass out of bed at a relatively early hour the morning after hiking in the mountains of the moon. Alex, my local colleague, found me eating some kind of local dish of (boiled?)(baked?) banana covered in some kind of purple sauce, out on the second floor balcony. For some reason they didn't expect anyone to eat out there, even though it adjoined the restaurant, but it had a beautiful sweeping view of the mountains beyond the city, so I dragged a chair out there myself. Now this banana covered in purple sauce wasn't really so great as the alternative omelettes they'd make were way way too dry.
   Presently three girls staying in the hotel, whom I'd met earlier, came out (one from Norway, one a Kenyan-born mzungu, and one from New Zealand). They were on their way into the Congo to hike the Rwenzori mountaints from the other side. One of them asked the waiter for coffee, and he smiled and took hre order with a little bow .... but half an hour later there was still no sign of it, so she asked him again and he said "oh .. we're out of coffee someoen has just gone to the store to get more." But she had been living in Uganda for a bit and was on to these tricks. "what time does the store open?" she asked, and he looked a little embarrased and said 9, but it was still before 8 so she further pressed him "so... no one has gone for coffee have they" and he kind of smiled helplessly and made the slightest acknowledgement that this was correct.
   As we then discussed, this seems to be a common thing in Africa. Service staff seemingly would rather give you an outright lie then tell you some simple bad news about something not being available. One of the more annoying things.

Alex reported the previous day he had driven two German tourists around to some local sights, I believe only for the price of gas, what a swell fellow. And as it happened, he had gone to the some places I wanted to go to this day. We resolved to go on these adventures as soon as we were done with breakfast.

   So we got in the car and headed south. Not 15 miles down the road we came to the equator, which consisted as a giant line in the sky which was marked on either side of the road with big white circles. I took a bunch of pictures, of which I fortunately uploaded one to instagram so it's still with us.



   Now my other hobby is sailing, and crossing the equator is a big deal if you're a sailor. I asked on facebook if stepping across counted but was told no it does not. HOWEVER, a large lake, Lake George is just to the East of that location, so I've resolved to next time I'm in the area cross the equator by boat, while sprinkling salt in front of me so no one can claim "oh it wasn't salt water" :D

   From there we proceeded south into Queen Elizabeth National Park and after another ten miles or so crossed the Kazinga Channel, a river-like 20 mile strait between Lake George and the larger Lake Edward. It's about 200 yards wide and could be easily mistaken for a river, but I think the current flows sometimes one way and sometimes the other. On the other side we made contact with a tour boat operator Alex had somehow met the other day. For $50 we could go out on a boat down the channel for about two hours, which sounded good to me. Where the boat launched from there were many traditional canoes drawn up on the side, with fishermen assiduously working on their nets and things. The smell of fish was strong in the air. I think someone tipped me off that they didn't like having their picture taken so I kept myself to broad scenery shots ... which might sometimes happen to include them. I also got shown a basket full of various fish and eels and it included two very large and still-breathing lung-fish. Lungfish btw are basically darwin fish, able to survive the complete drying out of their body of water (and has "the largest known genome of any vertebrate," isn't that.. fishy?). The fish waved its fin at me stoically, as if understanding the occhiolism of its position.
   There was a little floating dock here that had one more modern little motorboat moored up at it, and this was our ride. We went aboard and cast off. As we headed slowly down the coast we quickly saw many interesting species of birds. I'd made a list but, you know, lost. I remember there were three kinds of kingfisher, including a piebald kingfishe, and one that was like neon blue. There were also numerous hippopotami all up and down the bank, wallowing with just their nostrels, eyes and ears above the surface. Startedled they'd submerge themselves and all one would see is a swirl of disturbed water. When they'd come up for air I noted it was a very whale-like spouting, as they blasted a tall spout of condensation out, presumably inhaled just as fast, and were back below the surface. They're a great danger to the small local canoes but the locals quickly learn to spot and avoid them.
   We also saw wildabeest and water buffalo on the bank. At one point a large monkey guiltily climbed off a tree that had a huge nest in it and loped off into the shrubbery. I was hoping to see a leopard, the remaining member of the "Big 5" I haven't yet seen, and was informed they can some times be spotted lounging in trees by the bank, but no luck.
   As one can perhaps imagine, the channel was in former times a major barrier, to both people and biodiversity. I learned an interesting fact about how some now-abundant tree used to only be present north of the channel but is now on both .... but that was in my notes.



   I was busy taking pictures but at one point there was a kerfuffle I wasn't really aware of until after. Alex had handed his phone to one of the crew (I think we had a guide, driver, and one deckhand), and when Alex got his phone back he saw he had a message "you have transferred 1000 shillings to [some number]" ... in Africa, where, you know, they are technologically ahead of us in some surprising ways, its very easy to transfer money from person to person with your phone. Having had his phone in custody, the deckhand somehow thought he wouldn't get caught transferring himself 1000 shillings. Which is, by the way, FOURTEEN CENTS.

   By and by we returned to the landing and made our goodbyes to the crew. I think the "captain" (/tourguide) was extremely embarrassed and apologetic about the theft attempt, and made sure Alex got his money back.



