Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Ode to The Bus Driver

There are but a handful of consistencies that can be counted on across the World.
In no particular order: Fanta Orange. Flip Flops. Bikes made in China.
And The Bus Driver.

I'm not one to lump anyone to another, but this cross cultural likeness is too beautiful to ignore.

You know this man. We all do.

Mighty forearms.
Elbow draped out the window, tattooed from years spent resting in the rubber well of the open window.
Toothpick. Present. Always.

Quick with a smile. Quicker with the horn.

He is not a truck driver - opting for a solitary life on the road.
No, no. The Bus Driver indulges in the company of others.
Each rider, a chance to flex his well-worn charm and wit.
If his bus is equipped with a microphone - he rocks it.

A cigarette at every rest stop.
A loafer or boot kicked up on the tire of the bus.
Happy to small talk while we wait, but when it's time to load 'em up and fly, he's all biz.

Back in the bus, a personal touch flaps from the rearview mirror.
A Manchester United flag or a symbol of the God that keeps him company on the road when we all get off.
Ask him about it. He'll share the sermon.
And for the love of that God, please keep your feet off the seats.

His native tongue may vary from country to country, let's get one thing straight:
He knows what's best.
And if you ask, or if you don't, you're likely to get a little free advice.

And truth be told, you NEED it.
THIS is a man to count on.
He'll take you where you need to go.
He'll point you in the right direction.
He'll chat you up when you're lonely.

Laugh at his rusty jokes.
Smile when you get off.
Give him a good, hard pat on the shoulder, even if touching makes him uncomfortable.

Appreciate this dude.

Thanks, Bus Driver.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Pireneos with the Funny McFunnertons

Journs, J and I rented a button of a car and took a spontaneous snowboard safari through the Pyrenees in Spain, France and Andorra. Rode hard and happily. Sang along to Bob Seger. Ate an extreme amount of yum cheese. Soaked in hot springs. Stretched out the car window to take pictures of the glory. And gave a ridiculous number of high fives about it all.

Fancy free.

More pictures to come...but here is a peek.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Loveable Espana

One month of anonymity landed me in Spain ripe for laughs with friends.  Destination: San Sebastian where Journey and Jason live a very large life.  Days of outside playing...clothes drying on the line in the tiny courtyard...nights in cozy tavernas drinking righteous Rioja and eating pinxtos. Lucky to share a bite of it with them. Off we go to Formigal in the Pyrenees to ride the snow today!  


Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Genius of Francis Bacon

Despite my deep appreciation for art and culture, I'm actually not much of a museum goer. I don't know exactly why I hesitate -- might be the creepy whispering or the slow pace of the walking that goes on in museums. Ridiculous? Yes.

But I go sometimes. I've been to three museums on this trip so far. Each one had me wrapped up with thoughts and questions. These are the ones I have been to and what I gathered as the point of greatest intrigue:

Tanzanian National Museum: Artifacts from the slave trade put me in tears. Tanzania, specifically Zanzibar, was a hub for slaves being sold from Africa to the East. There were collars and chains and the most horrible images. A painful, but important, reminder of our heinous past.

Ethiopian National Museum: Ethiopia is the roots. Seriously. The roots. It's the cradle of us. Right there, in the Rift Valley, humans evolved from apes. There is really no debate about Creationism when you see "Lucy." Her bones were extracted from the Earth 30 years ago and she literally is half human, half ape. (Simbs, I'll sign an autograph for you when I return.)

Museo Del Prado: The feature exhibit was the work of Francis Bacon. I'm in love. New favorite artist. He painted abstract portraits with a bold, raw, emotionally naked style (like the one above). His stuff is beautiful and at times, almost nightmarish. If you Google his name and then click on Images, you can see it for yourself. I wanna write with a similar blend of reality and expression. And his name is Bacon. 

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the...Brows

My Pop used to tell us we were "Black Irish." Said my dark features that didn't look so Irish were all about the Spanish Armada crashing off the shores of Ireland, mixing with the freckled folk and making babies with thick, dark hair and names like Murray. This was universally believed as an untruth in the family -- and mostly just fodder for laughs and ridicule.

Until today.

Got off the plane in Madrid. Not even off the tram from the terminal and the likeness was undeniable. Big, righteous brows everywhere you look! Men and women alike with unruly ones like mine, my Pops and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario's.

I've come home.
Bienvenido, SJM...

Saturday, February 7, 2009

This is What Addis Ababa Looks LIke


Milled around the city with my camera this morning. This place has me captivated -- so beautiful, so gnarly, supremely human. Looks like this...

Friday, February 6, 2009

Meeting the Have-Nots

Merkato is the largest market in Africa. Addis is a very safe city, except for Merkato - which is known to be a place where tourists and Ethiopians alike get robbed. It's also a total treasure chest filled with smells, textures and wares found nowhere else on Earth.

