The Hide

The Hide

The bricked path to the Hide leads under shady acacia trees,

alongside lush lawns, next to beds of colourful wild flowers;

I approach slowly, reverently almost,

Binoculars in one hand, iPad in the other,

My head covered by a New Balance running cap,

A Holiday gift from my colleagues.

All around are the strains of birdsong,

Nearby a kingfisher chants shrilly from his lofty dead branch;

Further off the water dikkops wail mournfully, quietly;

The bottlebird warbles from his bush down by the riverside,

Far off, high above the river, a pair of fish eagles call majestically to one another;

All the while the river flows, rumbles, rushes, washes, swirls, singing its own powerful song.

I slowly, unsteadily mount the creaking central wooden staircase ladder;

Uneven slanting steps cause me to lurch and sway and almost fall;

I grab the handrail and the whole Hide seems to rock.

The assembled watchers look round, frowning, disapproving.

I mumble an apology and tiptoe to a vacant place on the bare wooden benches.

The obvious regulars are quickly picked out – the brilliant red bishop, Egyptian geese,

Egrets, bulbuls, babblers, spur fowls, weavers, prinias, swallows, swifts …

No one is that interested in them and neither am I.

Ticked them all off long ago.

No, we are here to Wait and Watch.

Watch and Wait.

Watch for the Coming.

Wait for the Revelation.

Will it be today?

The minutes tick by.

The lowveld afternoon air hangs thick and heavy about us.

Birds come and go, but nothing new happens.

There is peace here, and quiet,

but it is an expectant peace, an excited quiet.

Something momentous may happen today.

Something new may be revealed.

Suddenly, a gasp.

Inaudible, but felt.

A Watcher has seen something.

We follow the direction of her binoculars to the reeds below.

Another gasp, a group gasp.

Someone says the words “cuckoo finch”.

We all reach frantically for our books or iPads and page or type furiously,

In-between drinking in the sight of this diminutive yellow-brown creature,

flitting around in the reeds below.

We envisage ticking it off, chalking it up – a lifer!

The old man in the corner is silent, calm, unfrenzied.

For a long while he just sits and observes.

Then he intones in a deep voice through his white beard:

“Weeeaaaavvvvverrrr…..”

A groan, felt but not heard.

We return to watching and waiting.

Perhaps this is not the day, not the hour.

We must remain faithful.

Revelation could happen at any time.

Devotions over, we make our peace and leave quietly,

Singly or in twos and threes.

Out into the hostile world of the unbirded,

Those lacking our magnificent obsession.

The stairs creak again under the load. The structure sways.

The last watcher leaves and the Hide lies empty, deserted,

Maintaining its own watch.

oooOOOooo

London in the autumn

Wednesday night, Thursday morning

Years ago I would not have considered doing this - flying 12,000 km for 2 nights. When these trips came up I would always find an excuse to tag on a few days at the beginning or the end of the work part and go and visit friends or family. I have stopped doing that for 2 reasons. One is that working on contract I no longer have the leave. The other is that I was just spending too much time away from home. So here I am 34000 feet above the Mediterranean coast on my way to London for a meeting which will probably not take more than 3 hours, 5 at the outside. And yes, I know that I will get into trouble with the carbon emission police. My only defence is that if we don't do something fast about certain infectious diseases then it won't matter how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere because we won't be around to experience it - and that is why I am in London. Another, much weaker, defence is that SA220 would have gone anyway, regardless of whether I was on it or not - but that is really no defence at all.

We are in the new SAA airbus 330-200 which I must say is a lovely plane. So nice to be the first or one of the first to use a really good piece of equipment before it gets broken. Feels like Christmas morning! Each seat has a screen which actually works. There is a great navigation program. The movies work. The coach class seats seem to have a little more room between them and when they tip back the sitting part moves forward a bit, like the seats in business class do. This is an overnight flight - we left Cape Town around 8 last night and it is now 6.30 South African time, 430 local. In a few minutes they will likely switch on the lights and serve us a half edible breakfast but right now it is still dark in the cabin and most folk are snoozing. That is the other thing - the flight is half empty. I realize that is not good for the airline and probably not good for prices or the environment, but it meant that the seat beside me is empty. In fact one person in the middle block has four seats to himself and is stretched out with more room than British airways business class. Maybe that is what happens on a Wednesday night.

When I awoke and looked out the window just now we were just approaching the Algerian Mediterranean coastline. The moon is full and just setting in the west, reflected off the sea and the night cloudless. Quite pretty. There is a bright planet just below the moon which my astronomy program on the iPad tells me is Jupiter - who would have thought? Now we are over Barcelona, actually Reus, approaching Andorra and the Pyrenees - I expect that may give us a little turbulence. Then north west, passing between St Giron and Tarbes, between Bordeaux and Perigueux, (don't you just love these names?!), Niort and La Rochelle, Nantes and Angers / Saumur, Rennes and Le Mans, Cherbourg and Bayeux, and then on across the channel to London. We seem to have deviated east from the direct course - maybe we are too early - I know there is a curfew until 6 am local time on landing at Heathrow.

I watched a really strange movie last night while I finished a small bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and before sleep overtook me. It starred Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and was directed by someone called Terence Malick. It was called The Tree of Life and was noted to be "2011, Drama, PG13, 138 minutes. ... An impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years." It starts with a quotation from the book of Job - "were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth..." and so on, then goes to the death of his brother in the war, presumably Viet Nam, and how it affects his mother. Then it cycles back to Jack's own "creation" with lots of impressive imagery of galaxies being born and volcanoes erupting ... all very interesting but I wasn't sure that I got it. And then the story itself - his overbearing, manly father who goes to great lengths to raise his boys right, his beautiful mother for whose love and attention he has to compete with both his brothers and his father, his near idyllic youth in this country bumpkin town where his dad works and where his family lives. As the blurb warned, it ends in disillusionment with his father getting retrenched when "they" close down his factory, selling up the house and moving to the city, and Jack the adult searching restlessly in the board rooms and skyscrapers which now define his existence for what he has lost. I probably need to watch it again, perhaps on the big screen and at a time when I am not tired and have a clearer head. As I said, enjoyed it but wasn't sure I "got it".

We are supposed to land shortly after six a.m. At this time of the year I expect it will still be dark. My plan is to get through immigration and customs and go and leave my bags at the hotel, en head into town on the underground, to Euston station, and then take the train to Leighton Buzzard where I am meeting my uncle and aunt, and possibly my cousin, for lunch there or up at Milton Keynes where they work. I have with me a small packet of goodies for my uncle - six copies of my grandfather's poems and a used music edition of the Presbyterian hymnal. What is special about them is that you cannot get them in the UK. In fact you probably can't get them anywhere else. So I feel as though I am actually earning my pub lunch today...

We have just descended a level and are continuing to do so. Just passing over Cherbourg now. Have to switch off.

Later:

Well we had a smooth landing but had to wait for about 15 minutes on the apron because the "other airline" (never discovered which one) aircraft had not vacated our parking space. Irritating but not the end of the world. Well, not for me anyway - I didn't have a connecting flight to catch. And anyway, we were about half an hour early. Passport control and customs was a breeze. Some American colleagues who arrived later told me they stood in the "non EU" queue for over 2 hours - when I went through neither the EU nor the non EU queues were more than about 10 people. Strange.

I've done this routine a few times now so pretty much know my way around. Terminal 1, central bus station, find the U3 bus (they had changed the station), get off at the Hong Kong restaurant and walk the remaining few hundred metres to the Sheraton - fortunately it wasn't raining. Last time they gave me the gears about arriving early - this time they didn't - they were only too happy to usher me into Room 1409 (I later discovered they charged me an additional 40 pounds for this privilege) which, it turned out, was conveniently close to the front desk - always an advantage in this day and age when one's magnetic door key needs to be reset every time it comes within a mile of your blackberry case! I unpacked, showered and changed, and headed out to see my uncle and aunt in Bedfordshire.

This routine I have pretty much got taped now. I bought my ticket shortly after the end of peak time (9.30 am), which meant it was cheaper, Heathrow to Leighton Buzzard return. I think it was about 20 pounds. Then onto the London Underground, headphones in and turned up to maximum volume (I have learned), and so to Euston. I cannot quite recite the Piccadilly Line (to Cockfosters!) stations off by heart but just about. Heathrow, Hatton Close, Hounslow West, Central and East, Osterly, Boston Manor, Northfields, South Ealing, and Acton Town. I love the names and found myself thinking that each of them must have a story and a history attached to it - must have a look in Peter Ackroyd's book. Hammersmith, Baron's Court, Earl's Court - who were the Earl and Baron, I wondered. Gloucester Road, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner and Green Park. Was there a special bridge over the Thames for Knights of the Realm? Is the park named for its colour or after a Mr or Ms Green? Piccadilly Circus. Circus? WTF! Leicester Square. I got off at Leicester Square and made my way through tunnels to the northern line and thence past Warren Street and finally to Euston Station. Getting from the tube to the over ground midlands trains is quite a challenge. The main thing to remember is not to stop in the middle of the passage or concourse and look at the notice boards - not if you don't want to be roundly cursed by commuters in a hurry or simply bashed into.

I found my train and found a seat. The midlands trains are clean, comfortable, quiet, fast, air-conditioned - somewhat in contradistinction to the tube. Soon we were (it felt like) flying north west, through suburban London, and then into the countryside. I spotted the Grand Union Canal a few times, but the rest was pretty much a blur of hamlets, villages, fields and cows, and an occasional ruined castle. Across the aisle from me two young ladies were discussing their hair, their fingernails, their boyfriends, their girlfriends' boyfriends, their parents, their religion ... and then one of them said something about Bafana Bafana, which made me sit up and take notice, but I couldn't work out the context. Before I knew it, the lady on the PA was telling us that Leighton Buzzard was next. I gathered my stuff together and went and stood at the door. Now these are high tech trains - you don't wrench open the doors like you do in Cape Town (and usually your shoulder at the same time). You push a button and wait for the electronics to open the door for you. When it doesn't, you push it again - and again - and again ... eventually it did open, but not before I had got myself into quite a state. The lady on my left commiserated and said it always freaked her out as well.