   From there we headed back north, but I really wanted to see Lake George to the east (our little cruise in the channel wasn't long enough to reach either end, it would take several hours), so we struck out on a dirt road for a little village on the lake that showed up in the map. My motives for this were largely to scout out a good location for an equator crossing by boat (you thought I was entirely joking did you?). We came to the village, and got a little lost in it sicne it didn't have clearly marked roads. Children started chasing the car yelling "give me money! give me money!" ... which I think is really really sad that that's all they know.
   Finally we came to the village's landing place, where once again many canoes were drawn up and lots of local young men were working in various capacities on unloading fish loads, repairing nets, repairing boats. One or two boats came in while we were there. It was actually very pretty, and I set about taking pictures, once again being careful to only take general pictures of the scene without appearing to focus on any one person. Nevertheless, shortly a stocky young man with a sour expression approached me and demanded
   "What are you doing??"
   "Just taking pictures"
   "We don't like it. Don't take our picture."
   More or less. There might have been more, his message was pretty clear though. So I went off to the side where I could take pictures of the lake with no people in it to snap a few more. Apparently while I was doing tihs the same youth accosted Alex and asked him how he could work for a mzungu.
   So I think we were going to get out of there pretty quick but then an old man approached me and started asking questions in English in a friendly tone, and very gladly told me how they fish and answered various questions about life on the lake (there are alligators but not many I guess?). It was really surprising to find an old and poor rural fisherman who spoke such good english. As our conversation drew to a close he said "please, I'm really hungry, can you give me something?" Normally as a matter of policy I have a heart like ice and don't just go handing out boons for relatively nothing, but I so much appreciated his kindness in this hostile little spot that I handed him a 1000 shilling note I had in my pocket and he was so grateful you'd think I had just given him a $20! Clearly, 14 cents goes a long way here.



   From there we returned to Kasese. Ate at a little "western style cafe" which had had rave reviews on tripadvisor, but I wasn't really all that impressed. In particular my coffee tasted really weird. It had been specifcialyl noted that they had good brewed coffee, as opposed to the usual nescafe, so I was rather disappointed.

   That evening I went out with Sharon and Maggie, the giggly receptionists. This consisted of some walking about on dark streets at night, but it was interesting, saw the bare little rooms they lived in (in rudimentary little buildings with rooms around a central courtyard, and may have had a guard at the door all night (?). Then we road motorbikes the short distance to downtown, which was funny because a friend from the states called me at that moment and I had to explain I was on a motorbike at night in Western Uganda. Went to a club/bar downtown, it was pretty decent, had a few beers, though I think my stomach was already starting to feel a bit weird. The other interesting observation I made was that near to this club was a large hut that said LIONS CLUB on it. The Kasese Lions Club is literally a hut!! I'd have loved to take a picture but it was too dark.
   The girls had work in the morning and I myself had to get up very early for my plans so we headed back before 1, going by motorbike to the hotel, where the girls made sure I could get in, and then they went back to their places.
   Aaand that night it became apparent that something had destroyed my guts, as I had to run to the bathroom numerous times throughout the night (and the bathroom was across the courtyard!). Since the little western style cafe was the only place I'd eaten all day since breakfast I think it had to be that. I thought about noting a warning to future travelers on tripadvisor, but since it was operated as a women's co-op I didn't have the heart to do something that would hurt their business, despite my guts.

[pictures to be added!]

July 7th, Monday - Day Six: We finally had a new generator, so even though we were going out into the field I left my computer and phones plugged in and left the generator running, to be turned off by others when everything was charged. Once we'd gotten that sorted out we accompanied the president of the national beekeeping federation an hour south to his home village. There the beehives were kept in a veritable jungle, which was fun. I've always had an affinity for jungles, possibly because the very earliest thing in life I can remember is being in the jungles of Brazil.



   I noticed something along the way. One of the beekeepers in San Pirii has a green "SMHS CHEER" jacket. Another had a shirt ostensibly advertising a 5k in Scantron, Pennsylvania, but being as it also had among the list of causes "celebrity rabies" I suspect it may have something to do with the show The Office. This fellow at a shop along the way had a shirt emblazoned with "Alabama State Youth Beef EXPO 2009" ... another had a shirt for some American church, and odds are the guy was Muslim. Clearly the Salvation Army or someone is exporting thrift store shirts here, which is all well and good, fantastic really, but it results in people in Africa randomly looking like hipsters!

   I also got my first inkling this day that the country's previous dalliance with socialism may have left lasting impressions. People were talking about the beekeeping federation itself as the entrepreneurial unit. "Strengthening the co-ops" to solve all their problems. That's all well and good, but the individual beekeepers are the ones trying to earn a profit here, they're the only self-motivated unit. The Federation and cooperatives must be able to support them, and the Federation should buy and sell honey to that end, but I think its a backwards idea to think the whole thing will maintain momentum from the top down.
   I showed them pictures of the very good honey processing plant in Ethiopia, saying, "this is in Ethiopia, Ethiopia is not rich, there's no reason you can't do that here" and the President responded that "well they have very organized coops there!"


   Returning home I found that because I had left my computer on, it had charged up to 100% and then charged down all the way to 0%. So I had lost what charge I'd started the day with.

   This should have been in last week's update perhaps because it applies to every day, but here it is: they had put me in a house with a "western style toilet" -- but without running water it won't self-refill. You really learn to appreciate how much water it takes to flush a toilet when you have to fill the bowl by hand each time.



July 8th, Tuesday - Day Seven: When they told me there was another village they wanted to visit that was 3 kilometers away by forest path or 30 km around by road, I eagerly noted that I'd like to walk there. A parade of us beekeepers trooped in single file through the beautiful forest, among tall ferns and past cute huts. Most of the beekeepers carried some kind of load atop their head, from bee suits to boots and gloves. Two motorcycles took the roundabout way to meet up with us, and Bara was on one of those. I felt bad for the beekeepers doing all this walking and apparently not even allowed to drink water during the day during ramadan.
   Arrived in the village of Sala. Of course by then it was time to pray. Then we headed out to the beehives. Here many were placed directly on the ground, which is undesirable (bees don't like it and its easier for pests to get in). We split into two groups and also made more of an effort than usual to make sure than new people were actually going through the hives, not the same people over and over again (its hard for me to monitor this because (a) at first I'm overhwlemed by all the new faces and mostly (b) everyone looks the same in a bee suit!). When the groups reconvened some women from the other group who had been kind of the the periphery on previous days proudly announced they had worked the bees without gloves. Excellent.

