Kruger

I spent ten days in Kruger National Park. I had a great time as a junior ranger driving around in my safari mobile. There is not much I can say to explain my experience. To say it was great would not touch it. To say it was beautiful could not describe it. To say I learned things would not be enough. I did become acutely aware of my position in the food chain. I was in awe of the bird life, and was able to identify 64 species and recognize some of their calls. I had elephants shake their heads and trumpet their disgust at me after accidentally driving to close to them when I came around a curve. I set up camp close enough to elephants to hear them fart. I slept under African skies and was awakened in the night by a lions roar. I observed baboons harvest grains. I had a buffalo turn on its heels, glare at me and ask " what you lookin at?". I lost my head, got out of my car and took many pictures of a dung beetle rolling it's prize across the road, forgetting I could be eaten at any moment. I watched three cheetahs spend their morning grooming themselves and each other and I watched a leopard slink through the bush. I watched ten beautiful sunrises and sun sets over acacia and balboa trees on the African plains. I was right where I wanted to be at each moment. I was in heaven. I cried when I left.

Taming the Cheetah

Yeah, I petted a Cheetah, Elaine did too. Yes, we tamed the cheetah. It cooed for me (you know how I am with cats, my own run from me) and purred for both of us. I almost had it talking ..... the way my cats do. They call people over to tell secrets and ask whole groups at a time if they are fat. This cheetah was just about to engage in a conversation with me alone. You can see it in the pictures, it is looking over its shoulder at me, just about to tell me something loving. I had it in the palm of my hands, she was putty. I was the cheetah tamer. And just as she was about to say that loving something to me, the Cheetah Land employee told me my time was up. You only get so long for your 150 rand, but you do get your very own 8X10 photo as a souvenir all included. Yes I paid money to touch a cheetah. So did Elaine. At Cheetah Land. And we had fun.

Chicken did the trick.

I finally got my prized horse ride on the beach. It wasn't quite what I wanted, but it did happen. The guy I had booked with the night before had not followed through with the booking so in the morning when I showed up the horses were not there. By the time the guys were called and the horses saddled, I had waited and waited and watched my five hour ride slowly disentigrate into a two hour one. The horses finallychucklin arrived. They were quite underwieght, ill equipped and trained by whooping and hollering cowboys. I went anyway. The horses had some life in them and we were able to canter along the beach, dodge in and out of the waves and then move up a small pass to a mountain village. I was a bit apprehensive about the village visit because the S. African natives are not known to be friendly nor welcome more whites into their lives. The guides and I though made the scheduled stop at a traditional village house where I was offered a type of beer made of corn to drink. The women of the village passed a pitcher to me, the two guides that were with me and several villagers that were hanging around. The beer was awful, I couldn't drink it but they seemed to love it and drank three pitchers among them. It was a brillant day. We were on top of a mountain, the wind was blowing through the tall green grass, the horses were grazing, the sea spread before us as far as the eye could see and mountain farmland spread out behind us. Among this beauty we sat strangely quiet and disconnected. The villagers doing their obligatory offering of beer and entertainment and me sitting there not able to drink their beer. The guides and I had to wait some more time to let the horses rest and while we waited I noticed some chickens walking around. I asked one of the horseman if they could catch one of the chickens for me. They chuckled and said "no". I waited for a bit and asked again explaining that if they could catch a chicken for me I could show them some chicken tricks. He said to me "these chickens aren't trained". I tried to explain that any chicken could do these tricks, but he just smiled. He took some newspaper from his pocket and tore a small square away, filled it with tobbacco and rolled a cigarette. He smoked. I looked around. I tried again. I told the guide I was serious about the chicken tricks and asked if he could get me a chicken. He answered that we didn't have time to train chickens. I persisted ,telling him that the chickens could do these tricks without training. He made a face, said something to one of the women in the houses and then looked at me and said " there is one in her house over there". I went into the small round hut , waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, and found the chicken. I walked over to it and made a casual grab for the bird, they are usually easy to grab with one hand on its back and partially wrapped around its front. As soon as I grabbed it though, it turned on its back, scratched at me, pecked my hand and squaked and screamed. Dust off the dirt floor billowed up from her flapping wings and feathers went flying, as she got away I was left with two in my grasp. I looked at the woman in surprise but she didn't hesitate, she headed the chicken off at the door. I made another grab at the chicken and this time got a leg. More screaming, squaking,pecking, scratching, and beating the floor with her wings, but this time I had her. Man she was wild. Probably had never been touched by a human. It took me a few seconds to get her collected in my hands, but when I did I walked outside to a collecting crowd. I pushed the chickens head under her wing and rocked her through the air between my legs as if she were on a swing. I let go of her and she rested in my hands in a deep sleep. The women and the two horse guys looked at each other. I smiled. They twisted their mouths around still looking at each other and then looked at the chiken. I put my index finger up to indicate there was more to come and woke the chicken. She made a loud crow and shook herself. I grabbed a small sharp rock and walked over to a bare spot that was hard packed earth, void of grass and near the center of the crowd. I put her on the ground, held her down firmly and stretched her head out and down to the ground. I started with the rock at the point of her beak and quickly drew a line in the dirt away from her head. Her eyes locked onto the line. I lifted my hands from her back and walked away. The chicken didn't move. Everyone stared at the chicken. Then they looked at one another and started laughing and mimmicing the chicken's outstretched neck. They clapped their hands, shook their heads and laughed a bit more. I snatched up the chicken and put my index finger up indicating there was more and I smiled. They gathered around a little closer. I turned the chicken on her back and laid her on the ground. I waited for her to relax and as she did her legs stretched out into little 'L' shapes and her beak came down to rest on her breast. I let go of her and danced a little jig and as I did her head followed my every move. By now the people were in stitches. They had their hands stretched out like her legs and their own heads tucked into their chests. They were laughing and slapping each other on the back. I was laughing with them. I got the chicken up and let her go and she took off with an indignant shake of her tail feathers. People were still laughing. When we got on the horses to go the villagers came over and waved goodbyes as I did to them. I smiled as I left. The chicken did the trick.

