Traveling Companions

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Zanzibar Spice Tour Companions

The spice farm tour was absolutely the BEST value to date! For $10 each, we were picked up at our hotel joining 12 or so others in the ubiquitous Toyota minivan matatu, given a first rate tour by an excellent guide, a good lunch, a trip to the swim in the Indian Ocean at a private beach, and then back to the hotel. Not once did the guide or the driver ask for additional money, a welcome relief, although in this case, we certainly would have tipped the guide if he hadn’t disappeared without asking.
Although we were to be picked up about 9 a.m., obviously that was African time, and as I waited in the street for the van, I noticed three other muzumgu (white people), and we determined that we were waiting for the same van:

Our Companions
It’s fascinating to see how a group of people either connects or doesn’t in close quarters such as ours, particularly since our minivan overheated a couple of times, and the first van driver would have to return to pick us up. No one complained. No one bothers with names, we will never remember any of them, but we do remember where they are from and what they do and why they are here.

Our next-door neighbors included a malaria-researcher from Holland, she had just turned in her doctoral dissertation on urban malaria and would be defending in May, and boy, listening to the malaria research made me more careful with our mosquito spray…mosquitoes carry a lot of diseases, not HIV/AIDS, but others.

Her companions were a man from Germany and a woman from Belgium, both working in another African country in the small grants financial sector. They are friends who just happened to be able to travel together at this time for two weeks.

A Canadian couple travels each January/February while their neighbors feed their 300 head of cattle in Manitoba. They, in turn, feed the horses raised by their neighbors when they travel. In their 50’s, they are the youngest of their neighbors, so the Canadian small farmer/rancher is also disappearing. Farmers need 10,000 to 15,000 thousand acres (can that be true?). The nearest town has 250 people; she supplements their income with nursing and medical massage. Although not into organic or range-fed, they are definitely aware and concerned about the environment.

A young woman from Vancouver managed to loudly tell us ALL about their African travels (South Africa and inbetween), and we don’t think that her male companion said a SINGLE WORD for the entire trip!
The Italian couple and 7 year old boy spoke primarily in Italian, so we didn’t connect.

I finally got the other young man from Melbourne to talk at lunch, and as an environmental impact engineer, his comments led to a most interesting discussion back in the van.

Global Warming
Young Aussie told us about atmosphere dimming, the result of burning brown coal, and creating more clouds to reflect the light back into the atmosphere, and the fact in the three days after 9-11-01, when all the planes were grounded for three days, that the temperature rose by at least one degree in the United States…since the jet streams were not there to deflect the sunshine back into the atmosphere. Dimming only masks global warming.

We are all dismayed by the lack of pumps for water, for lack of water for producing enough energy, etc. The Canadian cattle folks told us how the solar panels are about 50 percent more effective and costing 60 percent less than four years ago, and that the new ones can generate power EVEN on very cloudy days, so long as there is sunshine, but that rules out many months in Canada. We talked about wind power, and then, Canadian told us about a proto-type generator that is producing enough electricity to power a small island off Scotland…the generator is powered by the waves, rolling in and rolling out and in and out, never stopping. Isn’t that a grand idea? No pollution, visual or otherwise!

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Photos

Canadian Travelers
She is a massage therapist and works with referrals from doctors in the local community. He raises about 300 head of cattle, a French breed, as I recall. They travel in January, and shared info re: alternative sources of energy.

Comments

[dolores]

catching up
Have been in Texas and didn't bring up your blogs there. Now home and catching up. Enjoying them very much--yours and Bill's. Nice record and great observations. Passing them on to a friend in D.C. who's working on a Clinton African project.