   After this someone announced there was a traditional hive nearby ready to harvest and would I like to see them harvest it? Which I of course said I would so we tromped a few hundred yards to where it was. This was the wicker basket style hive, located low in a small tree. They smoked the bajeezes out of it and then started tearing it open. It clearly had been going for awhile, had old brood and old hatched out swarm cells. They tossed the brood into the bushes, collected the honey, and then put a topbar hive in its place in hopes all the displaced bees would occupy it.

   Then we returned to the village and it was time to pray again. And someone had made me a big salad for lunch (which mostly consists of things visitors such as myself aren't supposed to eat, since all the fruits and vegetables are washed in local water), and placed it for me, along with a big cup of water from their bore hole, in a bare dark room in a house.

   Then it was time to return. Bara insisted I ride the moto on the way back and I went along with it to see a different set of scenery. It consisted of kind of quiet sleepy backroads with more villages and open space.

   We'd been vaguely following the World Cup in the afternoons via radio, and this day there was the much anticipated Brazil - Germany game. Bara announced that someone in our village had a tv and would be hooking up a generator tonight to watch the game, and of course everyone was invited. So after evening prayers we ventured down to the house in question, where just about every young person in the village was crowded on the floors and couches. They made room for us on one of the couches and little Mamadou de Boba soon found me and occupied the arm of my couch, though by the end of the game he was asleep there.
   We were apparently getting the game via some Congolese station and during the breaks when they went to their "news room" it looked super campy -- bad lighting, announcer clearly reading off of index cards in his hand, no visual effects whatsoever.
   The game itself was somewhat painful to watch as a Brazilian.. Brazil got utterly trounced, Germany made it look easy. I guess some of Brazil's key players were out with injuries?



July 9th, Wednesday - Day Eight: Suddenly its almost over! How did the end sneak up on me? Training was interrupted this day by rain so heavy that inside the building we couldn't hear eachother speak and had to wait for it to die down a little.
   We finally had a dependable generator (on day eight!). This is what happens in Africa when you run a generator:



   But I was finally able to do some slideshow-assisted presentations.

   In the afternoon I went out around the village with Mamadou de Boba and another lad who appeared around 9 or 10 maybe. We set out excavating a termite mound again, this time having an easier time since the dirt was soft from the rain ... but a local woman came and appeared to be harshly criticizing our activities in the local language so we beat a retreat.
   The older boy led us to a place by the river where there was a bare muddy slope and of course you could take a bucket of water and pour it at the top and watch as it flows down in various channels -- what young boy isn't amused by that?? And very interestingly when you pour water in the right place at the top there seem to be small underground tunnels from which the water spouts out lower down the slope. Neat!
   So this was fun and we did this for awhile, I tried not to get too muddy but at once point I slipped on the muddy slope and fell down. Upon returning to the house I was staying in I was slightly mortified to find the beekeeping federation president and his wife, apparently on a sort of formal visit, sitting inside with Bara, all dressed nice and here I am coming in all muddy. So I don't think I quite got off on the right foot with the presidents wife. She almost got in the car without shaking my hand and say goodbye, but then again they frequently neglect to introduce their wives or daughters here so it could have just been that she didn't anticipate being accorded a goodbye. Things were compounded further when she made a dinner for me/us that night but the memo that I don't eat fish didn't get to her until this fish was well under production.

   That night we once again all got together at the house with the TV to watch the Netherlands-Argentina game. I don't remember the score but most of the room seemed to be rooting for Argentina. I was rooting for Netherlands since Argentina is a big rival to Brazil, so once again my team lost.

   Later that night while Bara and I stood looking at the moon and commenting on whether or not it was full tonight or tomorrow, I realized that I'd been a lot more aware of the phase of the moon lately. Ask me on any given day in California what phase the moon is at and I probably couldn't tell you, but without electricity and sitting outside late every evening, one is very acutely aware of its progress.
   Additionally of course Bara would often remark on it as an indicator of how far along Ramadan was, since it goes from one moonless night to another and the full moon marked the middle.



July 10th, Thursday - Day Nine: Second-to-last day on site. We made candles, which, we were very successful with using both a papaya stalk and a piece of metal pipe as a mold (I didn't think the latter would work, I still don't know how they got the formed candle out), though unfortunately the string they selected for wick was plasticky and would just melt away immediately without holding a flame. (Interesting fact: solid wax doesn't burn. Only vaporized wax does. The way a candle works is that the heat from the wick is constantly vaporizing wax which then gets sucked up the wick to burn.)
   I don't really have business development presentation prepared but Bara remembered all the buzzwords from previous business development volunteers so he gave them a business presentation. From what I was overhearing though I was a bit concerned he was telling the small beekeepers to due market assements and business plans, which is all well and good for a big enterprise but the villager with three hives just isn't going to do it. It gave me some good ideas about how to do some business development stuff on future projects perhaps, though it wasn't until the last five minutes of this project that I really grasped the problem..



July 11th, Friday - Day Ten: Last day on site. We were going to make an aloe lotion this day, and I had explained everything involved to Bara and wasn't expecting any shenanigans... but next thing I know he has them well in the process of making soap. I knew he was enamored of this soap making idea, he'd brought it up a number of times on the previous two days, and I had always said yes but it involves many ingrediants and most importantly has to compete against easily available cheap soap, so I really don't think they'd be able to sell it. I guess this is where the market assessment does come in, and next time I think I'll have my group of beekeepers add up the costs of making soap and decide for themselves if it would be a viable product as an exercise. Meanwhile even though people had brought aloe vera leaves and Bara had been extolling at length their medicinal value, we never got around to making this simple three ingrediant product which would probably sell.