Obviously, I was going. Left my cell phone, camera, passport and all that jazz in the hotel. Just took $400 Birr (which is like $35 US dollars). Split it up into a cargo pocket, my sportsbra and my shoe. Figured if I got robbed, I'd at least have enough money in one of the three stashes to take a taxi back to the hotel.

Sure as sunshine....

I even READ about this method of picking pockets. One teenage kid bumped into my left shoulder, and goes "excuse me, Madam." The other kid slid his hand into my right cargo pocket.

Before he could get his hands on the little bit of cash in that pocket, I grabbed his wrist like a big, mean, angry mom grabs a kids arm in the grocery store. Gave him a loud bark and a scornful scowl. I don't think he expected my resistance or my strength. Looked at me with huge eyes of terror and took off running.

I laughed it off and made my way back to the taxi pretty quickly- a litlte freaked out.

Here is the thing. If there was justice in this World, that kid would have made off with my cash. The poverty in this city is staggering. I've traveled around developing countries some, and NEVER have I seen streets filled with so many helpless kids, men and women with polio - using flip flops on their hands, dragging their legs behind them, amaiciated mothers breast feeding infants. It's capturing and it feels endless.

This is not about drug addiction, laziness or lack of initiative. This is poverty.

Lonely Planet warns to "not give street kids your money. Donate instead to one of the charities that serves them, so they are discouraged from begging." In theory, that is a very glossy idea. In reality, it's total bullshit. When a homeless 5-year old girl tells you she's hungry, what kind of monster DOESN'T give her money and a hug? Every day, I've been putting a certain amount of money in my back pocket to donate to folks.

Of course, I didn't like someone trying to steal my money. But maybe if we, countries with money, took a little better care of those without, teenage boys wouldn't need to dip into our pockets and try to help themselves.

Team Tesfa


Spent Thursday with a running team called Team Tesfa, Here are some pictures.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

10 Things I Heart About Ethiopia


1. Men holding hands. Saw two military guys holding hands with rifles slung over the other shoulder.


2. Coffee is off the chain.


3. Taxis are funky sedans from the 60s painted blue with white roofs, usually with loudly decorated dashboards, always driven by characters.


4. To show sincerity when shaking someone's hand, you touch your left hand to your right elbow. I do it incessantly.


5. Order mango juice and you get real, ripe, delish mangoes smashed smoothie style.


6. Sophisticated young professionals parading down Bole Road past old grannies in traditional dress with bundles of firewood on their backs.


7. The dramatic, gaspy rhythms of Amharic.


8. Eating injera with your hands.


9. Soft, even mocha skin tones.


10. When folks greet older people, they kiss them on each cheek. More kisses = more respect. I saw a four today!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Moving


I have always had an infatuation with contrast. The juxtapositions of tender and tough, sweet and salty, rocks and water move me. On Tuesday, I spent the day with Team Naftech, an elite girls' running team here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The contrast of these young queens against the backdrop of their environment is something that will stay with me.


I'm in Ethiopia to shoot video and photographs of girls' running teams in an effort to help Girls Gotta Run Foundation with their online promotion. Naftech is one of two teams that I'll visit with while I'm here. Before the story goes any further, it's important to get why GGRF is here. Yes, this is the breeding ground for the world's top distance runners. AND, almost all Ethiopian girls are born into an incredibly tough predicament. According to one statistic that I read, roughly 30 percent of teenage girls between the ages of 13 and 16 live outside their home --they've either run away from child marriages, been sold into sex work or are homeless


So it's Tuesday and Yacob, the brother of 16-year old Helena, the top runner on the team, picks me up. We drive across the city and when he parks the car, I can hardly believe THIS is where we're getting out. There is no training facility. No track. No weight room. Just a huge open expanse with cattle and sheep grazing, trash clogging the river that bisects it and a bunch of homeless folks hanging around. The "track" is an uneven, singletrack dirt path that vaguely resembles a circle. There are several teams training in different corners of the land. Yacob tells me that this is where all the top Ethiopian teams train.


Wow.


The Naftech girls were doing intervals and hill sprints when we arrived. Physique slight and strong. Incredible grace in their gait. Speed that blew my mind. An interesting mix of athletic prowess and teenage awkwardness.


For every one of them, this is a full-time commitment. It was 9 am on a weekday. They did not go to school at this point in their lives. They are runners. Becoming a champion in the singluar focus of their energy, identity and dreams.


After practice was over, I filmed each one individually and did longer interviews with the coach, a 12-year veteran of the national team, and Helena. There was something so special about that girl. She was shy, but she held herself with such dignity. Her eyes were locked to mine the whole time we talked. When I asked her what she thought made her a great runner, she said it was only because she was passionate about working hard.


