360 Degrees Longitude (23 page)

“This part of the desert is set aside for dune bashing,” our guide replied. “There used to be a lot of accidents here, but in the interest of tourist safety, all guides are now required to pass a rigorous off-road test and to be knowledgeable in emergency first aid.”

“I feel so much better knowing that. What about the drivers that aren't guides? Do they have to pass any special training?”

“No, but most people who come here are very good drivers. You do have to be careful, though, when you see one of the off-road Lamborghinis. They are driven by the very rich and very crazy.”

Our driver neared the drop-off place for our overnight stay. I looked about and noted the sun setting in the west, but apart from that everything looked the same from horizon to horizon. Our guide unloaded the back of the Land Cruiser with efficiency and then he was gone. He had left us with some water, a picnic basket full of chicken, and some blankets.

“How does he know where to pick us up?” Katrina asked.

“Good question.” My eyes were scanning the horizon for any off-road Lamborghinis. I turned to September and asked, “Did you notice a GPS device?”

“No,” she replied.

Jordan, having recovered from motion sickness caused by “dune bashing,” was running about wildly, delighting in the freedom of the open space and being utterly alone. “Cool! Is this where we're staying tonight?!” he asked.

The vast sea of sand all looked the same. “Have you ever noticed,” I said, “that if you put enough miles between you and a place, that place just seems to evaporate?”

“What do you mean?” asked Katrina.

“It's hard to remember the carpet salesmen of Turkey,” September replied, “when the streets are lined with glistening chrome buildings and the banners hanging from the streetlights advertise the Real Estate Channel. It's fun to be in a new place, but it's sad that it's so hard to remember the place we just left.”

“Dubai seems so different,” Katrina commented.

“It is different, isn't it?” I said. “Mom couldn't sit with us on the bus today because men and women aren't allowed to mix in public. At the mall we saw men with three and four wives, and they were completely veiled.”

“The writing we see looks like someone tried to pull the paper away,” Jordan offered.

“But has anyone noticed how much
the same
things are?” September asked.

“What do you mean?” Katrina asked.

“The grown men at the mall eating their Subway takeout,” September continued. “Classic human behavior, trying to be anonymous when being sneaky. At the end of the day, we aren't all so different from one another.”

Everywhere we had visited it was possible to see what was different about it and the people. Yet I was beginning to see how much things—and people—were
alike
. Was it like that in Europe, and I was too distracted to notice?

The desert was very dark at night. And the stars brilliant. And we all felt very, very small.

October 18–November 2
Tanzania

T
he nice man with the machine gun at passport control wanted two hundred dollars for four visas. Cash.

We knew visas were fifty dollars each, payable in good ol' Yankee currency, before we stepped on the plane in Dubai, but I didn't want to withdraw a bunch of dirhams only to discover that I couldn't exchange them in Tanzania. Our strategy was to hope we would find an ATM in Tanzania before we reached passport control. We didn't.

As I explained our predicament to Mr. Machine Gun, he replied, “No problem. There are ATMs outside of the airport near the taxi stand. Just be sure to come back.”

I left September, Katrina, and Jordan as collateral to ensure my return and proceeded past passport control and out of the airport. As promised, outside of the airport two ATMs, on different networks, awaited. But there was also a pride of cab drivers waiting for a fare and a legion of beggars waiting for relief. All eyes were upon me. Due to low transaction limitations, to get enough cash I had to make eight separate transactions, four on each network. I pretended to be invisible as I stuffed an inch-thick wad of Tanzanian shillings into my pocket. I shuffled off to exchange them back into dollars for our visas.

Access to cash was our biggest problem in Tanzania. It would also be the catalyst for our appreciation of the people of a tiny village in the Usambara Mountains.

• • •

The power was out citywide in Dar es Salaam, the largest Tanzanian city, and it was expected to remain out for two weeks due to lack of replacement parts for a key generator. That every third or so shop owner was ready with a portable generator told me that power outages were not uncommon. This was my first experience in a large African city. Gone were the shiny chrome buildings of Dubai. In their place was dense, chaotic traffic and street peddlers lined up elbow to elbow, each more desperate than the last. The effect of fumes from generators mixing with trash rotting on the sidewalks and in the gutters was choking.

This was the kids' first experience in a third world city. “Why is there so much trash in the streets?” Katrina asked as she leaped across a pothole.

“No garbage cans,” Jordan responded matter-of-factly.

“Well, why don't they just get some?”

“Most likely no collection service,” yelled September as we passed a particularly noisy generator.

The garbage-in-the-street question was the first of many that the kids started asking.
Why won't they accept Tanzanian shillings for visas? Why are there so many people trying sell the exact same things?

We were spared any generator noise and fumes at our hostel; this also meant we were spared electricity. What could we expect for five dollars a night? Going without power was actually very nice. We spent a pleasant evening in the courtyard of the hostel talking with some of the other guests as Jordan zapped flies and mosquitoes with the handheld, battery-powered zapper he'd acquired from a street peddler.

Beth, a middle-aged woman from Philadelphia who worked with the Peace Corps, was vocalizing some of her frustrations. She was in Dar, as it is known locally, for a few days before returning to the village where she was trying to raise AIDS awareness.