   As I mentioned, it was only in literally the last five minutes that the depths of their business planning problems became apparent. We were going over my recommendations, and one of the major ones as mentioned was that FAPI, the federation, should buy up honey from the individual beekeepers and sell it on the bulk market for the higher international prices. To this the president aid "no we need to strengthen the coops," to which I was like "wait what? what does that even mean??" and he said that they can't do it because all the beekeepers currently sell their honey individually. So I very very quickly went through how they should contact food packaging and processing companies and see how much honey they'd buy and at what rate, and with these numbers write a business plan, and with this get a loan from a bank to buy the honey from the beekeepers and possibly improve their facilities for processing it, and then they'll be able to buy honey from the beekeepers at a higher rate then they're currently selling it so of course they'll sell it to the Federation. "Strengthening the coops" is all well and good but has pretty much nothing to do with this. It seemed to me "strengthening the coops" was being used like some magical metaphysical cure-all which would somehow solve all the problems and once they were sufficiently strong the honey would all just start moving of its own volition. But this was like a five minute crash course so next time I'm definitely going to make sure to walk them through this process at a pace more likely to be absorbed.

   Anyway after we hurried through the things we needed to do his day, there were some vigorous rounds of photo taking and then after they prayed and I ate lunch, we were off! The Winrock landcruiser had come up that morning, so Bara and I piled in and were off. The End!



   The two day journey back to Conakry and my subsequent adventures in the land of the plague ebola will have to wait for another entry Hint: I get sick! O:

   Having returned from Korem the previous day...



Thursday May 10th - Thursday morning I met up with the president of Comel Enterprises (Daniel). Comel began as an electronics retail company. But then one day Daniel was talking to someone from the Agriculture Department and heard they were distributing 50,000 modern frame hives per year. "So that's going significantly increase the honey production, what's going to happen with all that honey?" he asked. The Ag Department member just shrugged. So Daniel founded a honey processing plant.

   The processing plant was big and new. Had a lot of room for expansion already, and they're planning on building two more buildings. They also had microfilters and homogenizers and all the other fancy equipment you need for some serious honey processing.
   I had a great time touring their facility with them and talking to Daniel and their processing plant manager (who had been in my training class in Korem). I presented them with the refractometer I had brought, with which one measures the water content of honey. They already had one but they greatly appreciated having a second one so now they can send two people out at once to go buy honey from farmers.
   In return they gave me four jars of honey -- one each of four of the five types of honey produced in the region (the fifth wasn't available at the time).



   Later in the day the ACDI/VOCA driver showed up to take me to the airport. The guy in front of me at security had some honey confiscated from him. Foreseeing this kind of problem though I'd put my honey in my checked luggage.
   Security wanted to x-ray my carryon bag again though, and again. And look through it thoroughly, X-ray it again, and then take some things out and x-raw it again. There was a pen showing up on the x-raw, which they wanted to find. Which was a bit odd, since pens aren't usually a forbidden item.
   Kind of reminds me of how they found the hive tool in Addis Ababa but handed it back to me despite it being very weaponizable. Ethiopian security is thorough, and completely random.
   While they were going through my back an older lady also got sidelined to have her bag gone through. She had a hand-held GPS they informed her she couldn't take on the plane. "But I was able to take it on the plane from New York to here!!" she kept insisting, which grated on my ears because it's an entirely fallacious argument.
   Finally a compromise was reached -- she couldn't have it on the plane but security would let her have it on the condition she promise to hand it to a member of the cabin crew, and she'd get it back on arrival in Addis. This agreement was entirely on the honor system, they didn't watch her hand it to anyone. As it happens I did see her hand it to a member of the crew. Ethiopian security is weird.
   After they had emptied EVERYTHING out of my backpack there was still that ghost pen showing up in the x-ray. Finally they handed the empty backpack to me. I asked if they ever found the pen and the lady just smiled, I don't think she did but the backpack was now empty.
   As I was putting my things back in the backpack a hassled-looking American in a suit got sidelined to the inspection table. I welcomed him to the party. As I was leaving a group of australians was coming through (I swear the whole flight was ferringi), and one of them, a big loud fellow with a shaved head, was wearing skimpy running shorts. "Those your security pants?" I had to ask "discourages them from frisking me!" he said with a devilish grin.


Friday May 11th - Friday morning found me kind of in limbo. My original flight out had been a week later, and for some reason the Winrock travel agency was saying they couldn't change it from their end anymore. Furthermore the Winrock team in Addis wanted me to go immediately into another project teaching instrumental insemination to the people at the Holleta bee research facility near Addis. But I would much much much rather actually be able to PREPARE for something like that and review my notes on the finer points of amounts of things and stuff. And anyway I'd gotten it into my head that if I left now I'd be able to spend my birthday (the 14th) with Kori in Connecticut, so I was chomping at the bit to get out in the next 24 hours.
   But I was tearing my hair out for awhile trying to even talk to anyone at Delta. The nearest Delta office was in Kenya and wasn't answering its phones. I tried calling Delta in America but that used up all the minutes on my phone in the first 45 seconds, way before I'd gotten anywhere in the phone tree. Finally skype saved me. I "subscribed" to skype so I had some credit with them and was able to call Delta in America through my laptop and make the travel arrangements.
   To get any flight out in the next three days was looking to be like $1600 (the change fee alone, I don't even know what the underlying original flight was), because there were only flights out every two days and they were all booked up. I found this deeply alarming. But then I asked if she could finagle something creative, get me on a flight out to anywhere else that would then have a flight back to the States, and voila with a six hour layover in Istanbul it was on.