I was a little early for my uncle so took a short walk around Leighton Buzzard. There is a fairly attractive but not particularly ancient looking parish church quite near the station, which is being renovated. There was a railway hotel which I think just have been burnt down and is also being resorted. It reminded me of a song by Mike Batt which I have always liked, whose lyrics go something like "I knew the Savoy would have suited you well, but the best I could do was the Railway Hotel". Some pics below.

Ancient Uncle arrived on time with an even more ancient friend, whom we needed to drop off at his home, then we went and fetched my slightly less ancient aunt, and headed to Milton Keynes for lunch. Before we left I handed over the books I had brought and they gave me some goodies to take back to SA for my even more ancient mother. Why Milton Keynes - well, there was a possibility that my cousin might join us - in the end he didn't but that was why we chose MK. We lunched at Camperdown, which is an establishment, as I understand it, for mentally handicapped people, where they live and where they are employed. Our watrons were such people, although the manageress wasn't. The menu is vegetarian, and the veggies are grown on the estate. I had a lentil pasta main and a hot pudding with custard, washed down with a local beer called "Cock and Bull", which was really nice. I found the whole experience delightful and was glad we had come here. We ended it off with a short walk around the estate - very pretty, particularly the trees in the autumn colours. They dropped me back at the station in time for me to catch the 5.43 to Euston. This was much more crowded than the train had been coming north, but I still got a seat and was fairly comfortable. The tube, in contrast, was another matter. Two trains came and went before I could even get on to one. Then it was a case of pull your stomach in, try not to mind the invasion of your personal space and hold on tight. It was like that all the way to Acton Town - that was the first time I was able to sit down. I got back to the hotel around 8 and went across to the MacDonalds (where I am sitting now) to catch up emails.

Friday

Most of Friday was taken up by the meeting, which was ... a meeting. In the afternoon I decided I would try and run around Heathrow - I was feeling rather bloated and needed some exercise. I didn't realise quite how large the airport is - I got about one quarter of the way around and decided that would do, so turned around and returned. The total distance for the run was about 8km. What is unusual about Heathrow (I think) is that it is plonked in the middle of suburbia and even farmland. The northern runway runs fairly close to Bath Road and the northern perimeter road, both of which are accessible to walkers and runners, so you can watch (and hear) the big birds landing and taking off, which I enjoy.

We met at 7 pm for dinner. The plan was to go to our favourite watering hole, called the White Hart, just down the road, and have a meal together. The vehicle which had been hired wasn't quite large enough, so three of us walked. It was cold but pleasant enough. The White Hart is a traditional and I think quite old English Pub. I have had a meal inside before - it is very small and crowded. But they have an outside section, which is more open. Long wooden tables with radiant gas heaters and provided. They had a little trouble getting ours to work but finally it came together and we sat down. I ordered a glass of London Pride Ale, which got refilled twice during the evening. I always try to eat local specialties, so went with what was billed as Traditional English Bangers and Mash. It was GREAT! Who needs fancy cuisine?!

We stumbled back around 10 and I fell into (or more correctly onto) my bed with the TV on, full clothed, only to wake in the small hours with a rather dry throat.

Saturday

My plane only leaves around 8pm so I had the day to do with what I liked. I thought about going into London and shopping but didn't feel like the tube, so finally went for a long (very long) walk through some of the local villages - Harmondsworth and West Drayton. I have investigated the former before, but not the latter. It is lovely - very pretty indeed. I wandered through fields, parks, past old churches and an old building labelled "Drayton Hall" which I presume was the original manor house. I walked  next to streams, copses, mounds, lakes - one would never have guessed I was only a few km from one of the largest and busiest airports in the world and within the municipal boundaries of one of the globe's largest mega-cities. In the end I walked about 21km over 4 hours - I know this because I had Endomondo running. I discover that it works even if your data services are not on - presumably it doesn't need them to pick up the satellite signal, which I guess makes sense.

Right now I am killing a little time, but shall shortly have to get my act together and head across to Heathrow 1 and start the usual circus of checking in for my flight. Give me patience!

Sunday

The flight back was fairly ho-hum. I got the timing right for once - I cannot count the hours I have spent wandering aimlessly around the Heathrow 1 shops waiting for the information to go up on which gate to go to, because I have checked in too early. Airport shopping malls irritate me at the best of times. There is something not right about imprisoning large numbers of people for hours on end in these overheated, overcrowded complexes in the hope that they will spend their every last penny on items they neither need nor want out of sheer boredom and desperation. I don't believe for a minute the duty free lie - probably one of the biggest hoaxes in the history of commerce - it seems pretty obvious to me that the shops hike their prices to make up for the fact that one is not paying sales tax or VAT or whatever. And not to be too hard on the shop owners - i expect they have to do that because of the exorbitant rents charged them by the airports authority. Why is there never a Marks and Spencers or a MacDonalds? Presumably because one would spend too little money there, or heaven forbid, actually find something one wanted....

This time my flight left at 8.10 p.m. and so I tried getting to the bus stop at 5 which turned out to be about right. I missed two buses because I wasn't alert enough and didn't signal my desire that they stop, but eventually a number 76 came rolling by and we stopped it. As long as you are 3 stops or less from the terminal the trip is free. I have been told this is because there is no pedestrian access to the airport and so they had to come up with a compromise. I was soon as the central bus station and made my way to check in. Passport control and security was short and sweet. I still had about an hour to wait in the shopping concourse but that was fine. I tried to find some liquorice for herself and couldn't, not even at Harrod's. Nothing else grabbed me. I need some black work shoes but wasn't tempted by those on offer at Clark's, which seemed to start at about £50 a pair, or those at Timberland which started at about double that. I had some heavy coins I wanted to be rid of, so ended up using them at a slot machine in exchange for a bag of wine gums and a bag of chocolates. The board finally informed us to make our way to gate 33, which is about the longest walk one can have from the central concourse.

I was delighted to see that our plane was the same new Airbus 330-200 we had come on. The pilot later informed us that it had come off the plant in Toulouse on July 2nd this year. Very new indeed. The flight was not as empty as the outbound one, but still empty enough and I once again ended up with an vacant seat next to me, which was nice. I had a Windhoek light beer, and then a glass of Pinotage with my meal, which was a reasonably edible beef and potato stew. I have now learnt that the deserts are best avoided and I even resisted the temptation to eat the butter with my roll. When the lights were down I had a look at the entertainment on offer. I went for one of the foreign movies. Something called "El Hombre De Al Lado," ( the man next door) with English subtitles. It was billed as drama, not rated, 110 minutes, directed by Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat, 2010. It stars Rafael Spregelburg. The blurb said "Leonardo lives with his family in an architectural wonder. One morning, he wakes to an irksome noise and is appalled to discover that workmen next door are constructing a large window that faces directly into his home." I think it is set in Argentina. I enjoyed it, but shall have to think about it for a while before I figure out what it was actually about....

Now we are cruising down above the coast of Namibia, probably just around Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, which brings back memories from long ago for me - different era, different me, different life. When I open the window the Atlantic looks impossibly bright and blue. I guess a few days of the cloudy skies and muted light of West London has left my eyes overly sensitive. In another sense, though, Africa is stark. There is no mistaking reality here. I was looking at some of the building complexes along Bath Road yesterday - ugly factories or office blocks, but with well-maintained, manicured embankments and fine wrought iron fences between them and the road, which somehow muted their ugliness. Cape Town has lots of ugliness, but it is by and large in your face, in your front yard ugliness - there is little effort made to hide it or mute it. Driving in from the airport to the city centre you see it on both sides of the road - urban slums. Driving around the city you see it at every intersection - beggars. On a still winter's day you see it hanging above the city - brown haze. Open any of our newspapers and it will be on the front page - gang warfare, murders, rapes, hijackings, corrupt politicians - ugly, ugly, ugly. But at least the dirty washing is out on the line for everyone to see. We got a glimpse of England's dirty laundry with the "hoody" riots a few months ago. Countless English people seemed to be asking themselves, their neighbours, their members of parliament, "Where did all this ugliness come from?" and then we had the interminable communal navel gazing rumination about education and alienation and listening to young people and so on. Visiting London now, I saw no sign that they had ever occurred, although admittedly I did not visit Croydon or any of the other worst affected areas.

We have just flown over the South African border. It is good to be home. Much as I am coming to love England and London, and I am, it is good to be home.

Later still

There were two layers of cloud as we descended. I heard later that there is snow on the Helderberg – in November! The first glimpse of the ground I got I recognised as Long Beach. Odd. Moments later we got through the lower cloud layer and I looked out my window to see Simonstown harbour. The captain took us south a few more km, affording me an excellent view of Cape Point from False Bay, and then we made a graceful arc to the left. Once we levelled again I could see Hangberg and Kogelberg and the Hottentots Holland mountains. Then it was a slow glide over Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, and a surprisingly quiet and smooth northerly landing. Passports, luggage and customs done, I emerged into the Cape wind and felt again that it was good to be back.

 The Railway Hotel at Leighton Buzzard

 The church and park at Leighton Buzzard

 The Green, Drayton West

 The Gate House, next to the church at Drayton West

 The church at Drayton West

A somewhat anachronistic pub on Bath Road, very close to Heathrow

Kinky running

I have a new running partner - the Revered Hungry Kink. Kinky for short. Kinky and I go back a long way. Ok, maybe I should rephrase that - we have known each other for 35 years. We went to the same school. I was a day boy who lived just up the road with my parents. He was a boarder whose parents lived far away on a coal mine near Witbank, arguably the smelliest town in the country. I was into rugby and music, he was into wildlife photography. I was in the geography and biology class, he took art and history. Seemingly not a lot in common, but we became close friends at school and ended up spending a week hiking the 'berg together with Nobleman Shittier, and subsequently a week hiking the Wild Coast. Good times. His folks were real salt-of-the-earth South Africans. His Dad had worked his way up from being the office messenger to the mine's financial manager. He gave the three of us a lift down to the Drakensberg for our week there. I remember putting one of my Genesis tapes into the car's radio cassette player. The old boy tolerated Peter Gabriel and co. for about 20 minutes and then announced,  in inimitable South African style, "OK, let's have some white man's music!" as he turned on the radio. Priceless.

