This is awesome, its ESPN's top 4 players from each team in the American League, and they pick Billy Beane, even though he hardly even played for them, citing his incredible contributions off the field as the General Manager. The explanation is priceless (literally, almost):

Billy Beane? Over Rollie or Catfish or La Russa or Giambi or Eck? Yes. Since 2000, only two franchises have won more games than the A's -- the Yankees and Red Sox. During that time, the A's have spent $460.6 million in payroll while the Yankees have spent $1.47 billion and the Red Sox $1.05 billion. So, yes, Billy Beane.

Pitchers and catchers reported to camp a couple weeks ago. I miss a lot of things about home, but few so much as baseball.

There's this brief 15 or maybe 20 minute window in the weekday afternoons here in the Westlands area of Nairobi where everything just slows down for a minute. The children leaving school across the street have all disappeared, and people aren't yet "knocking off" (as they say) from work. It usually starts right around 4:30pm, and it is glorious.

Pretty soon the street will be covered in the walking masses and the driving lesser masses, but right now it is just the wind in the trees and the occasional laugh in the distance. Its warm out in the sun but the breeze pushing through the office is just right. Pretty soon it will start carrying the charcoal woodsmoke of locals making dinner. But right now, its like one big collective pause before the evening bustle begins.

This is my favorite part of the workday here.

Been insane busy with work but hoping to blog more shortly)

This is a small cone of paper wrapped around some nuts.

I bought it tonight on my way home from a kid, standing in the middle of the road, in the dark, in traffic. He stands there every night, from the start of rush hour until late in the evening. He's wearing his school outfit - a dirty white collared shirt covered with the typical v-neck sweater. Slack shorts that are a little too short for his slender frame, dirty brown socks sticking out of over-worn brown loafers.

He's standing there every night. Selling nuts. Waving the little cones back and forth in the air, trying to attract the attention of the drivers streaming past him on their way home, or out to dinner, or to the mall.

"How much?"

"Please sir, pull forward." And he trots along with me - more worried about holding up traffic than making the sale.

"How much?" As I'm reaching for my wad of cash.

"5 Shillings, sir."

.

...





The smallest paper bill I have is 50 shillings. That's the smallest one they make. I don't even bother carrying coins less than the 20, the one you use at the mall to pay for parking if you stay over 30 minutes.

5 shillings.

For the past hour that's all I've been able to think about, just sitting here staring at this little home-made, smoke-smelling cone of nuts. He sells them for a little over a nickel. Every night. In the dark. Almost no one rolls down their window to buy one. I don't know why I did. I think it was that part of me that tries to reward industrious effort when I see it - I always leave a buck or two with the subway performers in NYC.

But this kid is in Nairobi, and he's much better off than millions of others who aren't privileged enough to live in the slums here, selling nuts on the side of the road. Which hardly anyone bothers to slow down and buy.

When I was thirteen I had my first job and I was making 6 dollars an hour training hunting dogs and cleaning kennels. 6 dollars an hour. This kid was selling nuts for 6 cents a cone.

Where do you sleep, when you're that kid selling nuts? What do you eat, for your one meal of the day? If you get one? How many hours do you walk to school? What did your mother have to give up to get you the uniform, so you could go at all? Will you ever see a doctor, or own a pair of jeans? Will you live to see 30?

What can you possibly afford when a good night nets you - maybe - half a dollar?

Hell. I spent so much mental energy and frustration this week on the fact that I can't afford the big 4WD I want to be driving around this continent, feeling betrayed of what I know is rightfully mine. Because I've worked so hard for it. Or something.

5 shillings.

What is wrong with me?

OK so I should probably write an update about last week and who I met in Kampala and what I went and did last weekend in Western Uganda, but instead I'm just going to blow some steam about the car situation here in Nairobi. Which can be summed up pretty succinctly:

It sucks.

The main problem is the duties. Duties to get a new vehicle here typically (TYPICALLY) run right around the same amount as the ENTIRE STICKER PRICE OF THE VEHICLE ITSELF. So, I'm looking at a nice new Hilux, Toyota's kind of equivalent to the Tacoma pickup back in the US, the first (and only) car I had out of college (I payed something in the mid-teens for it, used and a couple years old). The sticker price is something around $25K which of course is a stretch on a humanitarian budget, but possibly doable.

Here's why a pickup or an SUV - something with decent clearance and 4WD is important - of all the countries I've been to all over this continent, Kenya has, hands down, far and away, without a doubt, and beyond all comparison the WORST roads of anywhere. Ever. I'm talking speed-bumps the size of Volkswagens, roads in complete disrepair, potholes so big they should really be called craters. Some of them actually look like sinkholes, there are at least 2 within a couple kilometers of my apartment that I know if I ever hit by accident will pop the tire and probably bend an axel, at the least. There is no way I'm investing in anything less than a truck, as it would just get torn to shreds here. I've actually seen potholes in the speedbumps.