   Unfortunately I didn't have time to see any of the museums in Addis (I really wanted to see the Lucy museum), though I was able to do a little souvenir shopping. Normally I hate souvenir shopping but I was determined to find myself a sweet drinking horn after seeing the magnificent horns all the Ethiopian cows sport.
   It turns out making sweet drinking horns is apparently not something they DO though. We stopped in at more than a dozen and a half souvenir shops without any luck. In one the owner called someone who showed up ten minutes later with an old decrepid ugly looking excuse for a drinking horn.
   Finally we once again found a shop where someone knew someone who knew someone who ten minutes later showed up with a selection of three horns for me to choose from. They all looked ancient and uglier than I had hoped (they were all nearly black and covered with leather, which is not what sweet drinking horns look like say when you google the subject). Still though it was better than nothing, even if preposterously overpriced. I haggled him from $50 down to $40 (keep in mind $50 is the average monthly salary of an educated professional in Ethiopia. The farmers seem to make around $12 a month). So, preposterously overpriced, but I was determined to get a drinking horn.



Saturday May 12th - My flight out was at about 1am the night of May 11th. Because Ethiopia follows the much more logical practice of considering the new day not to begin until around sunrise, I can still call this first hour after midnight part of the previous day.
   I had just finished filling out the customs forms when a Russian fellow named Igor tapped me on the shoulder and explained in broken English "you need to help me -- I don't speak English!" (the forms are all in Amharic and English). Fortunately I took five quarters of Russian in college! Unfortunately I quickly discovered I barely remembered a god damn thing!
   Then we got separated going through the emigration but as I was looking for a seat at the gate he waved me over from across the way and we continued trying to have a conversation with our meager bits of eachother's language.

   During the night we flew over some islands in the Mediterranean, the outlines of which you could clearly make out by the twinkling lights, and I would have loved to know what islands specifically they were.

   I still kind of regret not spending at least a day to get into the city. If I'd never been there before I certainly would have but as it is I remembered how far the city was from the airport and like I said, I was chomping at the bit to be home for my birthday.
   As it is, I ended up spending much of my six hours there trying to chase down my luggage. I was bouncing between the "lost luggage" staff, who were telling me it would be automatically transferred to my next flight and to leave them alone, and the Delta airlines staff who were telling me there's no transfer agreement with Turkish and my luggage definitely did not transfer.
   Finally a week later it would be delivered to me back home, appearing to have been run over repeatedly. Of the four jars of honey I'd been given, three of them had been utterly pulverized. Even my deoderant stick, which is not a fragile object, was smashed.

   I did at least get to sit down and have some turkish coffee in the airport. The coffee and a croissant came out to $14. Being accustomed to a meal like that being less than $2 in Ethiopia it gave me a "welcome to Europe!" rude awakening.

   Sitting at the gate for my flight I sat next to a fellow who used the most amusing profanities to describe his disgust with airlines, when it was announced the flight was running an hour late. And then when I boarded my flight I was surprised to find that my assigned seat was in fact right beside him. That coincidence, however, is utterly dwarfed by the coincidental seating occurrence on the last leg of my journey, from Atlanta to OC, but you'll have to read about that one in my next entry ;)

4/30, Monday- Monday morning Teferi, Beide & I drove about two hours to the town of Finot Selam. The road slowly wound through the undulating countryside. Much of the land we passed was being tilled by pairs of oxen pulling wooden plows. There were also large patches of eucalyptus forest.
   Eucalyptus has been imported from Australia as a source of wood and by and large taken over the countryside it seems. People are happy about it because it provides good straight wood for construction as well as firewood, though I feel a bit saddened that it's no doubt heavily displacing the native foliage, and wonder about the ecological consequences such as animals not having their native forage any more.
   We also passed through many villages. Often there were stacks of eucalyptus logs ready to be hauled off (I'm told they're imported to Sudan as well). Smoking piles of dirt signified charcoal production and bags of finished charcoal were stationed near the road for sale. And of course we had to slow to pass many many herds of goats and cows.

   We crossed the Nile a second time (it makes a giant spiral before it leaves the country) and just before we descended from the highlands to lower country, as I was preparing to take a photo of an ox plow, suddenly I found myself looking at the rusting hull of a T-54 main battle tank.
   "It's very old, from the battle with the derg 20 years ago" it was explained. "Have you ever been through a war?" I was asked ("no, America only has it's wars in other countries")

   Finot Selam (or Finot Salami as it's called in my head) turned out to be a small town in which my hotel and the building next to it were the only tall (four story) buildings. Hotel was pretty nice, though my window looked right out onto an open air restaurant and specifically was right next to their television. Unlike the hotel in Lafia, Nigeria, they fortunately had the decency to turn off the TV and try to enforce quietness after 10 or so.
   But before I discovered this, on entering the hotel, when I thought I was being led to my room, I suddenly found myself entering an event hall full of people sitting expectently, and was led to the dias. Apparently Teferi didn't feel like telling me that I'd be starting the training the very moment I got there. I was... somewhat caught off guard by this.


   The Finot Selam group had a lot of very experienced people in it, including four who described themselves as "bee experts" when I asked what they did. I still don't know what exactly that means they do. But the group in general was restless with my coverage of bee behaviour, kept interrupting with questions like "when you smoke a hive, how do you prevent the smoke from drifting to the hive next to it and making those bees angry?" (asked while I was explaining the role of drones in the hive), or "but doesn't smoke kill the bee larvae?" (asked while I was explaining queen cells), as well as many other off-the-current-topic questions, many also pertaining to "tell us how you produce so much in the United States."
   Finally I had to say "look, I could jump to the end right now and tell you right now that we produce so much in the United States by trucking the bees to whatever is blooming all year round and flooding our hives with pesticides, and be done in ten minutes, but we have three days here and I'm pacing myself to give you three days worth of material. The things I'm telling you to look for in the hive and what I'm telling you to do about them is the real way you're going to increase your production."
   Tuesday afternoon we visited one of the beekeeper's beehives and I went through a hive. The next day at the beginning of class the beekeeper and those present expressed to the class how impressed they was with how I went through the hive, and how I did it during the day and without wearing the protective clothing, and the level of respect from the class was palpable.