The kink studied to be a metallurgical engineer at Wits. I visited him a few times in res, played the occasional game of squash when I was up in Jozi, saw him once in a while. Then we kind of lost contact. I heard he had been G5'd out of the army because of having had one fit, ? epileptic. It never recurred but they didn't want him holding an R5 so he wasn't required to join the engineers' corps. I think he got a job on the mines or with Iscor, well paid, somewhere in the old Transvaal, but am not sure. As I said, we lost contact.

Then a few years back I was shopping at Blue Route Checkers with my two kids and this tall, thin bald guy comes up and says my name with a question mark at the end. I must have looked blank or stupid or both, because he then told me his. It was the Kink. He had moved to Cape Town and was living in Claremont. I asked him what the @#$% a metallurgical engineer was doing in Cape Town, to which he replied that he had given up being an engineer and was teaching science at a well-known private high school for boys in the mother city. He said he had had to take a 2/3 cut in salary but had never been happier.

Over the next year or so he introduced me to the art of restoring and maintaining vintage BMW motorcycles, invited me to his 40th birthday party (all I recall was that he wore a very strange wig and black tights) and promised to take me hiking up Du Toit's Peak. He also underwent surgery on both knees for shot ligaments. Then he disappeared again, chasing some woman to the UK, intent on marrying her. That too failed, and the next I heard from him was an email with a picture of him riding a very large Ducati, somewhere near a Norwegian Fjord. He does that - a few years later he sent me a similar shot from the Caprivi strip.

This is getting to be a long story so I will cut it short. The romance failed, he returned to Cape Town and his job at the boys' school, and he moved to Glen Cairn, where he had bought a rather run down but very well appointed bungalow with the most glorious view of False Bay. He proceeded to renovate the place over the next year, mostly on his own.

Given his knee issues, I was rather surprised when he told me he had started road running. "What about your knees?" I asked. He said he had read "Born to Run" by McDougall, had learned how to run on his forefeet and this had sorted out all his knee and ankle issues. Well it seemed to work - his times are substantially better than mine.

So that is the Kink. We now belong to the same running club (he had other motives for joining - his girlfriend is a leading light there). We run most Saturday mornings unless there is something else more urgent. Whereas the Handsome Masha and I discuss politics and philosophy on our runs, Kink and I talk about the old times and the old school, the quality of refereeing in the Rugby World Cup, motorbikes, and the like. Thank God for good friends.

Uganda

The Pearl of Africa. Uganda. I expect the country was pretty much unknown in the West for a long time, except to those in the British colonial services whose job it was to administer it and to those who had business interests there. Next year, Ugandans celebrate their half centenary of independence from the British, I read in a local newspaper - so that would be 1962, I guess. Then Big Dada Idi Amin arrived and suddenly Uganda was on the map - but for all the wrong reasons. My friends here still talk about those years - they were children at the time and they talk of the time, "towards the end" when you weren't safe in your own house at night. Came dusk, families would leave their houses and sleep in the bush, for fear of Amin's soldiers. You see the trauma in their eyes, and the deep sorrow. They tell you quite openly that the present government, under President Museveni, is not perfect, but they always add that nothing comes close to being as bad as the way things were under Amin.

And of course there was the Israeli special forces raid on Entebbe airport - the airport where I am sitting right now, even as I write this. The details of what happened are available in books, on websites and in at least one film. By all accounts it was extremely daring and well executed. One Ugandan friend told me that it only succeeded because their radar systems at the time were faulty and that ere is no way it could happen now. I wouldn't know. My observation is that it dented the national pride somewhat, even if it did occur during the tenure of a much hated dictator.

We flew in on Sunday evening on the direct flight from Johannesburg. I have taken it before and enjoy it because it is relatively short (4 hours) and because it seems invariably to arrive just as the sun is setting. As one is virtually plumb on the equator here, I guess that makes sense - sunset at 6pm and sunrise at 6 am all year round, or so I have been told. If you are lucky and there is not too much cloud around, you get some beautiful views of Lake Victoria and it's myriad islands as you make your final approach to Entebb airport, whose runway is right next to the shore.

Uganda is one of the countries where South Africans do require a visa, but you buy it for $50 when you arrive. The whole operation is quite efficient - that is, they have worked out how to relieve foreigners of $50 quite efficiently. Apart from handing over the money, the only other requirement is that you fill in one of those tedious but much loved by African bureaucracies immigration forms - yellow in Uganda, blue in Kenya, but all much the same - and smile politely as you say Habari and Asante. Oh, and they take digital scans of your finger prints on entry and exit, I guess to make sure it is the same person who comes and goes.

I am traveling with a colleague from Cape Town. It is his first trip, so I was able to provide some advice and information on what not to do. Don't mention the raid. Don't eat the salad. Don't walk in the road. Don't drink the tap water. Don't take pictures of official looking buildings. Don't give the presidential cavalcade the finger when it comes past - the basics of survival in Kampala. We collected our bags, cleared customs and found our shuttle driver. We were booked into the Metropole hotel, one of many in central Kampala. The distance from Entebbe is about 25km, I think, but it can take anything from 45 minutes to 3 hours to get there, a bit like Nairobi. The traffic is legendary. I was trying to describe the "jam" outside our hotel to a friend in an email and eventually resorted to "imagine all the cars on the N1 in rush hour trying to drive along Main Road from Muizenberg to Fish Hoek." The point being, for those not from my neck of the woods, that the N1 is a three lane highway, and Main Road is a single lane road which has been under construction / repair for over 3 years now. Picture that and you have, I think, a pretty good picture of Kampala in a "jam".

Our trip that evening took us about an hour - there were no major "jams". We sped along at a reasonable rate, dodging the odd motorcyclist, minibus or pedestrian. Traffic etiquette seemed to be fairly similar to what I have observed in other major African cities such as Maputo and Nairobi - size counts, pedestrians and cyclists have no rights, motorcyclists have half rights, driving on the pavement is allowed, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic is ok as long as you do so purposively and flash your lights, likewise overtaking on a blind rise ... you know, the usual stuff. I glanced across at my colleague to see what color his knuckles were and whether he had chewed through the seat belt yet and was surprised to see that he was fairly calm. When I asked him, he said that he had been driven around Rome a few times and that this was fairly tame in comparison! I guess the difference is that in Rome the average age of the vehicles is about ten years less than in Kampala and the roads are in better nick.

Our hotel, the Metropole, is what they call a boutique hotel, whatever that means. I could not fault it, except that it had no swimming pool. It is right next to the Uganda golf club, and close to the centre of town. My room was on the third floor and looked onto the course, separated from it by a stream with some very tall gum, banana and other trees on it's banks, which were the playground and possibly homes of several bird species - we heard or saw kingfishers, marabou storks, cuckoos and a number of others. The room was spacious and clean with a small balcony. I did not pay for the trip but was told the rate was $120/night for bed and breakfast, which is, comparatively speaking, not bad at all. At check in we were given a note from our American colleagues to say that one of them had gone to bed, the other was on the patio. We found our rooms, unpacked and made our way to the patio, which was on the first floor, also overlooking the golf course. We found our colleague, who was doing emails on her iPad, joined her table and ordered some beers. I remembered from my previous trips that one of the Ugandan beers is called a Nile. Someone once told me that they use the water from the Nile at Jinja to make it, but I have not been able to confirm the theory. Having been to Jinja and seen same water, I hope that it is incorrect! Another is called a "Club" and there is a third, whose name I forget now. Then one can also get Kenyan beers, for example Tusker malt or Tusker lager. They all come in 500ml bottles, which is 50% more than our standard pint or can in south Africa. They were surprisingly cheap - 4500 Ugandan shillings each, whichbis about $1.50. My colleague asked me which I suggested and I gave him my standard line: "there is no such thing as a bad African beer" which is probably not true, but I have always enjoyed sampling the local brews. A liter of beer each later we headed for bed. The most momentous decision to be made was whether to close the door and run the (rather noisy) air conditioner or leave the door open with just the screen door closed, and the air conditioner off. I opted for the former the first night but changed after that.

I woke to the shrill calls of the kingfishers in the trees. I thought briefly about going for a run but decided against it. Instead I had a leisurely shower, dressed and made my way to breakfast. I wore a tie and jacket, not sure how formal our meetings would be. Breakfast was a simple affair but quite pleasant. The coffee was strong and local, and what else matters?! I had some cereal and fruit, to assuage my conscience, and some toast and jam to fill a gap or two, but decided to skip the cooked offerings. I generally avoid red meat when traveling in Africa because one is never really sure what one is eating, and because I have had some really nasty sausages in my time.

The days were full of meetings, the details of which do not matter. Lunch was provided and consisted of banana (plantain), steamed in its own leaves, together with rice, beans and spinach, all of which i enjoy. I avoided the chicken option. Evenings were spent on the patio having extended sundowners and eating from the hotel kitchen. I had some excellent tilapia fish from the lake - tikka one night and red curry another. I think that if I lived in Kampala as an expat I might well get into that particular groove.

On the second morning we were picked up (or "picked" as they say in east Africa) by our host's driver in an elderly Land-cruiser. The traffic was particularly bad and we were concerned (as was he) that we would miss our meeting at 9 a.m. Accordingly, he hung a right and went careering down a side alley, up another and soon we were climbing one of Kampala's famous seven hills via a rather rudimentary looking mud track. I was sitting in what we used to call the "dog box" - the back section. Next moment we all heard a loud hissing noise from the back left tire and we ground to a lopsided halt. Puncture! We all got out and stood around making helpful comments while the driver changed the wheel. Then it started raining. To cut a long story short, we were offered a lift by the driver of another Land-cruiser who just happened to be taking the  same short cut. It did however allow me a few minutes to explore the area and take a few pictures - see below.