As the hostel turns.

The hostel I stayed at in Cape Town was a bit different. People lived there full time. They had been living there together long enough that they knew each other's habits, idiosyncrasies and struggles. I stayed for two weeks on a work program and in doing so I became part of the "family". Jane. She worked and that was all she did outside her room. That's about all we knew about her, where she worked and when. She was mysterious. She had a four day weekend while I was there and we only saw her when she had a smoke or was eating in the kitchen. She ate only T.V. dinners and instant coffee. She had no radio, no T.V., no books in her room. She had no dates and went nowhere other than work and the grocery. We would try to talk to her but to no avail. She would reply to a few comments or questions but then would get up and leave, in mid sentence sometimes. She was always pleasant however, always smiled when we said hello. Ask her to go anywhere though and it was an immediate "no". Ask her if she wanted a book you were finished with and it was, "I am not reading now thank you". So of course we all speculated about her life. We made up sordid pasts and extravagant futures. We predicted her smoke times and which T.V. dinner she would have. We invited her to places and knew she would turn us down. If we hadn't seen her in the usual amount of time though we worried. She wasn't the black sheep, just the mysterious one. And then there was George, the guy who lived in the broom closet. He did a little work around the hostel and he lived among the tools he used. He would unroll his bed underneath the brooms, rakes and hoses at night, then roll it back up in the morning so he could get to the tools he needed. He hung his clothes on hooks meant for screw drivers and pliers and kept his alarm clock and other miscellaneous items on the steps of a ladder folded against the wall. About once every two months he would travel for three days by bus to Malawi, his native country, and buy tourist trinkets to sell in Cape Town. He would sell the trinkets, live in the broom closet until his money ran out, and then return to Malawi. He spent much of his money on ganja (and as a result walked around with blood shot eyes) and Bob Marley music. If he didn't have enough to eat Elaenor would make him sit down and eat dinner with us. He had short dreadlocks that looked like cell phone antennae sprouting from his head in all directions. He was a nice guy with a broken heart and a winding path. We all liked him. Helen was the proprietor of the hostel. Long story short, Helen was depressed, disillusioned and downtrodden. Her husband was a spiritual leader and guru in the community, and a complete asshole. One day he surreptitiously took the cat that belonged to the eight year old living in the hostel to the animal shelter. Left it to the boy's mother to explain the cat's disappearance. He was so pedantic it was tiring, he would have told you how to breathe if he had enough time, but he was busy. He had many important "meetings" to attend. Everyone knew what his meetings were about. They were day time soaps and evening reality shows. If he was at the hostel he would announce to us that he needed to leave for a meeting. As soon as he got out the door people in the hostel would yell out, "Days of our Lives" or "Big Brother" and chuckle. He and Helen were vegetarians and ate no processed sugar, at least when Helen was at home with John. What John didn't know was she had an entire side of the hostel fridge stuffed with sausage, steak and sweet things. And ganja; ganja George sold her. Ganja she would smoke frequently and in total secrecy, or so she thought. She would go down the hall to the bathroom with her purse, to roll her doobie. That was the sign, the trip to the bathroom with the purse. When she went to the bathroom with "the purse" everyone knew what would come next.She kept a ladder propped up in one of the trees in the back yard and she would disappear (although everyone knew where she was) into the tree to smoke. Then came the sun glasses, a mad rush of energy, new ideas and a clean office. When the trip down the hall with the purse happended everyone would scatter, the hostel would empty and her ideas would bounce off walls instead of others. The guy that lived down the hall had a good job, and a nice car ( Mercedes S.U.V. of some sort )and lived in one room of the hostel, with a roommate. Sometimes his whole extended family would come to visit him, but they stayed in their cars. Fifteen or so people outside the hostel sitting around, cooking on fires and sleeping in their vehicles. (It was to dangerous to sleep outside.) They would be in and out