   As for the bees themselves, the beekeeper had at least ten frame (ie modern box type) hives lined up along two sides of the outside of his house (including the front) and several traditional basket hives (see picture above) hanging from the eaves on the back. Dinner was being cooked on a stove outside not six feet from the nearest hive.
   The sun was still up but it was a cool day and close to sunset and the farmer actually gave me the go-ahead to open a hive ... and even use smoke!
   As usual with African bees I started out fully suited up. Shortly after I got started though I decided I needed to know if they were being stingy since I was in the middle of a village so I took off my left glove. And then when I was in the middle of the inspection and hadn't received any stings yet I took off the veil and other glove. Didn't see any small hive beetles, which had been pervasive in Nigeria. Bees had a major tendency to run off the comb being examined, which is a common trait I've found among African bees. By the time I was done nearly the hole colony was hanging on the outside of the hive.
   After I was done inspecting the hive the beekeeper invited me into his house for some traditional food. We sat on cow skins on the packed-dirt floor and took turns tearing pieces of injera (crepe-like sour material made from the millet-like grain "teff") off a a communal plate and eating the pieces of roasted meat with it. They also poured us each a cup of "local beer." It tasted... like hay. Wasn't carbonated of course. Between washing my hands with local water and this somewhat questionable local beer I was quite certain I'd have some sort of intestinal failure in my near future (again I didn't, god bless my iron stomach!), but went along with it sportingly anyway. And I certainly greatly appreciate the beekeeper's generous hospitality.
   As a thank-you I gave him one of the hive tools the Orange County
Beekeepers Association donated.

   Wednesday, as I said, the class finally seemed to decide I knew what I was talking about. Also Teferi and Beide had stolen away either that morning or the night before without mentioning anything to me. They didn't reappear until the next morning. I didn't really need them for anything but being as they're supposed to be my support on this project and coupled with Teferi not mentioning to me on Monday that I'd be starting lecture immediately, I feel like maybe his communication skills could use a little work.
   Also this day we visited the little honey processing facility in town. They had some interesting comb honey extractors that I was told were specially designed and manufactured in Ethiopia at the instigation of the NGO "SOS Sahel." They didn't appear to have any frame honey extractor, and most of the hives I've seen here have been frame hives, but I'm told there are frame honey extractors around (somewhere?). Though the lack of access to such was cited by several beekeepers as problems.

   Thursday we drove back to Bahir Dar. On the way I saw what looked like a black coloured bird with a body about the size of an ostriches, but much shorter legs, and it appeared to have some red plumage on its head. It went by so fast I didn't get a good look at it, and I've been kicking myself ever since that I didn't immediately ask if we could stop so I could get a better look and a picture. It was huge! Beide and Teferi tell me its called a "turkish type" bird or a "jigra," but no combination of those words brought anything up on google. I'm still dying to know what it was. As we sped on from it and immediate regret at not stopping was already settling upon me I asked Beide if we might see another, to which he responded "no, it's quite rare."

   That evening the girls from the hotel invited me out to dinner again. Dinner for three and a bottle of wine? $13. (Needless to say I paid this and last time)


   Friday is already the subject of it's own entry


   And I'll write about my adventures in the Tigray region in a subsequent entry


( Pictures from Monday )
( Pictures from Tuesday )
( Pictures from Wednessday )
( Pictures from Thursday )

   Well this will be a little out of order since I haven't told you much about the last week and a half yet, but allow me to tell you about my day today.

   At 0600 I got up and packed my stuff in preparation to catch a 0900 flight. One is always advised to be at the airport two hours ahead of time here. My camera battery was dead this morning, I'd forgotten to charge it last night. Entirely my fault but that meant I'd be spending a day camera-less.
   By 0645 I was all packed up and signed out of the hotel, sitting in the lobby with my luggage. It only takes about 15 min to get to the airport so I was still on schedule. Regretted not having time to eat at the hotel restaurant but my ride should be there any minute... or so I thought.
   Tried calling the driver but both numbers I had for him gave me a "this user's phone is currently shut off" message. I next called the other ACDI staffmember in town, and he (Teferi) asked "oh you want me to send the driver?" ...which I thought shouldn't have been news to him since we'd discussed it yesterday. Long story short by the time the driver arrived it was around 0800, and I'd been kept in constant expectation of his imminent arrival the whole time so I still hadn't gotten a chance to eat.

   Arrived at the Bahir Dar airport to find no rush there -- plane not yet on the ground. Called the Winrock staff in Addis (where I was headed) and asked them to exchange 300 of the dollars I left with them there for Ethiopian birr. Then my phone died (because the charger I'd been provided with doesn't work).
   And then I waited, and waited, and waited. Airplane finally landed at 10:30. Well after I was supposed to have already arrived in Addis!

   Arrived in Addis Ababa around 1200, with a flight to catch at 1450. Originally, when I was coming in at 1100, it made sense for me to visit the Winrock office in the mean time. But with only an hour before I needed to be back in the hotel I was thinking I could probably better use the time to eat. But there was a driver waiting for me and I had no phone to call him.
   The winrock driver was all about bringing me to the office. When I reminded him I had to be back at one this seemed to be news to him, which concerned me a bit. But he was confident we could make it there and back no problem and I only vaguely remembered it not being terribly far to the office so I went with him.
   1240 we finally arrived at the office with me feeling quite hungry and irritable and anxious to return to the airport immediately. The winrock staff hadn't bothered to exchange the money yet and took me with them down to the bank to do the exchanging. Seemingly not in a terribly hurry. I surmise perhaps the entire reason the airports advise a two hour early arrival is because everyone arrives on "Africa time."