So anyway, back to the shiny Hilux. I'm thinking I just might be getting one when WHAMMO I find out about the duties. Just take that price and double it. Hey at least the math is easy, right? So instantly you take the idea of "new" and eliminate it from your car shopping vocabulary, that's no longer an option.

OK, so, used. Anything in the last 7-8 years is pretty much still out of reach because locals typically pay the duties in monthly installments, like their actual car payment. So anyone selling one is also selling it with whatever is still left on the duty. So I can't really afford anything newer than a 2001, maybe a 2002 if I find a steal.

Which just so happens to prove a very minor problem in that Kenyan banks won't make loans on older cars given the legal restrictions around the selling / importation / etc. of older model vehicles, in what I understand to be a rather admirable governmental policy trying to force newer vehicles onto the road and reduce fuel consumption. Smart move when the country's often out of gas (lines were 30 deep at the pumps yesterday, that I saw). So, I can't get a loan for the cars I can afford, but I can get a loan for the cars I can't afford. Brilliant.

Which in a way is fine, because, considering the state of the roads here, 100K kilometers on a used car, well I'd estimate that to be at least 1.5 to maybe 2.0 times as many kilo's wear and tear as it would be on the same vehicle in most developed countries. So I'm hesitant to consider one of those cars anyway.

So I'm up a creek. At this point I'm thinking maybe I'll just resort to taxis and borrowing friends cars here, and renting when I have to. WV's vehicle allowance is nice and all, but it gets me nothing up front to fund a car, so unless you want to blow your down-payment-on-a-home savings on something decent, that's not an option. I can always take the pool car which will be one of those used sedans that will get swallowed in a pothole, but then I don't get the allowance, and you can only use that for work anyway.

I realize I'm in the humanitarian sector now, but honestly, time is money, and the amount of time I've burned and will still burn on this headache is just bad business.

/vent.

And now I live in Nairobi.

Actually I'm still at a hotel, where every night I get to play my favorite new game, "Let's Not Get Malaria." You get points for however many mosquitoes you can kill, bonus points for finding the holes they're getting through and blocking them, and negative points for every bump you wake up with - one on my forearm and one on an ear this morning. I can't wait to get an apartment, hopefully one with actual screens on the windows, if I can hold out such hope.

I really hate sleeping under mosquito nets, but I suppose I need to get used to it again.

Nairobi's smaller than you originally think. Even for its size, its a bit intimidating - after all it does have 3-4 million people and is the 4th biggest city on the continent. Its a huge hub not just for NGO work but also governmental, business, and culture, although I'm not sure where to find the best of the latter yet. The climate's pretty moderate as its just below the equator, and a strong British presence remains here from days of old (which my palate of course appreciates deeply). But city-wise, it just doesn't feel that big - I'm not sure how else to explain that, but once you work through the uncertainties, it almost feels manageable.

Its called "Nairobbery" by many, given the rising crime rates in the last couple decades, attributed probably in equal parts to the massive urbanization / growth, combined with your sadly typical police / government corruption that does little to punish criminals anyway. I won't be posting the US State Department travel warning for the city like I did for SA and Zim way back when (I'll be fine, mom) - suffice to say this is where the embassy attacks occurred and Kenya's no further from the middle east and the general spread of Islam now then it was a few years back. WVI requires I undergo security briefing, and they require security analysis of the compound where I pick an apartment, and I'm trying to find a German-Shepherd friendly one at that.

84% of Kenya's population is native Kenyan - one ethnic tribe or another, leaving 15% of other African, and a whopping 1% of non-Africans, the majority of which I can pretty safely guess are Indian, probably followed by Europeans. I'm in a minority of a minority here, but at least most of that minority is here in the city.

The people are generally pretty friendly, but everything - EVERYTHING - is slower here. You have to talk slower, move slower, wait longer, and not get impatient. People get frustrated when you move too fast for them. Its like I've written about before - the one thing that the African has no paucity of is time. Its a completely different paradigm. My fast-growing grasp on Swahili has been helping me considerably this time around.

45% of Kenyans regard themselves Protestant, another 33% regard Catholic. Those are just estimates, though, and estimates on Islam range from 10% to as high as 45%. And 100% drive like they want you to die. Fortunately traffic is so incredibly bad in Nairobi - again, the rapid urbanization, combined with the almost complete lack of infrastructure development in that same time period - that its many times difficult for anyone to work up enough speed to kill you. Unless its a mutatu (minibus taxi), which only have 2 speeds: stop, and death.