of the hostel, using the showers, the kitchen, the dishes and the water. He never explained their appearance or their dissappearance for that matter. He never asked if they could come nor gave us warning that they would be there crowding us out. We spent time speculating about his life, wondering why someone with such money would stay in a room of a hostel with a roommate. We thought maybe he had a prison record or sold drugs and didn't really have a job. Maybe he had murdered ten people and the car was one of theirs. We never knew. Tumba was the woman who cleaned the hostel in return for her stay. She had been there for years. She also lived in one room but seemed to have friends and things to do outside the hostel. I tried in vane to get her to talk to me. I was at the hostel ten days before she did. The last four days I was there she would say hello and smile but that was as far as it would go. She talked to the other people in the hostel including Helen whom she worked for. She was Helen's personal attendant, cooking savory meat dishes and delectable desserts that Helen wanted. She was in on the game of hide and seek with John. If she were cooking for Helen and John came in she would not serve Helen until he had left. She hadn't liked John since the cat incident and was glad to participate in the secret eating habits Helen kept, besides she got what Helen didn't eat, and that was good stuff. There was romance in the hostel, and Tumba was at the heart of it all. She had a thing for George, but George's heart belonged to someone else, who didn't return his love. Felecia also helped to clean the hostel. I never got to know her though I got to know her hair. How could I not? She parted her hair into triangles against her scalp, about 15 triangles in all, and each triangle then lead up into a point. She was not friendly and we never spoke but I wanted to ask her about that hair..... Eleanor was my dear friend and confidant. She was a big formidable woman. I was nervous around her at first. She was not friendly right off. When she looked at me the first time I knew she was sizing me up and making conclusions before I had a chance to speak. I found out she was going to the grocery the first morning I was at the hostel and asked if I could ride along. She said a reluctant yes and I climbed in for a silent ride to the store. We left each other's company to do our shopping and met back at the front of the store after our purchases. I had gotten a little over zealous at the grocery and she did not hide her astonishment at the amount of groceries I bought. I tried to explain it was for ten days but she was not convinced I was sane and that was written all over her face. When I invited her to share in my dinner that night, that began a great friendship. We spent the next 12 days talking, taking walks, sharing dinners and dreams. She had lived eight years at the hostel with her son. They both lived in one room. She lived there so she had enough money to send him to a good school.She had no other options so she made do with the hostel as her home. She was the matriarch of the hostel. If people were out of line she put them back on the straight and narrow path. She told people at the hostel how it was going to be and they did what she said. She gave me a good example of how to stand up for myself. On our last night together we shared a nice meal and a bottle of wine and were set to eat a fruit salad for dessert but were to full. We left the fruit salad out on the counter for us to eat later. When we did come out to eat it about half of it was gone. She knew George and another hostel resident had been in the kitchen while we were gone. Immediately she hunted them down. She didn't ask if they had eaten the fruit salad or ask if they had been in the kitchen she just went right into how rude it was that they did not ask to eat her food. Then stood there silently until they apologized. I was impressed. She didn't waver under uncertainty,she didn't give them the benefit of the doubt and therefore doubt herself, she went with her intuition without hesitation. She did not question her ability to asess the situation, nor did she question how to handle it. She was pissed and let them know it. I liked that. I wanted that. I needed that in my life. We still write Eleanor and I. I was sad when I left her country. Somehow even though I had not seen her for three weeks,and would probably never see her again, leaving S.Africa made me feel far away from her. I spent two weeks at the hostel and learned about many lives, speculated about a couple more and came to deeper understanding of that line : Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting some battle.

