Kariba

Newlyweds, Veena & Ken

Ken & Veena, friends of ours here, have moved on to work in South Sudan. To mark an end of that era, in November Olga planned a weekend in Kariba, a lake town about a 5-hour drive north of Harare. I wanted to go, but bringing the kids would have changed the dynamic. No one else from this group of friends has kids. So David, in a gesture of unselfishness that his wife won't soon forget, offered to stay home with the kids and let me go.

It was the first time I've traveled alone (child/husband-free) for fun (as opposed to for work) for eight years or so. The memories of my pre-family, traveling days came rushing back. Granted, my husband is "the boss" of more than half the group that went, and the other half are his golf buddies, so it wasn't exactly far removed from my real life. But there was so much time for myself, so little thinking-for-others. I was free to read, write, do-whatever-the-hell-I-wanted. I found it to be extremely therapeutic. Just two days, mothers and fathers out there, two days: I highly recommend it.

Biggest catch

The best part of Kariba is the fishing. Until that weekend, I had never caught a fish in my life, but tiger fishing is totally addictive. I caught one, a 2.5 pounder, and that was after hours of standing in the pouring rain.

Now, normally, standing in a downpour to fish is not something I would have ever imagined enjoying, but once you've lost a big one that twisted and flipped through the air on your line, fighting for its life as you used all your strength to reel it in, you just can't stop casting again in the hope that you'll get it or it's larger cousin next time. With this type of fishing, you cast out far, then quickly reel it in, so it's also satisfying to be active, casting over and over to get it just right, hearing the line unwind, sailing through the air, then plop in the water.

The hippo and crocodile population on the lake has exploded in recent years due to hunting restrictions and the croc farmers releasing a certain percentage into the lake. These also are some of the most dangerous animals in the country. At one point we had to pass through a narrow set of sand bars that probably had 20 hippos, mostly submerged except for their eyes, ears and backs, just 50 feet away. The crocodiles with gorgeous yellow and black patterns on their tails seem almost harmless on the banks until they pop up on their fat legs and slither speedily towards us, disappearing under the water by our boat. Needless to say, there is no swimming in Lake Kariba, but all the wildlife certainly adds to the overall excitement of a simple fishing trip.

Yes, those are hippos.

...for more from that trip:

Trip to Nazareth

It was my third time to Israel, first time alone. I took a nice comfortable greyhound-like mammoth thing. It was cheap and quick and easy. I settled in and watched the hills and valleys of northern Jordan roll by as I listened to my weekly podcasts (New Yorker fiction, Savage Love, and This American Life).

The plan was to not mention my Palestinian friend at the border but to say I was meeting my German friend (which was also true). But I didn't think through the whole 2-passport arrangement beforehand. I bought a second passport in Jordan just for traveling into Israel because if you get an Israeli stamp in your passport you can't get into countries like Syria or Lebanon, not easily anyway.

The first time I used the blank passport, I had no problem with the Israelis, but the Jordanians were miffed... Why didn't I have a visa from their country since I was in it? So this time I brought them both, just in case. And when the 20-year-old Israeli soldier behind the glass started asking me about where I'm from and what I do and why I'm in Jordan and why I'm going to Israel and if I've ever traveled to another Muslim country and if I have a second passport, and if she could see it...well, I just wasn't prepared to lie. I showed her my 10-year-old, packed full with additional pages passport, and it was another 30 minutes of questions and flipping through the passport and more questions.

The bus was kind enough to wait a very long time for me. The hall was empty except for me and another couple of unfortunates. From across the room, the driver gave me the twisty-wrist Arabic gesture for what's the deal? I gave him the open raised hands for what can a person do?

There was this other odd twist to the story. I had a bottle of Chivas Regal that I'd agreed to carry through customs for an old man who'd been sitting with his wife in front of me on the bus. I didn't understand but went with it. I imagined he was probably some regular closet-drinking Muslim fearing the questions they'd lay on him about the alcohol, and I'd watched him buy it right in front of me at the duty free shop...so what the hey.

The bus had to leave me after all since the Israelis decided your truly looked suspicious enough to warrant a few hours of running me through the security check. (What is your father's full name? What is your father's father's full name? What is your friend's phone number? What is your address and phone number in the USA? What's your email address? What kinds of children does Save the Children help? Arabic children?)

It would make a much better story if I got that big bottle of booze for my trouble, but alas. I gave the bus driver my friend's phone number to give to the old man so he could look me up once I got there (which he promptly did).

Destination: Nazareth, the most important city in Israel for Arabs who make up the majority of its population. My friend Falastin was born and raised there, and she was spending some time there before relocating to Copenhagen. It's also where Mary is believed to have gotten knocked up by the Holy Spirit, and thus where Jesus grew up. So it was cool to see my friend's roots, as well as this very old little city nestled in a small valley.

Ah, going to bed without managing my children's night-time routine, uninterrupted sleep all night, and rolling out of bed at 10 a.m.