On our second afternoon there, we had an hour or so in hand and so decided to try and burn some calories by going for a run. Not having a map, we opted to try and run around the golf course, which looked fairly sizable. We found a path which took us straight across it and followed it, looking out for flying golfballs as we ran. It took us to the main road which ran along the far side of the course. The pavement was not very wide, a bit broken and quite crowded, so we decided to run along the fairway, parallel to the road. Bad idea. A security guard came running after us, clapping his hands and motioning us to get off the course. So pavement it was. At this stage we were adopted by a stray dog, about the size of a Dalmatian. She ran with us for the full half hour and only left us when we disappeared back into our hotel. The course is long and narrow - I expect most golf courses are. The area around the bottom was taken up by a hideous hotel with a revolving restaurant on top of a tower - "soos 'n puisie op 'n perd se poephol" as they say in Afrikaans. Also a shopping mall called Garden City, but sans anything even vaguely resembling a garden. We were glad to leave the thronging main road and get back to the Metropole.

We attempted a second run the following day. I had consulted google maps, which was probably a mistake. I was sure there was a road around the top of the course which, if we took it, would spare us the bit past Garden City, dodging motorbikes and four wheel drives. We couldn't find the road so consulted a security guard (every second person in Kampala appears to be a security guard). He told us to turn left here, right there and so on. We ended up in a somewhat dodgy looking area and scrambled our way past shacks, over seriously muddy dirt roads until we found the main road again. Nothing like a bit of cross country. We had had enough, and my colleague's knee was playing up so we called it a day.

On the Tuesday night our hosts took us to dinner at an Indian restaurant. I gather it was north Indian. I think it was called something to do with New Delhi. We sat under a gazebo on a manicured lawn. The air was warm, there was no wind and no rain. I had bought myself and was wearing a very bright, collarless, patterned shirt, which I was assured was "traditional Ugandan" and a likewise traditional floppy brown hat made of "bark cloth" - looks a little like felt but rougher and drier, and is made from the bark of one of their trees - from the shop at the hospital which sells for the HIV infected mothers who bring their kids there. We sat and chatted, sipped our drinks, ate our Dahl and a good many other dishes - I know there was vegetarian, fish, goat (which they call mutton in Kampala, our host told us), and chicken. It was a delightful meal and evening and I thought I could get used to this...

This morning we were up at four to leave at four thirty. We had been advised that traffic to the airport was not something to take lightly, so we gave ourselves a reasonable cushion. Our plane was at 7.25. As it turned out, it was as well that we did. There was no problem with the traffic but the credit card machine at the hotel was giving hassles which took about 15 minutes to sort out. Always something! The drive itself was fairly uneventful - we just stopped once and that was to refill the windscreen washer bottle - the roads were very muddy after the rains. I was told that it has been raining just about every day since May which is very unusual and is confusing the farmers and ruining the cotton crop.

We were at the airport by 5.30. Check in, security and immigration were surprisingly hassle free. We made a brief sortie into the "duty free" to pick up some overpriced Ugandan coffee for my colleague, were declined entrance to the business lounge (one has to be Voyager gold) and finally sat down in the cafeteria just in time to be told to get up and go to the boarding gate. More scans and security checks and finally we were on board. Last minute SMS to herself, cell phone off, doors closed, safety video over and then we were hurtling down the runway. We seems to take forever to get airborne but I expect the pilot knew what she was doing. We rose above the lake and I looked down on an array of huts and beaches and little fishing craft and realized that this was the real Uganda, not the comfortable hotel, fancy restaurants, golf courses and erudite company I had spent three days enjoying.

Now we are cruising somewhere high above Tanzania, I expect. Soon we'll be touching down in Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town. I don't know when exactly I shall be back in Uganda. I would like to return and perhaps take a trip to some of the national parks which seem to be mainly in the West of the country, along the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I would like to bring my family and introduce them to the "Pearl" and to some of the nicest, warmest people I have the privilege of calling my friends. Maybe, one day ...

Mozambique and Johannesburg

Mozambique  - September 2011

I am not sure how many times I have visited Moz. Somewhat less than ten times, somewhat more than five. About half of those have been trips to Maputo and about half have been trips through Maputo, to places further north. I find it a fascinating country, if a little depressing. My first trip was about five years ago. I went with a small team of south African academics to assist the Mozambiquean government with some short term training. We stayed at a modest hotel in downtown Maputo. It was a moderately successful trip, although the project we were training them for subsequently never happened, and I learned a few things in the process. One was about dress codes in Africa. Bottom line here is that whatever you wear will be wrong. I assumed that it being a government function, I should wear a suit. I arrived to find that everyone from their team was in jeans and tee-shirts! (I have had it the other way around as well, which is one reason I tend to err on the side of caution). The second thing I learned was how poor the country is or was. We tend to forget that our neighbor went through 16 years of brutal civil war, from which it is only now recovering. I don't pretend to know much about that war, other than what I have read and heard, but it is not difficult to see the effects of it - in short the infrastructure was (and still is) falling apart. My boss swears that when the Portuguese left in '75 or whenever, they were so pissed off that they poured concrete down the sewers. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It makes a good story and I guess I might have as well. Maputo certainly had and still has sewer problems...

I find that Maputo is a city of contrasts. On that first trip I remember taking a walk through the city centre and being astounded to find multimillion rand mansions belonging to some business tycoon or politician and right next to them open sewers, stinking to high heaven, or a ramshackle old house with broken windows and roof and yard rank with weeds. None of the traffic lights worked, it seemed. Major four-lane arterials intersected with other large roads and the intersection appeared to be nothing more than an elaborate stop-go system, whose rules it was almost impossible for the uninitiated to fathom. As far as I could see, the trick was to wait for a gap and then proceed slowly but purposefully as far as the first lane, wait for a gap in the second lane and so on until one had inched one's way all the way across. Even as that was happening, others were inching their way from east to west, west to east and south to north. The other remarkable thing was that I never saw an accident happen, although I don't doubt they occurred when I wasn't there.

This trip was short. we flew in on Monday and out on Thursday of the same week. All of Wednesday was taken up with a meeting and all of Tuesday with a trip to a field site some 100km to the north. So there wasn't much time for anything. We couldn't get on the direct Cape Town - Maputo flight and had to go via Johannesburg. We had one or two vaguely amusing incidents en route. I was in the company of the Handsome Masha, who is always good for a wry comment, usually socio-political in nature. There was a long queue at the passport control in Johannesburg airport - not a huge problem, as we had a fair amount of time before our connecting plane was due to leave, just mildly irritating. They had us snaking back in about five layers, for one immigration officer. That would probably have been fine but then another officer came, and the traffic director decided, in his wisdom, to re-engineer the "snake", with the result that about 20 of us were left in an island, not quite knowing where to head, and the rest in the main queue, wondering if we were about to gate crash them. Of course tempers got frayed, people argued, folks disobeyed instructions and climbed under the railing (I did) - it had the making of a good old mudsling. The turning point came when a South African white guy said rather loudly, "Well, welcome to Africa!" - an inflammatory remark at the best of time. The black guy behind him went off pop. Turned out he was Nigerian. He started screaming at him, "What gives you the right to say that? How can you say that? Nigeria is in Africa and this doesn't happen in Nigeria! We don't do things like this!!" The rest of us pretended to be British and discussed the weather or looked out the window.

Maputo has a new airport, built partly by the Chinese. Not sure how "partly". It is a modest airport by international standards, but certainly a huge amount better than the one they had before. I emerged from baggage reclaim and customs into a light, airy, spacious and surprisingly cool entrance hall and made my way to the three cash machines against the far wall. The first did not work. The second was out of money. The third had just swallowed an American gentleman's cash card. I retreated, deciding to rather wait for the hotel (which as it turned out didn't change money). There was a large and rather weird wooden sculpture in the arrivals hall which I photographed - maybe you can interpret it.

We stayed at the Hotel Avrin. It lies along the estuary, rather than the coast proper, surrounded by government ministries. As a hotel I guess it was above average - large rooms, most of the mod cons, marble everywhere, also lots of expensive looking paintings and sculptures, many of them African. The room rate was about R1000 for bed and breakfast, which always sounds like a great deal when you are having to pay it yourself, but internationally is nothing unusual. We found our rooms and agreed to meet later. Mine was on the second floor, facing the mouth of the estuary. I unpacked, showered and changed, and then went for a walk along the waterfront highway, with a friend. There was a light sea breeze, it was late afternoon and the sun was setting over the river, everywhere were sellers of cashews, crisps, cold drinks, beers (yes, on the pavement) ... young people everywhere, lots of rather lousy music blaring from parked cars' hi-fi's. But there was a festive atmosphere and we enjoyed the walk, ending at the ferry docking station.

Back at the hotel we met up with the Handsome Masha and one other colleague, and decided we would walk to the waterfront restaurant, where I had been on a previous trip and where I had had great seafood and listened to some wonderful African jazz music. The walk is about 10 minutes and we decided it would be fine. Wrong!

We had not gotten more than a block from the hotel and were just passing some or other ministry, when we were hailed by a soldier or policeman, I am not sure which. He wore a green uniform, had no name badge, but did have a large automatic weapon suspended over his shoulder. He asked to see our passports. Now I had never been told I must carry mine, and never had such problems in the past. In fact my practice is to put my passport straight into the room safe as soon as I have checked in, because the LAST thing I need when traveling is to lose my passport. So it turned out that one of us had a passport, two of use had drivers licenses and one had no identification. Three of us were South African and not required to have a visa and one was American, who had one. The soldier was not interested in the licenses - he wanted to see passports and he particularly wanted to see our American friend's visa. He would have to take us to the station, he said. We would need to pay a fine - I think he said 3000 meticals for each of us. That is about 1000 rands each - a lot of money. Well, if that was the law, then we would have to go to the station and pay up. I think we were resigned to that. And then he played his trump card - if we paid him, then it would be about half that and we wouldn't need to go to the station. Why didn't we just help each other? In other words he wanted a bribe. It is interesting to me that the three South Africans hesitated and looked like pushing back, despite the AK47. For one thing we didn't have the money on us. But on another level, I think we are just so bloody sick and tired of this sort of crap back home, that we weren't going to give in that easily, so we thought. Our American friend and colleague, on the other hand, reached into his wallet, found R500 and handed it over! The man's eyes lit up, but clearly he wanted more. He looked at me and asked why I didn't help my friend. I showed him my wallet which was genuinely empty - I intended using a credit card if I needed to pay for dinner. I don't know how long it would have gone on or where we would have ended up, had not another soldier approached from across the road. Quickly, the man's manner changed. "I am freeing you!" he said, with a certain amount of pomp and pretense at magnanimity. "My name is Rashid!" and he held out his hand to shake on it.

