I am laying on a beach in Montego Bay, Jamaica. To my left, a heavyset man on his fluffy white bath towel sips gingerly from his pina colada as his pasty white man-boobs develop tell-tale red splotches. Past him on his horizon of a belly, countless other American folk bake in the sun, either sporting extremely large straw hats or torsos idiotically slathered in tanning oils, but all similarly sprawled out on bath towels that are blinding white, riddled with offensive quotations, or a neon color bright enough to assault the eyes. Conversation in English surrounds me, the American accent tinkles [View Full Entry]

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"You are a legend! Keep living the dream, kiddo..." - Big Sturms As soon as I step out of my arrival terminal, I am greeted with all the comforts and familiarities of a proper, if even one of THE most proper, first world enviornments. Three months in Africa have never seemed so far away. Everything in Hong Kong is shiny, everything is new. Everything is the latest technology and everybody wants to serve YOU. A/C in the winter, wasteful decorations and enough twinkling and lighting to give everybody observing an epileptic seizure. Hong Kong in December is even better - it [View Full Entry]

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In our world, we have bar- and bat-mitzvahs and sweet 16 parties. We are debutants, we are strip club patrons. We undergo extreme hazing, 21-shot debaucheries, and imbibing until our stomachs need pumping. Call it what you like, do what you do; something marks as a celebration or an entrance into manhood or womanhood. And this is no different in Africa, and no different in the ethnic tribal groups of the Lower Omo Valley. The Hamer tribe is one of the largest in the Omo, numbering at around 50,000. As subsistence agropastoralists they cultivate sorghum, tobacco, cotton, vegetables and millet. They [View Full Entry]

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In 1974 in Awash Valley, a 40% complete skeleton was found of the oldest known human, believed to date back 3.2 million years. She is now widely-known as the infamous "Lucy," and holds the Amharic name "Dinkenesh" as well. Archaeologists believe humans have inhabited the Awash Valley since the beginning of the species; the area is also famous for being the place where many hominid (pre-human) remains have been found as well. Africa isn't called the Cradle of Humanity without reason. To be more precise, this said Cradle is the area along the deep East African Rift amidst mountains, valleys, and [View Full Entry]

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The slice of lip separated from the rest of her face sways around as she shakes her head at me, wrinkled in its limp, un-stretched form. The crescent-shaped hole under her jaw gapes with its big, empty space. I want to punch my fist through to see if it will fit, but the look in her eyes doesn't seem so welcoming. With that, she takes her left hand to her mouth and stretches the bottom lip outwards and down. Her right hand places a 20cm in diameter clay disc on the edge of the lower lip, carefully laying the flesh down [View Full Entry]

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Armed conflict in Africa overall seems to have eased a bit in recent years but obviously still rages in certain pockets, primarily now in Darfur, Somalia, and the Congo. Conflict in Africa festers immediately in the current environment, lacking democracy, development, control on human rights, and proper governance. Really, the fundamental peacekeeping I would think should lie with Africa itself, and in fact some African governments have contributed to facilitating negotiations (such as I believe the Congo negotiations in Nairobi currently.) In reality though, Africa lacks sufficient capacity both financially and militarily, and does require the assistance of other countries beyond [View Full Entry]

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"Here, give me your hand." No, I know what you're going to do. "Just gimme it, please?" No. Jos draws me in closer to his body and puts his arm around me as we walk together through the streets of Lalibela. I sigh and resign myself to my fate. He turns around to the local boys following us blatantly staring at me or my boobs, we don't know which. Jos's mouth turns up at the corners into a lopsided grin of victory. "Sexy China girl! She's my girlfriend, yeah. Sexy China! Sexy China!" The boys blush and squeal in laughter, jumping [View Full Entry]

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I want to describe to you how it feels to travel through Ethiopia. I want to take you with me, so that you feel like you are sitting right here next to Jos and me on this torn, itchy, plastic seat in this totally dilapidated minibus decorated with gaudy, colorful, beaded pieces of cloth that sway against each other with every jerk, creating a sound not unlike one you would get if you shook a Rastaman with beaded dreads really hard by the shoulders in rage. Sometimes Jos and I, one ear-bud for each, sing obnoxious African songs outloud out of [View Full Entry]

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"All people come from God, but the Ethiopians more than most." - a Geez scholar at Addis Ababa University, "I Didn't Do It For You." According to Ethiopia's founding myth found in the book which gave the Ethiopian emperor's their mandate to rule, the Kebra Negast, "Glory of the Kings," the Axumite kingdom was a kingdom blessed by God itself. The Kebra Negast has been described as "drawing on the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha, Talmud and Koran, weaving in Ethiopian legends handed down by word of mouth... an exotic composite story... The tale of royal date rape, a radical [View Full Entry]

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In fact, it does take nearly 11 hours to reach Gondar via Bahir Dar the next morning, and this is considered a short ride as I have taken a hired minibus instead of a normal public transport bus estimated for 2 days. The guesthouse I have stopped at in Gondar is the second one I have tried after the first one being full. This one has no single rooms and no dorms (not unlike the rest of Africa) but actually only has rooms with two twin beds for the price of 120 Birr. This is only like 12 USD but thats [View Full Entry]

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