http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/amyuyma/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from amyuyma en-us Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:26:46 +0000 Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:26:46 +0000 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 manboobs develop telltale 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 spra http://www.travelblog.org/Central-America-Caribbean/Cayman-Islands/Grand-Cayman/blog-357425.html You are a legend Keep living the dream kiddo... Big SturmsAs 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Hong-Kong/Hong-Kong-Island/blog-357423.html In our world we have bar and batmitzvahs and sweet 16 parties. We are debutants we are strip club patrons. We undergo extreme hazing 21shot 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Southern-Nations-Region/Turmi/blog-357430.html 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 widelyknown 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 prehuman rem http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Southern-Nations-Region/Turmi/blog-357422.html The slice of lip separated from the rest of her face sways around as she shakes her head at me wrinkled in its limp unstretched form. The crescentshaped 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 outward http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Southern-Nations-Region/Jinka/blog-356978.html 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 a http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Amhara-Region/blog-341823.html 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 g http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Amhara-Region/Lalibela/blog-356762.html 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 Rasta http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Tigray-Region/Mek-ele/blog-356221.html 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 O http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Amhara-Region/Axum/blog-348226.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Amhara-Region/Gondar/blog-348200.html Obviously I'm not very good at this. It is 3pm in the afternoon or 9 o'clock Ethiopian time and I am sitting slouched over with two branches of qat plant in my hands in a smoky dim room off Bole Road no bigger than a typical dingy African single bedroom encircled with enough colorful blinking Christmas lights to give me a minor epileptic seizure. I'm trying to keep the wad of plant between my r http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Ethiopia/Addis-Ababa-Region/Addis-Ababa/blog-345576.html I am sitting at the Ethiopian Airlines office on Ohio Street across the way from the golf course here in Dar es Salaam at about 10am. I have come back from Zanzibar early this morning to book a flight out to Addis Ababa Ethiopia for later today. Originally I had thought I could travel through Kenya and then up through the border to Ethiopia but as things go I decide to skip Kenya out of lack o http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/East/Dar-es-Salaam/blog-344452.html You know it's nice when people I don't know message me or leave comments in response to my entries. However in response to the last entry I wrote on how Africa was wearing on me seriously people chill the fuck out yeah I'm not sure if its that real Africa lovers have been following my blog or what but when I write an entry explaining that I'm tired after 2 months in Africa I don't need anyb http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/Zanzibar/blog-344431.html No there wasn't an ending to the last post but of course even the most hellish situation always somehow works itself out in Africa. Because it has to.I end up almost hitching with a few lorries or truckers as we know them in America that pass by all too eager to bring a little Asian girl onto their vehicles for the day only that I realize trucks actually drive ridiculously slow and on these http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/East/Dar-es-Salaam/blog-342353.html When my brother called me to wish me a Happy Halloween I didn't think I would be spending the night like this.I'm not really sure what I'm doing in Tanzania. I didn't actually plan on coming here but as I fled Congo east back into Rwanda then fled Rwanda east here... well Tanzania is the next country over. I am on a bus travelling from Ngara right inside the western Tanzanian border with Rwand http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Tanzania/blog-340763.html So I think I spoke too soon a couple entries back on my way to Gisenyi about how lovely the bus rides were in Rwanda comparatively to other African countries. Because on hauling ass back to Kigali I didn't bother with returning with the same bus company I came with to Gisenyi Atraco but instead just took the next available bus out of Gisenyi to Kigali which happened to be on Otracom Express.Otr http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Rwanda/Province-de-L-Ouest/blog-340561.html Eastern Congo is very very unstable right now. ... There have been attacks and counterattacks between rebels and the Congo military. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer to CNN November 1At the time I wrote this October 28 only so much of the recent events had unfolded. Today on November 1 as I post this finally as I haven't had reliable internet connection until now the current situ http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Congo-Democratic-Republic/East/Goma/blog-338808.html YU AMY.Oui c'est moiYu... Amy... He laughs.Yep...YOU he points at me AMI he points at himself. We friendsYep...It is ten in the morning and the chief DRC official at the GisenyiGoma border has had me in his little office now for about half an hour. He takes a funny liking to my name and has spent the last ten minutes repeating it on end giggling to himself all the while and smi http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Congo-Democratic-Republic/East/Goma/blog-338545.html Good luck...I would tell you to be safe but that seems pointless being that you are in the middle of Africa heading toward instead of away from rebel fighting and war.... Big Sturms via emailI have made my way now from Kigali in central Rwanda over way west to the town of Gisenyi. Gisenyi is rather nondescript and sits on the RwandaDemocratic Republic of Congo border at the northernmost p http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Rwanda/Province-de-L-Ouest/Gisenyi/blog-337917.html I don't particularly enjoy writing heavy entries but writing about Rwanda today and ignoring the fallout from the Genocide wouldn't paint for you an accurate picture but an incomplete one.Sometimes you peruse a museum lightly glancing fleetingly at some exhibits and perhaps reading a plaque or two here and there strolling through to see what the hype was all about. Sometimes though you let y http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Rwanda/Ville-de-Kigali/Kigali/blog-337397.html