We were just glad to get out of there. I shook his hand and said "Thank you so much for your help, Rashid" and held off adding "You disgusting lowlife piece of shit!!", which was what I was thinking, and even managed a smile while I looked at him, all the while feeling only loathing and hate. I don't loathe and hate many people, but this man aroused in me those feelings in plenteous quantities. The others did likewise (shook hands that is) and we made our way slowly back to the hotel. I said to the American "I apologize for my continent!" "No problem," he said, "I have had far worse things happen to me in Washington, which is why I always carry enough money on me to pay a good bribe. That guy didn't know but if he had really pushed us I had 500 dollars hidden in my underpants!"

That night we ate in. We were one of only two parties in the hotel restaurant. The food was mediocre, the wine was from Chile and okay, and the prices were ridiculous. But at least we were safe. My American friend had not been to Maputo (or Lorenco Marques, as he called it), since the seventies. Mostly what he remembered were the prawns which were "as big as hot dogs!" and he was determined to find them again. That night the prawns were small - maybe an inch long. The next night we ate in the same hotel restaurant and they were maybe two inches long. It was only on the third night, when we finally succeeded in getting back to the Waterfront restaurant, that we got the real thing - three inch long tiger prawns. My friend thought he had died and gone to heaven! Had things worked out differently, that might have been truer than he wished.

I was awakened each morning by a rather tinny rendition of reveille played over the loudspeakers at the Ministry. Heaven only knew why. Presumably they were summoning the troops and running up the flag. Maybe they hadn't heard the war was over. Other than that, we didn't see the men in green again, not even on our trip up the N1, which is notorious for road blocks. I did speak to a Mozambiquean colleague, who happens to be well connected in the government, and he confirmed that no such law exists and that this fellow was simply chancing his arm. He also said that a night in a Mozambiquean jail is not something you want to court.

I don't want this to sound like a wholly negative blog about Mozambique because of one man's greed and immorality. The vast majority of my experiences in the country have been positive. Also, I know that many tourists have had far worse experiences in my own country. I have had friends and colleagues mugged in Paris, Rome ... you name it. Nowhere is immune, not even Saudi Arabia, I expect. I just mention these things because they kind of burst my bubble and altered somewhat my possibly naive, rose-tinted view of Africa. I shall be a little more careful in future, and carry my passport. I recounted this experience to my running partners yesterday, all of whom are South African, and they all said they would have called the soldier's bluff. well, they would wouldn't they - they didn't see his face or machine gun.

So that was Moz. I don't think anything else of importance happened. On Thursday we made our way back to the airport and via Joh’burg back to Cape Town. It was mildly irritating that no direct flight was available on either day and as a result our trip home took all day, whereas the direct flight takes a mere two hours.

Johannesburg – October 2011

Ten days later I was on a plane to Joh’burg for a 5 day "training" - I was being trained to train others, so called "train the trainer". The content of the course doesn't matter - it was OK, but a little tedious. It was all arranged pretty much at the last minute, I suspect because the Department suddenly discovered that it didn't have the required numbers. I flew up with some of the provincial program staff and my Cameroonian colleague, whom we affectionately refer to in the office as Lord Charles or Prince Charles, because he once let on that he has Royal Cameroonian blood. Charles is an academic physician and an accomplished researcher. He speaks not only his native Cameroonian language but English and French and something he calls "Pidgin English", which he says is spoken all over West Africa, but with regional differences. I asked him whether I, as a native English speaker, would be able to understand it and was told I would not.

We were booked into the Airport Grand Hotel, which one would think would be grand and near the airport. Well, it was not very Grand, and was near the nether end of the airport rather than the business end, if you take my meaning. The hotel is about 500 meters away from the south end of the eastern runway with some predictable and rather dramatic consequences. At peak hours, incoming planes come in low over the hotel before touching down. I found it fascinating to watch them, wheels down, listen to the engines throttling down, feel the walls and windows shake when the really big planes passed over, listen to the Doppler effect on the engine whine. I remember my Dad saying once that in London during the Second World War, they used to listen to the drone of the V2 rockets ("Doodlebugs"). As long as the engines kept whining they knew they were ok. It was when the engines stopped that they panicked. Once the rocket was overhead, they also relaxed, since even if the engines cut, it would continue going forward as it plummeted. Terrifying. But the planes, I found exciting. I even found a pub with an outside first floor deck called "High Fliers" from which one can "plane-watch" over a sundowner.

The hotel is officially in Boksburg, which is now part of the Ekurhuleni Metropole, what we used to call the East Rand in the bad old days of apartheid. I racked my brains to remember whether we had ever gone to Boksburg. I did remember that it was the site of the first Hypermarket. Imagine that - we would drive 50km to go to a Hypermarket! Nowadays I won't even drive ten. I bought my first and only Venter trailer from their depot in Boksburg. I spent an incredibly stressful and unhappy three weeks in 1989 as the medical officer assigned to the military detention barracks in Boksburg. Lastly, I do remember that when I was very young we used sometimes to drive out to the airport (called Jan Smuts Airport in those days), to watch, from the open air veranda, the planes landing and taking off. I think we saw the Concorde there when it visited, and the first Jumbo jets. Other than the above, I don't think I ever visited Boksburg. I mean why would I have? It was very Afrikaans, very flat and very ugly, in my opinion. "My" part of Johannesburg was hilly, leafy and pretty with blooming jacaranda trees and majestic old oaks.

The hotel, with the exception of the noise, was OK, as hotels go. Nothing more, nothing less. I must say the food was good and a little over the top. The only real negative was that there was no gym. There was a swimming pool in the central courtyard, but not big enough to get much exercise, and too cold anyway (I felt it). So I had a problem - the prospect of five full days of sitting listening to presentations, interspersed with meals which I really didn't need, but which I couldn't resist and which I felt morally obliged to eat since they had been paid for ... What to do? I had a look on Google maps and discovered that even though the hotel itself is on a main road and in something of a commercial and even industrial area, there is a residential suburb right behind it. I decided to throw caution tto the winds and go for a run on the first morning. At six a.m. I made my way past the security boom, clicked "start" on the Endomondo program of my Blackberry, clicked the start button on my running watch and set off at a good trot down the road, in the direction of the runway. After two blocks I turned right and ran along Viewpoint Road, which runs parallel to the R24 highway. I was surprised at the houses, several of which would not have been out of place in Houghton or Bishopscourt. The majority had, not unexpectedly, high walls or fences, topped by the ubiquitous electric wires, guarded by monstrously large dogs. But every so often, these were punctuated by old style small holdings, with low wire fences, lots of trees (plenty of syringa's in bloom, putting forth their pungent scent, but also palms and others), manor houses, some of them thatched, cheeky fox terriers poking their noses through the chicken wire... quite charming establishments in their own way, though one couldn't help wondering about security and how many times they had been burgled. Sad.
The sun was just rising. A few locals were out walking, singly or in pairs, some with dogs. Early birds were leaving for work. Diesel engines were idling at a trucking depot. The air was crisp but not cold. A peacock was calling from one of the small holdings. It was actually very pleasant and I found myself envying the worthy citizens of Boksburg their flat terrain and windless morning!
I was so happy with my run that my enthusiasm clearly affected Lord Charles. He went out that same afternoon and bought himself some running shoes at the East Rand Mall and the next morning he joined me on the run. Now His Excellency is new to running, and a little overweight, so we had to walk once or twice, but it was a good opportunity to chat and we both enjoyed it and made it a daily commitment for the rest of the week.

Other than that not a lot happened. Before we knew it, it was Friday and we were preparing to leave to return home to Cape Town. Would I go back to Boksburg if invited, or if I won a week there in a lottery - probably not, but hey, it was okay for a change.

Ezeebikes

Ezeebikes

My kids are convinced I am having a midlife crisis. Perhaps they are right. I have probably spent more money in the last year than in the previous three. On the other hand, I thought midlife crises were supposed to be about Lamborghini cars or Harley Davidson motorbikes or Caribbean cruises. Mine has so far consisted of upgrading to a 40 inch flat screen television (my excuse was that I could no longer read the cricket and rugby scores from my arm chair, even with my spectacles on), having the house repainted inside and out (it needed it: Cape Town is not kind to paintwork), fitting new security gates to the front and back doors (hey, we live in South Africa), having new blinds fitted in the lounge and granny flat (the previous ones were see through at night) and having a shelving unit fitted in the computer room (we have four computer users and two desktop computers, so the space needed some organizing). Is that a crisis - I think that most of it could be classified as running repairs or simple maintenance.

Perhaps our one indulgence has been the bikes. We realized a while ago that with three drivers and soon four drivers, each with his or her own life to live, we would need to have more than two transport options. Currently we have the "small car" (Peugeot 107) and the "big car" (Hyundai Getz). What to do? Well we could buy another car, and we almost did. We even test drove an absolutely scrumptious Hyundai i20. Somewhere inside my rational self, however, something kept saying "sooner or later oil will run out or become so expensive you won't be able to afford petrol. Why on earth are you buying another fossil fuel burner? Go green, for heaven's sake (or at least for earth's sake)." So I started researching hybrids and electric cars. All very fascinating, but the bottom line seems to be that a hybrid car will cost me three times what I paid for the Peugeot and return a consumption figure not very different, and an electric car will set me back even more, and will not be available in South Africa for about 2 or 3 years. That doesn't help us. So we made do with two cars for a while and seemed to be getting on okay. Once in a while one of us would use public transport - not the most wonderful experience in Cape Town, but certainly a whole lot better than in most other parts of the country. Even so, the trains are unreliable, unclean and sometimes unsafe. On the positive side, they are relatively inexpensive.