South Africa photos - first batch

I can guarantee that some excellent stories are coming. In the meantime here are some more excellent photos.

More India photos

New photos of India. And no surprise there are some real gems here.

As the hostel turns.

The hostel I stayed at in Cape Town was a bit different. People lived there full time. They had been living there together long enough that they knew each other's habits, idiosyncrasies and struggles. I stayed for two weeks on a work program and in doing so I became part of the "family". Jane. She worked and that was all she did outside her room. That's about all we knew about her, where she worked and when. She was mysterious. She had a four day weekend while I was there and we only saw her when she had a smoke or was eating in the kitchen. She ate only T.V. dinners and instant coffee. She had no radio, no T.V., no books in her room. She had no dates and went nowhere other than work and the grocery. We would try to talk to her but to no avail. She would reply to a few comments or questions but then would get up and leave, in mid sentence sometimes. She was always pleasant however, always smiled when we said hello. Ask her to go anywhere though and it was an immediate "no". Ask her if she wanted a book you were finished with and it was, "I am not reading now thank you". So of course we all speculated about her life. We made up sordid pasts and extravagant futures. We predicted her smoke times and which T.V. dinner she would have. We invited her to places and knew she would turn us down. If we hadn't seen her in the usual amount of time though we worried. She wasn't the black sheep, just the mysterious one. And then there was George, the guy who lived in the broom closet. He did a little work around the hostel and he lived among the tools he used. He would unroll his bed underneath the brooms, rakes and hoses at night, then roll it back up in the morning so he could get to the tools he needed. He hung his clothes on hooks meant for screw drivers and pliers and kept his alarm clock and other miscellaneous items on the steps of a ladder folded against the wall. About once every two months he would travel for three days by bus to Malawi, his native country, and buy tourist trinkets to sell in Cape Town. He would sell the trinkets, live in the broom closet until his money ran out, and then return to Malawi. He spent much of his money on ganja (and as a result walked around with blood shot eyes) and Bob Marley music. I he didn't have enough to eat Elaenor would make him sit down and eat dinner with us. He had short dreadlocks that looked like cell phone antennae sprouting from his head in all directions. He was a nice guy with a broken heart and a winding path. We all liked him. Helen was the proprietor of the hostel. Long story short, Helen was depressed, disillusioned and downtrodden. Her husband was a spiritual leader and guru in the community, and a complete asshole. One day he surreptitiously took the cat that belonged to the eight year old living in the hostel to the animal shelter. Left it to the boy's mother to explain the cat's disappearance. He was so pedantic it was tiring, he would have told you how to breathe if he had enough time, but he was busy. He had many important "meetings" to attend. Everyone knew what his meetings were about. They were day time soaps and evening reality shows. If he was at the hostel he would announce to us that he needed to leave for a meeting. As soon as he got out the door people in the hostel would yell out, "Days of our Lives" or "Big Brother" and chuckle. He and Helen were vegetarians and ate no processed sugar, at least when Helen was at home with John. What John didn't know was she had an entire side of the hostel fridge stuffed with sausage, steak and sweet things. And ganja; ganja George sold her. Ganja she would smoke frequently and in total secrecy, or so she thought. She would go down the hall to the bathroom with her purse, to roll her doobie. That was the sign, the trip to the bathroom with the purse. When she went to the bathroom with "the purse" everyone knew what would come next.She kept a ladder propped up in one of the trees in the back yard and she would disappear (although everyone knew where she was) into the tree to smoke. Then came the sun glasses, a mad rush of energy, new ideas and a clean office. When the trip down the hall with the purse happended everyone would scatter, the hostel would empty of people and her ideas would bounce off walls instead of others. She had big dreams and had done some great things but somewhere along the line had run out of steam. The guy that lived down the hall had a good job, and a nice car ( Mercedes S.U.V. of some sort )and lived in one room of the hostel, with a roommate. Sometimes his whole