So. Yeah.

Not much blogging lately just because life has been nuts. That's always the excuse but this time its somewhat legitimate...

I resigned last week from Accenture and accepted a position with World Vision. I'll be returning to Africa as the Program Manager for Global Supply Chain Management Implementation there (a mouthful, right?). I'm flying to Nairobi on January 10th and will be looking for an apartment there, at least in the short term. Doesn't really matter where I put my stuff, the position will be 75%+ travel to the countries across the continent (primarily southern, eastern, and western regions) that we are working in to set up SCM offices within WV's existing architecture. Its exciting but its going to be a lot of work.

I'm finishing up a 10-day stint here at home in Cali tomorrow and flying back to NYC tomorrow night. Its been good to spend time with the entire fam, eat all my favorite foods, and get a day of riding in on a foot of freshies. Also I think I caused some nerve damage in my arm that I need to see a doc for next week. Speaking of next week, I also need to:

- get a medical screening done for WV
- see a travel clinic to update any of my immunizations
- meet with my financial guy and sort all the 401k rollovers out
- interview potential sub-letters for my place
- host the NYE party at Lincoln center
- schedule an appointment with the derma doc
- figure out how to transfer all my personal stuff from Outlook and OneNote to the home computer
- back up the home computer
- get new headphones, an external hard drive, a projector to serve as my TV in Africa, and potentially a DSLR (woot)
- find my old receipts and submit them for work expenses
- finish all the administration around leaving the company
- send some thank-you cards
- pay my parking ticket
- find a new bank account that won't screw me on withdrawal charges in Africa
- figure out where I'm going to store my stuff
- start packing
- find some jeans sample sales
- get a living will drafted
- send my (late) holiday cards
- finish all the on-boarding paperwork for WV
- see Grand Torino
- switch all the bills over to Dave's name
- figure out how to get out of my Sprint plan without having to pay
- eat slightly healthier and perhaps even get a few runs in

Also, I have decided that I will be acquiring a pair of dogs once I get settled (so to speak) in Kenya. This makes me happy.

More when I get around to it...

In the last decade, urbanism has con- verged, to some extent, with another field of study: Internet use. It's probably not an accident. Both cities and the Internet are at once highly atomized and elaborately connected milieus that encourage both solitude and interaction with the diverse, bountiful unwashed. And like city solitaires, Internet users were also once identified as antisocial loners, painfully awkward people who vanished into the green-gray light of their computer screens rather than joining the warm community of man. In the beginning, studies even showed this to be true (or that users were shy, anyway). But not once three-quarters of the public started using the Internet.

"The idea that you're isolated when you're online is, to me, just wrong," says Keith Hampton, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who did an extensive ethnography of "Netville," a new, 100 percent wired community in suburban Toronto. "It's an inherently social medium. What starts online moves offline, and what starts offline goes online." Which explains why the people with whom you e-mail most frequently are your closest friends and romantic partners. "Online and offline are inherently connected," he says. "They're not separate worlds."

-- Alone Together: The Loneliness Myth, by Jennifer Senior, New York Magazine, December 2008

7 days, 1 hour, and 14 minutes ago was the last time I heard from my friend Lu. We were chatting over gmail, like we always did.

We had been chatting off and on all day, ever since I pinged her at 8:25am right after I woke up that Saturday morning.

It seems really long ago now.

She told me about the bad dream she had and I told her about how I never really dream anymore. She told me about how foggy it was there that morning and we bitched about squirrels together - we shared a special hate for them. I complained about my cold and how the medicine wasn't working. I told her about the two things I want to do before I die. She complained about the small town post office. And then we started sending each other the music we were listening to.

I sent her Bach's hunting cantata "Sheep Can Safely Graze." She sent me Clem Snyde and some Pharcyde. I sent her a Dan Bern song and she sent me a bunch more of his back. She sent me a song that her band played. She sent me Fantasie in F Minor - not played by her but I know she played it perfectly, all 19 minutes of it. I sent her some Jozi.

She remembered the Uganda slide-show of pictures from the orphanage that I was supposed to show her, so we watched it and talked about it. We talked about African languages that I'll need to learn over there. That was the last thing we talked about.

"rofl. peace out."

That was the last thing she ever said to me.

Alexandra Clare Wilich, 28, died unexpectedly Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008. Her many friends and family called her Lexi.

I'm spending today and tomorrow in our West Village office for meetings with the partners that are doing the account planning session for the client I'm helping out with. I love this office because this is the view from my desk.