Then I started thinking about criterion number two - the need for exercise, the ever present battle against the expanding waistline, the prospect of one's slaved-for retirement being obliterated or at least ruined by degenerative conditions like coronary artery disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis or, perish the thought, cancer. Fitting in the runs and gym sessions never gets easier. Who wants to go and work-out after a 10 hour stint in the office? Who wants to get up early in the morning for a run when you only finished your work after midnight the night before? Not me! But how about if getting to and from work were your exercise? Could that work? Well it might, the biggest caveats being Cape Town's weather (but the Dutch manage and their weather is absolutely dreadful) and the distance (I live about 30km from the office). Maybe riding 30km over a mountain pass at 5 pm after a hard day's work might not be the most attractive option imaginable...

These were the thoughts which were swirling around in the whirlpool I call my mind when I came across the Ezeebike website. The machines looked really interesting and the prices, though a good deal more than one would pay for a banger from Makro, were nothing like what I hear serious cyclists are paying for their steeds. They featured a story about two cyclists who had taken their Ezeebikes all the way from the Caprivi strip in northern Namibia to Cape Town, a distance of perhaps 3000km. Sounded enticing. On the spur of the moment I filled in the "contact me for a test ride" section and then forgot about it. A week or so later I got an email from a fellow in Blauuwbergstrand, inviting me to come and try one. Herself and I duly made the trip one fine Saturday afternoon. We were shown how to work the bikes and allowed to take a 20 minute ride around Big Bay, which is one of the prettier parts of Cape Town's northern suburbs. We were blown away! (not literally, I am happy to say). Two weeks later we proudly took delivery of two demonstration models - a "Sprint" for herself and a "Torq" for me.

Maybe I should explain how they work. Under the seat is a large battery. It makes up about a third of the price and quite a bit of the weight. You charge it from your domestic power supply and it takes about 4 hours if the battery is totally flat. On the handle bars is a little indicator which tells you how much charge you have - no numbers, just green, yellow or red - thankfully designed for the technically challenged amongst us. The right handle grip is the "throttle". If you switch on the motor and twist the grip, the bike leaps forward - you actually have to be quite careful. The motor itself is inside the front wheel hub. Don't ask how it works - it was explained to me and I think I understood at the time, but I have forgotten the details. I do know that it delivers a maximum of 250 watts which is enough to propel you at around 25kph on the flat if you don't pedal at all, but small enough that it doesn't need to be licensed as a motor vehicle. The range is said to be around 30km, but it obviously depends on the number of hills, how much you weigh, how much you pedal, the wind speed and direction, etc. All fairly simple and straightforward. Ezeebike are made in and imported from China, but are sold in Europe and the USA as well, as far as I understand.

My biggest frustration was that, having taken delivery of the bikes, we did not get a chance to ride them for at least a week. There was too much else going on, much of it rather tedious stuff. Eventually we decided that we would ride to Simonstown and back, a round trip of about 16km, on Saturday morning - we needed to be there for a soccer tournament which the princesses were playing in. Saturday dawned bright and reasonably fair. The forecast was for intermittent showers and a fresh westerly wind - the end of a cold front which had just passed through. We packed a bag with warm tops, apples, juices and the like, and set off. Central Fish Hoek is not terribly hilly, but there are some fairly challenging little slopes which can make for uncomfortable moments in the saddle. So imagine coming to one of them, and instead of having to change down to first gear and pedal hard, even stand on your pedals, you just carry on pedaling in the gear you are in, and turn the throttle far enough to allow you to do so. You hear a faint whine from the motor, you feel a surge of power like your father is pushing you on your first bike, and you smile beatifically as you whizz up the hill. Bliss! This is how cycling was supposed to be. No pain!

I won't bore you with a blow by blow account of every kilometer and gear change - it just got better and better. After the soccer, on the way home, we decided to ride over the Glen Cairn Expressway instead of just taking the coastal road straight back to Sunny Cove and Fish Hoek. I have both ridden and run up that hill. It is about 3km long and I guess you rise about 120m, (according to the trusty Endomondo, from 39m to 166m) so an average gradient of about 1:25, which may not sound like much but it is tough. Add to that a headwind. The long and short of it is at it was an absolute pleasure. I managed to maintain a speed of 20kph going up, with a fair bit of throttle, I admit, and felt exercised but not sore or exhausted when I arrived at the top. From there we had a gentle ride down into the Valley and so on to our home.

The next challenge is Boyes Drive and after that the ride to work and back. But one step at a time. For now I am happy to be an Ezeebiker and optimistic that I may have found a mode of transport which is green, healthy, cheap (relatively) and fun. I expect there may be a few more blogs on the subject coming ...

Another trip to the land of the brave and the free

Sunday

I was almost forty years old before I left the African continent for the first time. It was a huge deal for me. I remember getting off the plane that first trip to Austria and walking out of Vienna airport, half expecting the ground below my feet would somehow feel different to what I was used to in good old South Africa. Of course it didn't.

Since then I have had the good or bad fortune to travel quite frequently and widely for business and occasionally leisure, including a good number of trips to the United States. So it is getting a little familiar now, though not too familiar - I still worry about their rather intimidating immigration control processes, wondering whether I will be the unlucky one to get on the wrong side of the officials and be selected out for an “interview”. It is getting easier, however, and I do genuinely enjoy visiting the US, Washington particularly, which almost feels like a second home to me now. I can negotiate the Metro, the Ride On bus system; even drive the beltway on the "wrong" side of the road if I have to.

This particular trip I had to attend a full-day meeting on a Wednesday, so decided to leave on a Sunday and return on a Saturday, giving me 3 full days there to do other things. So it was that herself dropped me off at Cape Town International Airport on a really foul Sunday afternoon, early enough that she would be able to get home and still have an afternoon nap before church. I checked my baggage and made my way through security. Instead of heading for the business lounge, my usual haunt, I went to Exclusive Books, since I had been sent a R15 voucher in the post which I was keen to redeem. I picked up a copy of Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom", which I have for some reason never got around to reading, despite the fact that I greatly admire Mandela and the book has been around for over 15 years. It is a thick book, over 700 pages I think, which I thought wryly would stand (literally!) me in good stead for the queues I expected at Dulles airport.

I usually fly via Europe when I travel to the US but this time I decided to take the direct flight from Johannesburg to Washington. It isn't entirely correct to call it direct since it stops in Dakar, Senegal for a variable time, but at least one doesn't have to get off. In Johannesburg I spent a productive 30 minutes in the newly opened business lounge, which has been designed to be very African - I think it works quite well. The main thing is it is quiet and smoke free and has free wifi and fee wine and beer. I don't really care about the rest. We boarded rather early, but left on time. I found my window seat and got quite excited because when they closed the doors the seat next to me was still vacant, raising the possibility of a more comfortable trip. Alas, the occupant was chatting to a friend a few rows back and appeared in due course. Once we were airborne I ordered a Windhoek light and got stuck into my book - "Franny and Zooey" by JD Salinger - very interesting, but that is probably for another blog. Then dinner arrived - chicken or beef, or was it mutton or fish, I forget - whatever it was, it wasn't terribly palatable nor was that terribly unusual. One gets used to airline food, which I guess is bad. Dinner eaten and cleared away, I devoted myself to the iPad, first to write an email and then to read (Salinger finished) "Room with a view", by EM Forster, on the eBook reader I had downloaded, nice experience - just makes reading that much easier. And of course some nice music on the iPod program of the iPad. Really good - I like this toy.

 

The Johannesburg Washington flight is legendary - or should I say notorious? I expect there are longer flights or flight combinations but they cannot be much longer - not flights where one is confined to one aircraft continuously for a set amount of time, which in this case is anything from 18 to 19 hours, depending on how long they stop for in Dakar. In business class that may be survivable - in economy it is brutal. Add to that the fact that our aircraft was one of those old ones with just one TV screen for the whole cabin and one movie playing on it - you get my drift - not a terribly enjoyable experience. I think I'll go back to flying via Europe.

I should make mention of the Dakar stop because it really is rather odd. A few passengers get off and a few get on. That is not odd. What is odd is the security check. One is asked to remove one's baggage from the overhead locker and sit with it on one's lap. Not terribly comfortable but okay. Then these Senegalese guys come on and search the empty lockers. Wherever they find a vacant seat they also search the magazine rack and take up both cushions to look underneath. I guess they know what they are doing, just seems odd. You half expect them to bring on the sniffer dogs. Then the cleaners come on, and the new aircrews, and then you get underway again. Presumably they also refuel.

Monday

Eventually we arrived at Dulles. The last few hundred km were quite pleasant as we came in over Chesapeake Bay and made a wide arc over Maryland north of DC before crossing the Potomac just downriver of Point of Rocks and making our final approach to Dulles. It was exciting to pick out a few landmarks - I felt like I was in familiar territory. The cabin attendants had brought around a number of forms - green forms, white forms, blue forms. I showed my passport and was given a green form plus a blue customs form, both of which I dutifully filled in. We touched down around 11 a.m. in sunny, clear weather with little fuss and taxied to our bay - it seemed fairly quiet. We alighted, or "deplaned" as the Americans love to say (they also say "detrained" on the Amtrak, which had amused us) and made our way along passages and up and down escalators, rode in a mobile lounge and finally arrived in passport control. Now last time I was here the queues were about 10 "layers" deep on the "non US citizen" side and it literally took me 2 hours to get through, so that was what I was expecting. I was delighted and somewhat flabbergasted to find, therefore, only about 12 people ahead of me in the queue. An officer checked my passport and asked me whether I had completed an ESTA application electronically (which I had) - "Then you don't need the green form" he said. Okay - live and learn. It would be nice if they all sang from the same hymnbook. The officer at the booth was an attractive women in her twenties, I would say, who asked me a few questions and let me through - what a pleasure, and what a difference. Someone must have given them all a public relations course since I last visited. Maybe I was just in a better frame of mind.