   Arrived in the airport terminal "lounge" area (between the first security check / ticketing area and the second security check + gates area) around 1420. My flight was supposed to begin boarding at 1415 but I was about dying of hungry. Ordered a burger from the little restaurant in this section of the terminal. As of 1432 there was still no sign of my burger. I was just packing up to head to the gate without it when it finally arrived. I devoured it as fast as humanly possible and was off to hope I made it through the second security checkpoint in time to catch my flight. (which I did)

   Touched down in Mek'ele about an hour and a half later. Was impressed by how nice and modern looking the terminal here is. Especially since in Bahir Dar, one of Ethiopia's primary tourist destinations, the airport was kind of a glorified shack. As I headed out of the terminal though it occurred to me that I didn't have a working phone, and both my earlier first arrivals in Ethiopian cities had involved trouble finding the people I was supposed to meet (in Bahir Dar Teferi and Beide hadn't bothered to approach me because they were expecting an ACDI staffmember they'd recognize to be with me, and apparently no one's ever seen a volunteer technical expert as young as me before. So they waited until I was the only person left in front of the terminal before they finally approached me).
   But fortunately this time a fellow from ACDI met me as I exited the terminal, and took me to the hotel here.

   Tomorrow we were SUPPOSED to continue on to the city of Korem, but I've been informed there is no car (the car they had is having problems?).

   AND if we don't get there tomorrow, the following day is Sunday! I have yet to see any work get done on a Sunday in Africa.


   Welcome to the third world!



And here's a cow!

No new pictures today but here's another link to the set.

   So we were in Newport Friday evening (or at least I was) through yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon. From my already-getting-foggy recollection I believe we sailed about on both Saturday and twice on Sunday, Monday just did maintenance, and just had dockside education programmes on Tuesday.

   Monday evening we got a vip tour of the Rogue Brewey, and our first round of drinks at their very nice restaurant were bought by the GM. The food at the restaurant was highly delicious, much like Stone Brewery, Rogue appears to carry on their dedication to only the finest products to all the food in their restaurant. They also have their own creamery (making Rogue Cheese!) and distillery (try their "pink gin" if you get a chance! It was aged in pinot noir barrels, it is excellent! Also I just plain like the design of their rum bottles).

   Otherwise have ended up at the Rogue Pub every evening. The Brewery is across the river from us but the pub is just across the way. Got to know Reuben (the manager of the pub), Danny (the manager of the hop farm (did I mention Rogue has its own hop farm?)), Paul (one of the brewers), and Tyson (one of the distillers). The latter two were quite eager to have us fire off a cannon for them but alas it was the last evening and we were due to leave in the morning. They tried to bribe us with promises of copious amounts of booze and beer. We resisted, but the captain (who it turns out is himself quite a fan of high quality beer, was a local chairman of some Committee to Save Real Ale or something back in jolly olde England) had to excuse himself to bed in order to resist their tempting bribery. We did give them a tour of the boat though, which they were excited about (which I thought was funny because to me what THEY do is so exciting).
   And being as they already have a creamery and hop farm, and they do use honey in some of their beers, I did ask if they had their own apiary or were interested in starting one ;) (turns out all anyone I asked knew was a local town it comes from).


Everything a Tourist Needs To Know About Newport:
Where to Stay: the Rogue Inn! Above the Rogue Pub! Comes with complimentary BEEEEER.
Where to Eat: (1) There's this quaint little coffee shop called "THE COFFEE SHOP" just at the end of the marina. All their food looked delicious. I got a pasty there, which is a delicious pastry I haven't seen anywhere since Ireland. (2) Rogue Brewery! Their food also all looks, smells, and tastes delicious!
Where to Drink: do I really have to answer this? Rogue Pub!! or the brewery itself! Also the distillery apparently gives tours with free samples!
Where to get free Wifi: Rogue Pub! ("Emo-snal now sponsored by Rogue?")
What to Do: During the day? I don't know they don't let me off the boat during the day! I'm sure there's stuff.


Transit to Garibaldi
   We were scheduled to leave Newport at 09:30 Wednesday (yesterday) ... but the Coast Guard said the bar* conditions did not permit us to exit yet and to check back with them at 12:00. *bar in this case means the shoal or sandbar or just plain hazardous conditions formed where a river meets the sea and creates extremely dangerous conditions. So we all trotted over to the coffee shop across from us. There I got to talk to an old shipmate of mine from the Lady, Jesse, who happened to be in town visiting his dad. At noon we were postponed again and finally by 13:00ish the Coast Guard gave us a "it's as good as it's going to get."

   Heading out between the breakwaters out to sea, watching the waves crash over them, everyone was a bit tense, and hardly anyone talked. When we finally got out there there were certainly big swells, but it wasn't really that bad.

   I didn't even feel close to sea sick when we went spent a day in a gale on the Spirit of Dana Point, and crossing the Colombia and Gray's Harbour bars on the Lady Washington I was positively buoyant and jolly throughout. However, I've oft heard it said that the Hawaiian Chieftain moves about in a particularly squirrely (they always say squirrely) manner, probably due to her very low draft (she only sits 5.5 ft deep in the water). I was fine until I had my second turkey pot pie for dinner, and then bam it immediately came back up again. I was able to hurredly finish washing my dish in the galley and scurry over to the lee scupper and calmy kneel down and puke on deck right beside it, exactly as we'd been advised to do on both the Spirit and the Lady (right by the scupper the waves will wash it off the deck in moments, and you don't risk your life by leaning over the rail, which also risks splatting it on the side of the boat somewhere the waves won't wash it off before it damages something). However the First Mate scowled at me and told me to lean over the rail next time. :X
   After that first puke it was all over though. I mean I didn't feel sick for any sustained period of time but after that if I was upright belowdecks for any period of time I'd be liable to have to suddenly run for a trashcan. ): Once I even had to spring out of bed, which I felt was a particularly cruel turn of events because I've always felt totally safe of sea sickness while lying down.

