now that i have reached my goal everything has become divine and wonderful for me. cape town is a paradise of antique book stalls, beautiful cafes, lovely leather couches, fantastic restaurants and comfortable scenarios of every order, all of which are housed in towering and crumbling colonial structures of dutch and british origin, wrapped by delicate brass ornament and painted fading pastel shades with in stone on the facade is marked the original year, 1926, 1895, 1802... or even earlier. the wind comes off the sea and cuts through town fiercely, taking along with it any ill pollution th [View Full Entry]

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yesterday from graham's town there was a very strong headwind for everyone traveling west through frontier land towards george and cape town. with an overcast sky and a good chill the conditions were unfavorable for motorcycling. the road itself is three lanes wide and divided, pitch black pavement with fresh shining yellow and white stripes with long beautiful cars speeding along. i spend my time in the shoulder. for the past three days the bike has been good to me, i figure it must be the fresh road, there is at least one major complication related to the bike per [View Full Entry]

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onwards! yesterday morning once the freeze had lifted from the ground i lit my motorcycle up and banged west, buckling through durban, popping, backfiring and wobbling on blown bearings, worn out bushings and a loose chain. the bike has lost metal somewhere, the chain can become no tighter and has resigned to derail over any slight bump of the road, causing me to shutter to a halt and have to toil in the oil and grease to spin it back on to the rusty gear. even on the freeway, the horrid winding freeways of south africa that seem to twist through [View Full Entry]

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swaziland was beautiful, big bend was beautiful. an old nun gave me a pair of shoes in the name of god in big bend. the cold was stinging my bare feet into spasms. the land stretches out like good young skin over a face and the face is swaziland, staring up, neon green eyes of strange sparkling trees and blinding white teeth of fresh painted crumbling shacks. swaziland and big bend, freezing wind and open sky hazy with icy moisture and down into south africa itself. five young fellows working the border post kicking my tires and laughing about tanzania [View Full Entry]

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i've driven like a fiend straight down, across, through and around and now out my hotel window is shining, strange maputo. it's a city that is still learning how to be a city, the way that africans in general seem to be learning how to be people, people from the television. if there was never a television imported to africa these africans would not know about wearing their hats backwards, or low over their eyes, or about walking with a swing step, or about building and living in cement. everyone says it who has come here, that the problem is wherever [View Full Entry]

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the motorcycle is seeing no end of problems. yesterday it stranded me in the forest alone for three hours in the heat. i have half a mind to sell it here in vilankulo. if i can repair it today and leave tomorrow i should be ok to get to cape town by june 16 but we will see. my mind is spinning, i am so busy with this hard type of travelling that there is never time to write or draw or take photos. photographs are so hard to take in africa because the people who live here trust you right [View Full Entry]

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hello! i'm sorry to not have written but there is really no computers at all let alone internet, it is dirt and mud and dirt some more. i am o.k. in a strange way, the last couple of days have been a mix. mozambique is a true frontier. the world spins around and around and the africans here, on the east coast, spin with it. they scream at each other and laugh with each other and cry and jump around all at once and they are beautiful people. from the top of mozambique there is an endless stretch of mud and [View Full Entry]

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the things that have happened! i tucked out of mtwara on sunday. saturday night my friend Osman had his wedding party in a strange square roofless courtyard of red brick, big enough to host the entire village inside. the stars and moon and some dusty clouds were the light as a team of young fellows continually fed an old CD player that was hooked up to some very big speakers in the corner. from the far end of the village and up the ridge to the old boma hotel, about two kilometers walk, the Swahili hip-hop came through clear enough. the [View Full Entry]

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i am deep south. the world has changed now from loose tree scapes and lonely long low shrub plains into the Africa you can imagine before having been, the one from movies and books. wide fields of incredible tall yellow grass in the wind with wild twisting trees poking up and lending shade to those old rusty bicycles and their rusty riders that take long breaks from the angry African sun. the road is thin and cuts to and fro and over subtle hills through the land past mud villages thatched with the very same tall yellow grass, but dried into [View Full Entry]

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it's been a month since i've used my physical voice for anything except mumbling "thanks" or using the simplest possible strings of words slow motion to speak with hassan. for the rest i use sign language. i feel like that if i do not successfully make an english friend my voice will shrivel up and be lost. i waited there on the ledge, now it became dark, and the stars came out slowly, the big dipper upside down and a bunch of other stuff i don't recall ever seeing. the upside down big dipper pulled up from the horizon and [View Full Entry]

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