Falastin, her girls and I walked down from her parent's house where she grew up (mother's domain: freshly clean and spare) to her late grandmother's house where her father holds court under his pomelo trees all day and night for "the gentlemen of Nazareth." The house is actually under massive renovations in the style of the region: straight up a few floors to accommodate the next generation of families (for Falastin and her brothers). The back yard was chocked full of fruit trees and rows of veggies. Her father had a shack set up with his mini bar and tools. It all reminded me very much of my late grandfather's domain in Florida. We ate cherry tomatoes and cumbers off the vine and still warm baked flatbread rubbed with thyme and olive oil from the bakery around the corner.

Late that afternoon I had a few hours to just stroll around the city - its old market is like a mini version of Jerusalem's old city market. I sat in a hip cafe with its ancient vaulted ceilings, drank a completely drinkable gimlet (gamely attempted by the bartender for the first time), and I wrote in my journal. I was, if only for a day, that reflective, roaming young woman of my 20s.

Falastin and her mother

Andrea with Kathi and Jacob (talk about heroic traveling!)

The Cafe

Scenes from Mary's Church of the Annunciation. This is Mary reeling from the news that a) she's pregnant and b) that her explanation for not being a virgin on her wedding night is that it was all God's doing.

What Mary and Jesus look like to Asians:

China

Korea

India

Indonesia

Biding Time: Trip to a Bath House

For the last five months, I have felt that I must make the most of my time off from work. It wasn't planned that I should be unemployed. I've just been waiting, not very patiently, for things to come together at ol' SC. We have in fact been discussing the finer points of my new contract for at least 4 of the 5 months...but I digress.

At first I worked on making our house more of a home. I bought some old carpets, had broken pictures re-framed, and finally got some reading lamps after a year of oppressive overheads in the living room. After a month or so of that, I felt it smart to reign in the spending a bit, seeing as we'd become a one-income-family.

One place I'd been meaning to check-out but never made the time for was the bath house in the old part of the city. That area of Jabal Amman and the narrow, cobbled Rainbow Street have beautiful old houses clinging to the ridge overlooking the downtown market. There are interesting shops, art galleries, bookstores and bars. It's where our single friends live.

The bath house itself isn't old but is designed, at least to my untrained eye, in the Ottoman style with smooth domes pockmarked with tiny round glass through which a little light filters through. The great room we first entered was cool and refreshing with a fountain full of giant gold fish and people sipping tea behind plants in the corners. We checked in and got our personal bars of locally produced soap and loofas. From there we entered a locker room, and my friends and I had to sort out what to wear.

Unbeknownst to us, this bath house has a culture of conservatism about it, at least during the women's time in the morning. All the other ladies, though thankfully there were only a half dozen of them, were wearing bathing suits. My only other experience of a bath house was in Istanbul, and there it'd been full nudity, even the old ladies who worked there. Between my German and Palestinian friends and I, we only had our knickers, so there we were, a teeny bit embarrassed at not only being naked for the first time in front of each other but being in an environment that didn't exactly support our semi-nudity.

Luckily the grand dame of the place was kind and hospitable. She helped us on our way to do the done thing there. First to the shower (hmmm, group thing...moving on). Then to the steam room, a small, enclosed space, reminding me of an awful sweat lodge experience I'd had in college. Semi-nakedness hidden by the darkness and steam, I hunkered down with my friends and talked about the party we were planning. The grand dame shooed us into an even hotter area of the steam room, handing us cold scented towels for our heads and icy sweet hibiscus tea.

After that was the hot tub in the center of the room under the dome, where they left us for a while as they prepared the marble slabs. I went first (to get it over with?). I can't say that the scrub down was pleasant. It was in fact excruciating. I was clearly losing some skin, which is the point, I suppose. The Filipino in her biking shorts and tank top was not out to make me feel relaxed. I was stretched out on the wet marble like a fish being cleaned.

The next table was gentler, if more...invasive. One's limbs are soaped up, massaged, and rinsed, as are one's head and torso. Weeks before I'd already been mildly traumatized by the Arabic "bikini" waxing: think Brazilian to the extreme. So I was prepared for the worst, which it nearly was from a perspective of modesty - a modesty that simply had to be put aside for the sake of cultural exploration (am I not an anthropologist?), and hopefully, glowing, younger-looking skin (am I not pushing 40?).

After that, I made the rounds again, then waited for my friends with a few ladies in a lounge off the locker room. It would have been relaxing if not for a two-foot long shark swimming in a long tank that made up the back wall. The room was lined with long red woolen cushions atop low mattresses that made it impossible to do anything but recline in that extravagant Middle Eastern way. An older lady, her wet hair not yet covered in a head scarf, gossiped away with a Filipino still in her wet suit, apparently on a cigarette break. I had the local sweet tea; they had the Turkish coffee. The only thing missing was a sheesha pipe.

My friends and I still had an hour to kill before picking up the kids, and I was starving, so we had lunch at Wild Jordan, a cafe managed by the Royal Jordan Nature Conservancy. What it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in ambiance and healthiness. It's all glass, metal and polished concrete hanging on a cliff. The three of us were extraordinarily relaxed, even giddy like girls skipping school. It was a nice way to spend a morning.