I found my baggage, cleared customs (again, a casual wave of the official's hand) and exited to the departure hall. I found the Supershuttle desk and got a ticket from a young man who couldn't have looked less interested or more bored if his life had depended on it. "Where'r ya goin'?" he drawled. "Hilton Garden Inn Shady Grove Road Rockville - Gaithersburg" I read from my cell phone calendar. He punched something into his computer and informed me that I owed him $30. I gave him my credit card to swipe. He told me I needed to find van 139 which would be outside and to the right. I lugged my bags outside into the blistering midday sun and found the van, but there was no driver. I looked at my ticket. "Hilton, Rockville". Now if you know Rockville you will know that the two are about 5km apart, too far to walk and inconvenient to take the bus with baggage. Besides I had paid. By this stage the driver had appeared: a short, squat guy who looked Chinese, or at any rate Oriental. I explained the situation. "Gaithersburg more money," he said, "you need to change". So I lugged my stuff back in the heat to the disinterested young man who was unrepentant and unapologetic, averring that it all cost the same anyway. Back to the driver who received the news badly and looked like he was about to have a fit or a stroke or both. But by this stage I was gatvol, to use a good Afrikaans word. I gave him the ticket and told him to go and sort it out, which I am glad to say he did. Five baking minutes later he re-appeared and said it was ok, he would take me, no extra charge. I climbed into the air-conditioned van thankfully. A few minutes later we were on the highway heading for the beltway and Washington. We crossed the Potomac, made a stop on Wisconsin Avenue near Pook’s Hill, a name which always amused us when we lived there, and then headed up the I-270 towards Rockville. He found the hotel without much trouble. I asked him to wait while I went in and drew some dollars so that I could give him a tip. $40 including the tip is pretty good, considering it must be about 40km from the airport to the hotel. I have paid a lot more than that in New York and elsewhere. Even in Cape Town it would cost more than that I suspect. Supershuttle offers a good service even if some of their more junior staff members do need a stick of dynamite up their backsides.

My room was on the 6th floor, facing Shady Grove Road, looking north I guess. I settled in, figured out the Internet, caught up some emails, spoke to herself on Skype and had a shower. The temptation was to sleep, but I wanted to try a new jetlag strategy so I resisted it and instead took a walk down to Research Boulevard where I knew there is a Citibank branch - I needed to see them about getting a new card. Of course, I had forgotten it was a holiday (Memorial Day) and so the bank was closed, but it was a pleasant, if rather hot, walk, part of it along the Rockville Millennium Trail with its notice to "Beware of coyotes", which I remembered from before - not entirely sure whether to be alarmed or amused by it. On the banks of a small dam I passed, I saw an animal about the size of a small dog swimming, then clambering out onto the bank and running through the long grass and undergrowth - I assumed it must have been an otter.

Bank being closed and it being only about 3 pm I decided to walk up Research Boulevard to Washingtonian Boulevard where I knew there were some restaurants and shops. It was seriously hot and humid and I was wearing jeans, but it wasn't unpleasant and I needed the exercise after the long flight anyway. I took a slight detour at the top of Research Boulevard which took me around a dam where I encountered a flock of Canadian geese with goslings. Someone had warned me that they can be aggressive when with young so I kept my distance and just took a couple of pictures. Even that occasioned a few hisses. I also had to negotiate a large open field, which struck me as odd in the middle of suburbia but it was evident that they are in the process of turning it into more townhouses anyway. Pity - it was rather nice.

Washingtonian Boulevard is essentially a string of hotels and shops which runs parallel to the I-270 freeway. Between the two they have created a lake and boardwalk which is quite pleasant. I visited a few shops - Dick's sports I remembered from our time there, a huge sports shop where you can get just about anything. They had a lot of Redskins gear on sale (the local football team), but being proprietary branded stuff it was still expensive - $60 for a shirt, etc. I passed. I stopped by Barnes and Noble books, which is a great US institution, and picked up a gift for some American friends who have just had a baby and whose parents I would be seeing the next day. Then I wandered down to the Californian Pizza Kitchen and found myself a table on the verandah overlooking the lake and boardwalk. I ordered a Sam Adams beer and a mushroom pizza, and settled back to watch the crowds. People drifted past. I must say that most of them appeared to be overweight, some morbidly so, but every so often there was one in trainers and gym gear who looked like he wasn't about to have a coronary. They have a little train and carriages which trundles past every few minutes with its cargo of young kids and their parents, driven by a very bored looking guy. Well, I would be too, but I guess it is a job. On the lake, pedal-powered duck-shaped boats moved slowly back and forward, generally with Mom and Dad pedaling and the kids telling them to pedal faster or go this way or chase that goose. It was a nice picture of family life, blissful or otherwise. Washington is extremely cosmopolitan, and I saw what seemed like the United Nations pass before me in one afternoon, an aspect of the city which I always enjoy - we never felt out of place there, because there were so many others who like us we not native Americans. I suspect it might not have quite been the case if we had been in a city in the mid-West, say.

By the time my pizza arrived I had finished my beer, so I ordered another one - in retrospect probably not a great idea given that I was sleep deprived and a little dehydrated, possibly hypoglycemic but there you are - I was thirsty and the beer was good. By the time I left I was full - it was a good pizza - and a little light headed. I paid the bill ($25) and walked slowly back to the hotel. By this stage it was getting on for evening and though still very warm, it was no longer oppressive and I enjoyed the walk, which took me about half an hour, more. I discovered that right next to my hotel was a small shopping centre which sported a Starbucks, a Panera's and a Chipotle's as well as a few other outlets. I picked up half a dozen bagels and headed for my room. I took a short swim in the hotel's heated pool (would actually have appreciated it more if it had not been heated) and Jacuzzi, then did a bit more work, but by 9 pm could no longer keep my eyes open so turned in. I did wake at 12, and every hour thereafter till I finally got up at 6 but the difference was that I went back to sleep and didn't lie in bed for hours feeling like I had just had 3 double espresso's. I think my plan worked.

Tuesday

Breakfast was a fairly conventional affair. The hotel dining room had the grand name of The Great American Grill, but was really just a breakfast nook with a kitchen. I avoided the cooked menu and had some fruit, cereal, a bagel with Philadelphia cream cheese and a cup of coffee, which was more than enough for me. Then I retired to my room to catch up on a truckload of work, emerging around noon. I had a meeting at George Washington University at 3 and still needed to get to the bank so I repeated the walk of the day before. This time the bank was open and they were able to sort out my card issue. I must comment that my experience of US banks is very positive. Compared to their counterparts in SA, they are highly efficient, customer friendly and cheap. I was told that I could pick up my card the next day after noon. Now that is good service, I think. Also they routinely stay open till 5 pm. I then took the 54 Ride on bus to Rockville station. I wasn't sure what the fare was but imagined it would still be less than $2 - the driver said $1.70 I think. The machine swallowed my bills and didn't give me change. OK. No problem - I can spare 30 cents for Montgomery County. I had a smart card for the metro but it didn't have any money on it. I had to top it up at Rockville station. The metro trip would cost $3, as it was off-peak. That is quite a bit more than one would pay in Cape Town (about $1) but the service is better - cleaner, faster, safer, more comfortable, more convenient. I love the Washington metro - I can see that riding it every day, one might become blasé about it, but as with flying, I am amazed afresh every time I take it at the engineering masterpiece that it is.

I had a bit of time to kill so instead of going straight to Foggy Bottom / GWU, I got off at Metro Centre and took the Orange Line to Smithsonian, the exit of which is in the National Mall, between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument, right next to the Smithsonian Castle. For some reason I took the wrong exit (most metro stations have 2 which are sometimes quite far apart) and came out a little way from the mall. Making my way back to the mall, I passed through an attractive garden, named after someone whose name I forget, but right next to it I noticed the rather modest, unobtrusive Museum of African Art and decided to have a look. Most of Washington's (very fine) museums are free to visit, as was this one. I am not sure what I expected but the exhibits were delightful and I spent a happy hour learning about African art, mainly West African I must say. At the museum shop, I bought myself a rather gaudy bag which came from Rwanda, from some AIDS orphans project there. Then it was time to go, so I made my way back down to the metro station and caught the orange line train to Vienna, getting off at Foggy Bottom, which is right at GWU.

After our meetings we went for dinner at a restaurant in Bethesda. I forget the name of the place, but it was on Wisconsin Avenue. I ordered scallops, more because I had never had them than for any other reason. They were ... umm ... chewy. Not unpleasant, but I don't think I'd go for them again. The calamari starter was good though. Our waiter was a large fellow who had altogether too much to say and not a lot of etiquette. The final straw was when he came by with the dirty dishes from another table in his right hand. Properly wishing to avoid talking to us while holding dirty dishes under our noses, he held the plates aloft while he prattled on about the qualities of the crème brûlée or whatever, but the result was that we had a conversation with his sweaty right armpit for a few excruciating minutes. Strike three. Don't think he got much of a tip (I didn't pay).

After dinner I took the metro back to Rockville station, the 54 bus back up to Shady Grove Road and walked the short distance back to my hotel. Everything worked like clockwork, which is how America generally is, in my experience. It is a welcome change to be able to take public transport at night and walk in the streets without much concern about being mugged, gang raped or murdered.

The whole of Wednesday was taken up by a meeting which was, well ... a meeting. A necessary evil I guess. Afterwards, I went home with a friend who lives in Virginia, about 30 km from my hotel. The original plan had been just to go for dinner, but it seemed to make sense to stay over and come in with him the next day. My friend is in his 60's and the last of his 7 kids has just graduated from college, so he is having, by his own admission, a delayed midlife crisis. His cars have always been what could best be described as functional - four wheel drive Subaru's and the like, usually unwashed and definitely unpolished, which he needed for getting up and down the very long unpaved driveway at his semi rural estate. His midlife crisis car, on the other hand, is far more than functional - he bought himself a top of the range 5 liter Mercedes 2-door convertible which is just ... beautiful, raw power, driving pleasure. We headed out along route 28 towards Point of Rocks and Virginia, and I could see that this was something he enjoyed. The one hour each way commute was far more than a tedious daily necessity: in this car it was an adventure. He showed me some of the features - the radar which keeps you a set distance from the car ahead, the roll bar which pops up should the wheels leave the ground. Just amazing.