Also, the main office area is a big wide-open work space about half the size of a city block. Its got high ceilings with those suspended HVAC ducts, and for some reason whenever the heat or the AC comes on in the building, the entire hanging metal structure does a sort of metallic shudder, causing a big sound akin to thunder, but its right above your head and your inside.

I've gotten used to it after years of being in and out of this office, but it still sneaks up on you sometimes. Every time it happens you kind of look around to see everyone else who got taken by surprise and is mildly freaked.

The real bonus however is when you get a completely brand new analyst. She's hard at work in the brand new office with her head down at her laptop trying to meet some ridiculous deadline her manager gave her and all of a sudden thunder above her head and presto: office scream. And then we all turn around with huge grins and watch her cower and turn beet red.

Good times.

They're projecting Pennsylvania for Obama, which essentially means that McCain has to find a way to carry 5 out of 5 of the remaining must-win states to have a chance at the white house.

Whatever.

That's what I have to say to this whole race. These many months of insanity. This night of anticipation and mass celebration and grieving. What the freak ever.

You know what McCain would screw up? The economy, he has no idea how to fix that. He's going to keep giving the tax breaks (not to mention legal breaks) to the big corps that the Republican party is chronically indebted to. He'd more than likely not do a damn thing about the gross misappropriation of power to the executive branch of the government under the Bush administration. Gitmo, the NSA and the wiretaps, the Homeland Defense disorder, The Patriot Act. And he'd probably keep fairly similar foreign policy going, although he has a much more realistic approach to the war.

You know what Obama would screw up? The economy, he has no idea how to fix that. He's going to increase taxes for everybody 3-fold if he's going to pull off the kind of policy changes he's claiming (hint: he's not). He'll completely bollocks up the pull out of Iraq - and I have about that much confidence in his ability to manage Afghanistan and Iran - the man has no military experience whatsoever. He might do a bit more about fixing the office of the president and some of the other disasters developed in the previous administration. And although he might have a better foreign policy (this is my biggest siding with him - I can't imagine a candidate with a better position on Darfur), its not one that's supported by experience, which he'll have to get in real time. At least we don't have to fear the Palin factor if he did win.

Frankly I think neither of these candidates are a really great choice. We need change but it needs to be even more than the touchy-feely type that Obama's waxing his way into office with. We need a complete roll-back on financial policy and regulation. We need a massive shift in approach on the war in terror, and we need out of Iraq in a structured manner. We need a return to a position of moral leadership and a respected position in the world forum - we need to eliminate our gross violations of the Geneva Convention, our resistance to the Kyoto protocol, and other rights that we claim for America but forbid for everyone else. We need to fix the broken judicial and prison system, starting by realizing that the war on drugs is a war we shouldn't be in. We need a lot of other stuff that neither of these candidates is going to get around to during their stint in office.

Despite my cynicism, I went and voted today. It amazes me how few people think through these issues and then actually go out and vote. Its frankly quite frightening. We have sons and daughters still dying overseas to protect our freedom to do this and the vast majority of us will watch it on TV without ever taking part in the process. There is no national dialogue - we're a nation of zombies. Quite literally - we have been programmed.

In Zimbabwe this very year, there was an election complete with brute squads forcing people to vote in a completely rigged presidential election. The results weren't released for over a month, and when they were they were a lie. Hundreds of people were killed in the meantime. Thousands more fled the nation. And a tyrant remains while the economy continues to plummet. I'm convinced our freedom to vote without fear is one of the ones we appreciate the least and therefore will most miss when we lose it.

There goes the projection for Ohio. Whatever.

I've been researching the story of Lt. Daniel Dawson, a pilot shot down over Vietnam in November of 1964, and his older brother Donald. I first heard of the Dawson brothers' story in a sermon that quoted Edmund Clowney's own sermon, Sharing the Father's Welcome. You can read the following excerpt in its entirety, here.

During the war in Vietnam, Army Lieutenant Daniel Dawson’s reconnaissance plane went down over the Vietcong jungle. When his brother Donald heard the report, he sold everything he had, left his wife with $20, and bought passage to Vietnam. There he equipped himself with a soldier’s gear and wandered through the guerilla-controlled jungle, looking for his brother. He carried leaflets picturing the plane and describing in Vietnamese the reward for news of the missing pilot. He became known as Anh toi phi-cong—the brother of the pilot. A Life magazine reporter described his perilous search.

The Life magazine article in question was called "A Haunted Man's Perilous Search," from the March 12, 1965 edition of Life. Life is no longer in print but it is owned by time, and I'm still trying to find a back-issue of the article.