Spending time with these brilliant young women had me humbled, inspired, ignited. I wish every young American athlete to see this -- see what it means to have passion, dedication, work ethic. Their success has absolutely nothing to do with a scholarship or the brand of their shoes.


As I left, I realized that this isn't simply another story of girls passionate about sports. Theirs is a story of survival.


Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Yanga, Drums and Heartbeats


Imagine the most high energy sporting event of all times - maybe a Yankees vs. Red Sox game seven at Fenway. That begins to tap into the feeling of what it was like on Saturday at the National Stadium in Dar Es Salaam watching Yanga (the hometown favorites) take on E'toile D'or in a the Tanzanian Premier League match. Begins. Hardly compares, though...
The place is just seeping with raw, visceral energy, exploding with bright yellow and green team colors and dire pride.
It was sports amplified in all of the pure, true ways.
Picture it: a professional game with no corporate sponsors all up in your face. Get rid of lights, jumbotrons and pre-recorded music and replace them with hundreds of bongo drums and booming echos of Kiswahili songs. You could literally feel your heartbeat in the music.
Midday sun heating up every beat and body. Infuse the stadium with the smell of thousands of real humans who aren't afraid to touch each other and sweat.
Epic. Just epic. And although Yanga blew E'toile out of the water, the pace and athleticism of the players was spectacular. Tanzanian football is known to be rugged and unrefined. Talented athletes, who, unlike North African teams like Nigeria and Senegal, don't have very sophisticated high-level training. The result is a wild, but incredibly entertaining form of the game.
Bringing my camera wouldn't have been the smartest idea. But I did manage to sneak out my cell phone and snap this shot. The beautiful roundness you see in the foreground is the tiny boy who watched the match from my lap. No idea where his parents were. Didn't matter. He, like I, was there to watch the match. He was so young that his fingers and ears were still almost see-through fragile...yet he know what offsides was and followed the game with sick focus. He actually threw his hands up at the ref at one point.
I was in charge of providing padding, he was in charge of waving our Yanga flag.
Sweet day for this fan of the World's game.
p.s. The National Stadium was probably built in the 50s. Has an asphalt track around it, no lights, and peeling pink paint. It was the same stadium that Nyerere, the first president of an independent Tanzania was sworn in at.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Kiss Your Mailman

I have been traveling without a credit card for almost two weeks. It's actually easier in East Africa than it would be in the U.S., cause local biz is all about the cash. Even so, I couldn't really leave this island until my new card arrived, since I had the bank send it here and it's impossible to book flights without a card. The tracking number indicated that it was in Dar Es Salaam on 1/26. The date was 1/29. It HAD to be in Zanzibar by now.

The catch is, they don't have mail.
I'm not kidding. There is no mail delivery as we know it.

Despite my knack for writing, I will never be able to explain the ridiculous adventure of finding this piece of plastic.

There is a small post office in Stone Town. I have been going every day. The woman at the counter was so over me. She sent me off to the main post office across the island.

I hopped on a dalla dalls (mini bus), stated capacity 8 people....I counted 16 at one point. Sweatfest. Got off at what we are calling the "main post office". it was a vacant looking cement structure...with an antique weighted scale and a man in a sweaty tank top. I waited about an hour while he tried to track the package. He finally came out and said that he thought it might be "DHL". Who knew there was DHL in Zanzibar! It was sent via UPS...but I remembered seeing a DHL logo on the UPS site.

Back i went to Stone town (via Hamis' taxi this time). Found the DHL "office"...which was a desk tucked in the back of a dingy tiny hotel. I gave the woman my 12 digit tracking number (and probably a slightly pathetic look.)

"DHL packages only have 10 digits," she says.

"It was sent using UPS. Is there anyone who might know about United Postal Service", I say.

She writes a number on a piece of paper."Call Abdallah," she says.
And buries her face back in her work.

I do. He answers. Baby crying in the background.

It's his cell phone. Tell him the scenario.
He puts me on hold. PLEASE hook up a miracle here, Abdallah!

"Yes, Sarah. We have your package.
"(The choir sings)"
You must send a local to come get it.
"Huh? How am I supposed to commission a local to go get my stuff?

Luckily, a guy that hangs out in front of the place i am staying was willing to help.
We fastwalked into a little shanty village, dodging chickens and hurling over streams of raw sewage.
Arrive at five pieces of corrugated metal propped into the shape of a shed.
Have mercy, there is a little, faded UPS sticker on the door.

Abdallah actually made me sign for the package.
What made me laugh, even though I tried to hold it in.


I was so excited...i ran into the street and got hit by a bike.
But the biker was okay.
And so am I.

I have the card.
Might have pumped my fist in glory.