We didn't go straight to his home - he took me over some back roads and showed me the abodes of some of his neighbors - worthy Virginian law-abiding folks, if wealthy ones. Loudon County is the wealthiest of Virginia's more than 50 counties, I was told.

We arrived at his house and were met by his lovely wife and the one daughter who still currently lives at home. I was shown my room, dumped my stuff, and we then headed off to dinner, which was to be in Lovettsville, a nearby village with 2 restaurants, of which we chose one. I forget the name but it was in a converted one storey house. I ordered a mushroom pasta dish, which was excellent, and we washed down our food with a great local Chardonnay called Chrysalis. I had chocolate crème brûlée for desert which was also excellent. We drove back through another village and over some different untarred roads - all very pretty and I found myself thinking that I could be happy here. It had wholesomeness to it, if a rather expensive feeling wholesomeness. Some of the estates are horse breeding estates. My friend assured me that one of them even has its own race track. I decided to have a lie down when we got back and basically passed out for the night, getting up in the small hours to get out of my work clothes and into my pajamas. Must have been really tired, and the wine no doubt helped.

Thursday

Next morning I was up early and showered. The sun wasn't up yet, but it was light so I took a walk up the drive and along one or two of the roads. There was a cool predawn wind blowing in, the birds were calling and it was really pretty. American flags flapped lazily in every second garden - a habit I still can't quite get used to. The sun rose over a low ridge, lighting up the houses and trees. Just lovely. My friend called me on my mobile to tell me that breakfast was ready. I don't normally eat much breakfast but he had prepared it specially. We sat on his patio and ate what he called a traditional Southern breakfast. It consisted of Quaker grits (like what we call mielie pap), Smithfield ham (the pigs are evidently fed on peanuts and this gives the ham a certain flavor) and "red eye gravy". Of course I asked about the origin of the name. He said it is disputed. Some say it is because one makes it with coffee which contains caffeine and keeps you awake, thus the red eye. The other theory is that if you put it in an oval gravy boat and leave it to cool, the way the fatty and watery layers separate characteristically has the appearance of a reddish eye. Whatever. It was pleasant. Again, not sure I would go out of my way to source it, order or eat it again, but it is always nice, I think, to experience local cuisine, local wines and local beers, and learn something about them, rather than just eating and drinking the expected. I enjoyed it.

Then it was another adventurous ride back to the hotel in the "beast". We stopped off at a small general dealer and gas station where the beast consumed $64 of gas. That is 16 gallons/ 64 liters at current prices, almost twice the capacity of the tank of my little Peugeot 107, and he told me a full tank is 20 gallons. I could see this was not a cheap car to run. The tyres looked like they cost a good few hundred dollars each and we won't talk about repairs and insurance. But hey, he loves it and he has worked long and hard to get it.

Back at the hotel, I used the few free hours to catch up on emails, then met another friend for lunch at one of the local restaurants. I hadn't seen him for a few years and it was good to catch up. I had a swordfish kebab and he had the beef, with a pita bread and hummus starter and diet Pepsi to wash it down. He dropped me off at Shady Grove station and I caught the metro through to Dupont Circle in DC, where my next meeting was. This is the older part of DC and there are some very beautiful colonial style houses in the area, also so called "embassy row" quite nearby, which is largely same olde houses converted into embassies, South Africa's amongst them. I had an hour to kill before my meeting at 4 so walked down "P" Street (sic), to what I thought was Rock Creek Park, but turned out to be Rock Creek Parkway - they have built the arterial road right up the creek, so to speak - well I guess they had to put it somewhere. So no park. I found a bottle store and picked up a bottle of Nederburg Pinotage for $12.95, the only bottle of South African wine in the shop - at least it is a halfway decent example of what we are capable of producing. That is also not a bad price - we wouldn't pay much less for it in Cape Town or even at the Nederburg estate, I don't think. I also popped into CVS pharmacy for some odds and ends, and Panera's for 2 chocolate brownies. I found the building where I had a meeting scheduled with (another) friend and colleague and managed to get past their rather overzealous security. My friend duly appeared and I presented her with the brownies - she had just come off her third teleconference for the day and I thought she needed resuscitation. She gratefully accepted and we made for the office kitchen where we brewed some fresh coffee and ate our brownies, while she caught me up on her job and we discussed possible areas of overlap and opportunities for working together. Then we got in her car and headed for her place in Falls Church, Virginia.

We stopped off at a deli near her house. "Do you eat Lebanese?" she asked. "I eat just about anything except Brussels sprouts," I assured her, which is true. Okay, I don't do brains or eyes or tripe, but I have eaten Mopani worms, which is more than most umlungu's can say, and liked them. She asked me if I would like to choose from what they had on offer. It all looked good, but unfamiliar, so I said I would trust her judgment and asked her to choose.

We got to her house, a modest double storey semi-detached in a quiet cul de sac, opened a bottle of Virginia white (it was still quite hot outside), sat out on the patio and chatted while we waited for her husband to arrive home. He is a physicist who does work for the CIA or FBI or something, so that was one avenue of polite conversation which wasn't going to be open. Fortunately he is a really easy going guy and he has also just acquired an iPad, so there was lots else to talk about. The food was excellent - will certainly do Lebanese again if I get the chance. My friend, who has lived in Saudi Arabia, tells me that Lebanese is by far the best cuisine in the Middle East. Before we knew it, it was 9.30. My friend was kind enough to drive me back to my hotel, saving me a long metro trip (orange line then red line) and bus trip (if the buses were still running, otherwise a very long walk from Rockville Station). It had been a long day, and I was grateful to flop down on my bed in front of the TV and drift off.

Friday

I had arranged to be picked up from my hotel at 7.30 so was up at 5 getting my stuff together. By 7 I was downstairs for my last hotel breakfast and by 7.30 I was outside waiting. The temperature had dropped a good few degrees and it was really pleasant - very slight breeze, lovely and mild. My friend and his wife (different friend) arrived and I got into his Mercedes 4 by 4 amidst lots of "How ARE you's". Our experience when we lived in the US was that "How ARE you?" generally means "Hello" rather than actually being a question about your wellbeing. With these particularly friends, however, it really did mean "How are you?" and not only how are you but how is herself and princess firstborn and princess second-born, all of whom they had known and come to like. It was a joyful reunion.

The rest of the morning was filled with a number of similar reunions, people I had worked with and become friends with, who for one reason or another have ended up working for one particular company. One of them was kind enough to take me down to the mall, where I bought the required 2 boxes of chocolate brownie premix and some t-shirts for the princesses. We lunched at Panera's, which still makes an excellent ham sandwich, I am happy to report. I bought a baker’s dozen assorted bagels for herself. Then one of them drove me to Dulles - not a small favor, I should add, given that it is about 40 km on busy freeways and he would need to come back to the office before going home. They really are incredibly hospitable people.

So it was that I ended up back at Dulles. Before I checked in I had to buy another suitcase - what with the bagels and all, I couldn't fit everything in the bag I had brought. Never learn! I found one and also bought myself a neck support for the plane. I suspect that I didn't get the greatest deal on the suitcase, but they didn't have a huge selection of shops, or of goods within the shops. In fact I got the impression that all the shops were one chain, since the cases and prices were identical. Closed shop, so to speak - I thought such practices would be illegal in the US, of all places. Whatever. Bought one and stuffed everything in it, including the bagels, then checked it in, to be told that my cabin luggage weighed 10kg and should only be 8kg, but that it was ok. Well if it is ok, why bother telling me? Passport control and security were tedious, but no more tedious than at other large international airports, and the staff were friendly enough, even if they were quite obviously deadly serious about their jobs.

I took the connecting underground train to terminal A and found gate A15. There were already passengers waiting, despite the fact that it was a good hour before boarding time. I wandered up the terminal's central passage looking at the shops. There was a memorabilia shop called America or Americana or something. Some of it was fairly inflammatory and I couldn't see myself wearing it in Cape Town - t-shirts reading "justice done!" and something about the Navy seals who killed bin Laden. That would go down really well in the bo-Kaap, I don't think! But there was good stuff as well. I settled on two metal name plates for the princesses made to look like US number plates (which are far more interesting than South African ones). Then I bought a bagel and jelly for $1.99, finishing my US currency, and went and sat at the gate, reading my "Long Walk". It had been a long walk, but not as long as his!

We boarded early and took off on time - there was a queue of seven aircraft waiting to take off. Finally it was our turn. One thing about big airliners is that they seem to be able to get airborne without it feeling as though they are about to fall to pieces. We just effortlessly glided down the runway and eased up into the airspace over Virginia, then out over Maryland and Delaware and soon there was just the blue expanse of the Atlantic below. Goodbye America, for now anyway. Stay well. Salani kahle.

Saturday

Of course one doesn't just leave the US - it takes a while to get back to Africa - a long while if you're talking about South Africa. Seventeen hours and counting, I am still confined in seat number 37K, but the view from the window has admittedly changed some. Now it is the dry expanses of Namibia which grace my portal. I cannot see well enough to distinguish vacant land from settled land at this altitude, but it wouldn't really surprise me if there are no settlements at all in the expanse of Africa I am looking at and therein lies the difference. You would struggle to find a vista like this in the US, certainly on the East coast. Soon we shall touchdown in Johannesburg, then I shall fly on to Cape Town, my lovely family, and our own wonderful bed, which has served us well these many years and still beats any hotel bed that I have ever slept on. Enough for now - adventures are fine but should be rationed. A bit of normality every now and then will be welcome.

A site familiar to any Washingtonian ... the Metro.

The Capitol building and the National Mall

A rather fine horse and rider in the Museum of African Art, 

from Mali, I think they said 16th Century

Rural Virginian sunrise

It certainly looks peaceful ...