extended family would come to visit him, but they stayed in their cars. Fifteen or so people outside the hostel sitting around, cooking on fires and sleeping in their vehicles. (It was to dangerous to sleep outside.) They would be in and out of the hostel, using the showers, the kitchen, the dishes and the water. He never explained their appearance or their dissappearance for that matter. He never asked if they could come nor gave us warning that they would be there crowding us out. We spent time speculating about his life, wondering why someone with such money would stay in a room of a hostel with a roommate. We thought maybe he had a prison record or sold drugs and didn't really have a job. Maybe he had murdered ten people and the car was one of theirs. We never knew. Tumba was the woman who cleaned the hostel in return for her stay. She had been there for years. She also lived in one room but seemed to have friends and things to do outside the hostel. I tried in vane to get her to talk to me. I was at the hostel ten days before she did. The last four days I was there she would say hello and smile but that was as far as it would go. She talked to the other people in the hostel including Helen whom she worked for. She was Helen's personal attendant, cooking savory meat dishes and delectable desserts that Helen wanted. She was in on the game of hide and seek with John. If she were cooking for Helen and John came in she would not serve Helen until he had left. She hadn't liked John since the cat incident and was glad to participate in the secret eating habits Helen kept, besides she got what Helen didn't eat, and that was good stuff. She had a thing for George but it was not returned. Felecia also helped to clean the hostel. I never got to know her at all though I got to know her hair. She parted her hair into triangles against her scalp, about 15 in all, and each triangle then lead up into a point. She was not friendly and we never spoke but I wanted to ask her about that hair..... Eleanor was my dear friend and confidant. She was a big formidable woman. I was nervous around her at first. She was not friendly right off. When she looked at me the first time I knew she was sizing me up and making conclusions before I had a chance to speak. I found out she was going to the grocery the first morning I was at the hostel and asked if I could ride along. She said a reluctant yes and I climbed in for a silent ride to the store. We left each other's company to do our shopping and met back at the front of the store after our purchases. I had gotten a little over zealous at the grocery and she did not hide her astonishment at the amount of groceries I bought. I tried to explain it was for ten days but she was not convinced I was sane and that was written all over her face. When I invited her to share in my dinner that night, that began a great friendship. We spent the next 12 days talking, taking walks, sharing dinners and dreams. She had lived eight years at the hostel with her son. They both lived in one room. She lived there so she had enough money to send him to a good school.She had no other options so she made do with the hostel as her home. She was the matriarch of the hostel. If people were out of line she put them back on the straight and narrow path. She told people at the hostel how it was going to be and they did what she said. She gave me a good example of how to stand up for myself. On our last night together we shared a nice meal and a bottle of wine and were set to eat a fruit salad for dessert but were to full. We left the fruit salad out on the counter for us to eat later. When we did come out to eat it about half of it was gone. She knew George and another hostel resident had been in the kitchen while we were gone. Immediately she hunted them down. She didn't ask if they had eaten the fruit salad or ask if they had been in the kitchen she just went right into how rude it was that they did not ask to eat her food. Then stood there silently until they apologized. I was impressed. She didn't waver under uncertainty,she didn't give them the benefit of the doubt and therefore doubt herself, she went with her intuition without hesitation. She did not question her ability to asess the situation, nor did she question how to handle it. She was pissed and let them know it. I liked that. I wanted that. I needed that in my life. We still write Eleanor and I. I was sad when I left her country. Somehow even though I had not seen her for three weeks,and would probably never see her again, leaving S.Africa made me feel far away from her. I spent two weeks at the hostel and learned about many lives, speculated about a couple more and came to deeper understanding of that line : Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting some battle.