“The ugly truth,” Beth said, “is that ‘safe sex' has taken on a sinister twist in the bush areas.” With a cautious glance at Katrina she continued. “'Safe sex' is taken to mean sex with younger and younger girls who are not yet infected.”

We had brought the kids on the World-the-Round Trip to experience the good
and
the bad of humanity. Just over 24 hours after arriving in Tanzania, Katrina and Jordan were already asking hard questions about why this place was so different from others we had visited. I had been wondering that myself, and had yet to find a very satisfying answer.

With no power in the city it was very dark in Dar es Salaam and the Milky Way was stunning in the African night. Even though Katrina wasn't meant to be part of our conversation with Beth, as we had learned in our first weeks on the road there were no private conversations in our foursome. As soon as the syllables “… younger girls” had left Beth's lips, Katrina spun around and looked at us and said, “What? What are you guys talking about?”

It was a segue into a discussion I really didn't want to have. Beth quietly slipped away and we spent the next hour or so discussing everything from AIDS to the meaning of life, corruption in governments, garbage collection services, and the vastness of space with Katrina
and
Jordan.

I had naïvely thought that these philosophical discussions would occur almost daily on our trip. Not that I liked talking about AIDS with my kids, but the vastness of space is right up there on my top ten list. I had presumed our year together as a family would be spent learning about each other on a new level, debating politics, and discussing the wonders of science. What we found was that the days were filled with the trivialities of existence, just like at home. So, to be able to have a long meandering conversation with my kids under the starlight on an African night was worth the entire trip.

• • •

We stayed in Dar just long enough to purchase bus tickets to Arusha, the center of Tanzania's safari circuit. We were careful to use the bus company recommended by our guidebook as “least likely to break down.” I grabbed a local paper in English for the ten-hour ride.

Local papers are always an interesting read. Prominently highlighted on the cover was a story about a little boy who was mauled to death by a leopard while on safari near Arusha. This was, of course, exactly where we were headed and our activity of choice once we arrived—the viewing, not the mauling. I decided to keep this information to myself and turned to local politics. Tanzanian elections were coming up. One of the presidential hopefuls claimed to know a famous scientist in America, and the candidate's platform was built on the promise of using this connection to cure AIDS in the next eight months. But he would do it
only
if elected. It would have been funny instead of sad if the guy had been considered the lunatic fringe by the electorate, but he was a serious contender.

A few hours on the bus and we had left the confines of the city, but the trash of the city still followed us. The major culprit was the lowly plastic bag, similar to what you might get at the local supermarket, but black and much thinner. There wasn't a square foot along the side of the road that wasn't carpeted with black plastic bags for at least the first two or three hours out of the city. Plastic simply doesn't biodegrade, and the concept of landfills and what they are supposed to be filled with simply hasn't entered the public consciousness. It is a problem continentwide.

Once we were well out of the “no turning back” range of Dar, the bus's engine started to emit a noise that sounded like my '68 Schwinn Sting-Ray when I clothes-pinned a playing card in the spokes to get the “motorcycle engine” effect. The bus driver pulled over, opened the hood (accessible from inside the bus), and after a few whacks with a hammer, we were happily motoring again. But not for long.

“There's that sound again,” September said. The driver once again pulled over and removed the cowling that covered the engine. But this time he gave the hammer to a gentleman in the front seat. For the next several hours as we made our way to Arusha, whenever the sound returned, the gentleman in the front seat administered a few random whacks while the driver continued to motor happily down the road.

Dubai, with its 24-hour cable TV real estate channel and the wannabe Team Ferrari racetrack for rent seemed a lifetime ago. The United States seemed as though it was a previous existence. I certainly would never have seen a passenger whacking a bus engine with a hammer in the United States, or anywhere else in the Western World for that matter. I recalled a trip to New Zealand several years prior; the bus we'd been on developed a noise and the driver pulled over and we were stuck on a remote mountain for hours until help arrived. Things may be done differently here, but who's to say which is better?

When we stepped off the bus in Arusha a mob scene ensued. “We have the best safari in town!” one man shouted as he tried to grab my hand. Another man, walking off with my luggage, pointed to the first man and proclaimed, “He is a thief! You do not want to do business with that man!” Bodies were pressing up against us, tearing at all of us, trying to pull the four of us and our luggage in different directions. Each was desperate to tell us that they had the best safari and hostel in town.

Tempers in the crowd were starting to flare and for a moment it seemed a fight was going to break out over who got our business. Even though we were outnumbered, simply raising my voice dispersed the mob efficiently. We pulled out our guidebook and went to a hostel that it recommended, leaving behind many very disappointed people.

Once settled into the hostel I remarked to Jordan, “Kinda makes the carpet salesmen in Istanbul seem like kinder, gentler entrepreneurs.”

Either I was making more out of the scene than I should have or the kids were becoming road hardened, because Jordan ignored the comment and asked, “I wonder if they have that same kind of cherry soda like they had in Turkey.”

• • •

Arusha is the gateway to the Serengeti and we started to research our options to experience this natural wonder. Our guidebook warned us to choose a safari operator with care. Some operators try to cut costs a little too aggressively, which could leave you stranded in the Serengeti without an operating vehicle, food, or communications. Worse, the odd criminal has been known to try to pass himself off as a guide.