   Anywhom, had my watch 20:00-24:00. There were about four people per watch. One mans the helm and the other three mostly keep them company, but the person manning the wheel switches every so often, and every hour on the half hour someone does boat check and on the hour someone (usually the watch leader) goes down to update our position on the chart. Our watch leader was Pony, a large blonde fellow who reminds me of Captain Aubrey from the Patrick O'brian books if that means anything to anyone. He's the ship's bosun and I envied his chart updating due to my enjoyment of such in my recent coastal navigation class. During Boat Check someone (being as there's four of us and it has to be done once an hour for the four hours usually a different person each time) has to take down what several gauges on the con say, several gauges in the engine room (as well as inspect that the engines are running smoothly), and the bilges in several places, among other things. Engine room is where one usually gets sick because it's extremely warm in there and stuffy and smells of diesel and definitely has no windows to the outside world. I actually only got sick in the engine room once, and successfully made it to the nearest trashcan (by quickly finishing my note taking there, pulling open the watertight door to the focsle, stumbling to the laddy, up the ladder, and finding the galley trashcan just in time).
   Got to sleep 24:00-07:30, which really makes my shift the best there is, normal sleeping patterns ftw. Ate some breakfast purely for the sake of having something to puke out again and avoiding unpleasant dry heaving, but actually rather enjoyed the breakfast (I thought it was cornbread but others referred to it as "square pancakes?"). 08:00-12:00 shift was actually rather pleasant. Was a gray morning with intermittent rainshowers, and occasionally even spots of sunlight. For awhile I was at the wheel with the sun illuminating a valley gloriously to my right and a large rainbow to my left and I regarded it as a particularly delightful moment in time.
   We could have been at Garibaldi early in the morning but the Coast Guard wouldn't allow anyone across the bar until around 13:30 so we steamed on right past it for a few hours and then turned around. More intermittent showers and even some pea sized hail for awhile. One whale sighted.
   Finally we approached the bar around 13:30, and the Coastguard had two arranged two of their little wave darting "lifeboats" to meet us out there. Word from the Coast Guard wasn't even exactly "it is now safe to cross the bar" so much as "well we still don't really recommend it but if you're GOING to it's now or never and we'll be standing by to rescue you." We were all told to stand by on deck in lifejackets as we approached. Massive swells, actually breaking on the approach to the harbour entrance. I've never seen so big a wave towering OVER our deck and looking like it's about to break. We literally surfed a wave or two. Coast guard lifeboat scooted about behind us trying to take wave breaks and we managed to get into the harbour without incident.


Garibaldi
   Garibaldi is a town of about 276 I'm told. It is not named after a fish as I had hypothesized with wild abandon but is actually specifically named after the uniter of Italy. Now you know.
   It looked like the whole town was on the base of the jetty to watch us come in (/ get dashed against the rocks). As soon as we were tied to the dock people were lining up to come up for tours, and I counted 103 people come aboard (with ye trusty clicky thing o counting), which needless to say is a significant portion of the town.
   Then we were all invited to dinner with (some sort of local civic society? members of the museum?) some local town elders of some sort at the local museum. They even drove us to/from the museum! For a tiny town they had quite a nice little museum. They had quite a bit about the original Lady Washington (the first boat to enter this harbour)!
   Later on I proceeded on foot from the ship to find bountiful wifi. First person I came across was a gas station attendant, who said "oh you can probably get the wifi from my house right here! It's unsecured!" there was nowhere comfortable to sit and compute there though nor power sockets, but I thought it was a particularly friendly gesture, indicative of how friendly this town seems to be. He pointed me down the road to a hotel, where I am now sitting on a (probably fake) leather couch by the (fake) fire in the fireplace (well the fire is real but the lobby girl explained apologetically that it's not actually burning the (fake) logs in it, it is gas).

   Tomorrow (Friday) we have "all the school children of Garibaldi" on the schedule for to come down to the boat for an education programme.

   No new pictures because my camera batteries died as we were leaving Newport, and I don't appear to have the batteries I'd bought in NYC. ):

   Thursday, 5pm, through Friday, 11am, I was moving bees from Redding down here to So Cal. After 18 hours of working, I slept 16 of the following 24 (=

   The previous weekend I'd been up in San Fran for a Model UN conference. In fact I think I've been up in Nor Cal almost once every other weekend since the beginning of the year. So much so that I often haven't noted it here.
   And I have some even more adventurous travel plans in the future: (1) Spain in May; (2) Epic Roadtrip 2009 -- destination TBA, but it will be epic!; (3) Turkey/Israel/Egypt in October!


Highlights from Recent SF Trip
   (A) Hotel security had a noise complaint about an empty room -- trigger happy about noise much?
   (B) My friend Connor, who had been most paranoid about getting in trouble, dropped a glass bottle of everclear in the lobby and it shattered. Oops. We walked quickly away and didn't get in trouble.
   (C) I was at the conference with Pasadena City College (PCC). Looking for other delegations' room parties we knock on a hotel room that sounds promising. The guy who opens the door immediately looks dumbfounded. "Kris Fricke!?!" he asks. We've stumbled upon the Davis delegation. Its been at least three years since I was involved in the club there, and I don't recognize any of them but they come out and tell me how I'm still cited prominantly in their training and take pictures of me. Way to randomly feel famous while looking for a party!
   (D) Everyone loved my homemade beer and rum I'd brought. <3
   (E) My personal favourite moment was when my friend Nima was in the bathroom in our hotel room and I put the little ironing board perpendicularly in the hallway outside it, ie blocking the bathroom door from opening and effectively barracading Nima in the bathroom. I had a hearty laugh for about a minute and then let him out. Muahahahaha.

Highlights from Bee Trip
   (A) Delicious food at "Logan's Roadhouse" in Redding. Strongly recommended.
   (B) Redding Sundial Bridge!


Picture of the Day

Redding Sundial Bridge (in sepiatone)