Warthog Kidney: June 2011

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.