Time, however, did have a brief follow-up article on Donald's search, found here:

Californian Donald C. Dawson, 25, emerged from the jungle north of Bien Hoa airbase and reported that his reckless, obsessive search for his brother, Army Lieut. Daniel Dawson, was over after nine months—four of them as a Viet Cong prisoner. "They told me he was dead and gave me a flight vest he wore, and then they told me to go," said Don sadly. He never saw the grave, but the Viet Cong claimed they would tend it until Dawson could come back after the war to recover the body of his brother, shot down last Nov. 6 in a light reconnaissance plane. For Don, it was time to go home to his wife and four children in Costa Mesa, Calif.

The story really kicked me in the gut the first time I heard it related, and its one I'd like to write up in detail. I've found a couple more detailed but somewhat conflicting recounts of Donald's time in Vietnam here(from The First Marine Captured in Vietnam, by Donald Price) and here (from Honor Bound, by Stuart Rochester, Frederick Kiley).

In the meantime, more searching.

Today I went to meet a friend for free lunch at her work (yes, she works at Google, the company I so very-much-want-to-but-probably-will-never-work-for). After catching up on all the deets of late, I started home. Which is when I found out I had taken the wrong keys in my frantic run out of the house (to be fair, I was on the phone getting my annual review from my career counselor at the time).

I went through the building next door (we live next to a...thing...that is kind of half insane asylum / half retirement home / always interesting...anyway I'm friendly with one of the building managers there, we shoot hoops together) to check and see if I had left the back door unlocked, but I hadn't.

So I took an unplanned walk over to Dave's office to get his keys.

I got to Union Square without much event, although the typical street performers were out in force. A block past that I was passing a cop giving an older dude a ticket of some sort, and the old guy just started losing his wig. Next thing you know the cop and him are screaming at each other "ARE YOU THREATENING ME, SIR?" (They were both screaming this.) Then the dude takes a swing at the cop and down they go and next thing he's in cuffs and the cop is sitting on top of him radio-ing for a car.

Get to Dave's office. Pick up keys.

I'm on the next block and I'm walking up behind a rather shady looking guy in one of those big long hooded black North Face jackets that the hoodlums like to wear. "I shouldn't judge him based on his looks," I thought briefly. Then I watched as one of the med students from the University hospital there walked up to him and casually bought a dime-bag from him (this was in midtown at like 3pm in broad daylight, I kid you not).

I turn the corner to head downtown at the next street and I'm walking past the hospital lobby, which is floor to ceiling glass windows facing the street. And there's a mother in there, about my mom's age, and she's facing me and she's holding what I can only guess was her adult daughter very tightly. She's looking right at me but she doesn't even see me. Tears are coming down her face. I was momentarily awestruck; I kept walking to leave them in their moment but it was one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

Two blocks later I'm at Grace Episcopal and I see the above sign. So I do. I'm sitting there in the strange quiet that doesn't belong in the middle of midtown Manhattan, and I'm talking some things over quietly when all of a sudden I feel the familiar rumbling of the floor as an N/R train passes underneath.

And then I walked the rest of the way home and didn't see anything really of note other than the guy a couple blocks away from our place who was showing off his freshly shaven legs to a girlfriend of his.

Oh and they're shooting a movie on our block apparently.

I love you New York. I'm going to miss you.

Well there's been a lot going on but nothing I've felt particularly inspired to write about. Or I guess I should say some of them are things I can't really write about yet. Most of you who communicate with me through other mediums are pretty much up to date.

Let's just say a lot about my life is kind of up in the air right now. It will be interesting to see where I am (life-wise) by the start of next year. Its not a bad spot and I'm not complaining about things. Life is good right now.

This last weekend was Young Life camp - the junior highers go as campers and we take the senior highers to do work-crew. Amber fought valiantly to get us indoor work crew - serving and bussing the tables in the cafeteria. It's a lot of work and then you're chasing high schoolers around all night, but it's a lot of fun too.

I'm going to try to start writing more regularly. I've got a few pieces I've been sitting on which still need touch-up, but long story short I need to be exercising the brain again.

Week in CA:

- flew there uneventfully.
- went to Margy's wedding (still need to put pictures online).
- spent the rest of the weekend with Peter then took the train back to Sacto.
- worked a bit.
- spent some time with Aunt Betty and Uncle Joe and then with the grandparents.
- worked more.
- drove down to Santa Cruz with dad and got an afternoon of surfing in.
- flew back. had an upgrade on my LAX-JFK flight which was nice.

Last weekend I finally saw Burn After Reading and Sunday was the old routine that I've rather missed in the last year - church, youth group, football. The week's been uneventful. Foot has been healing up from a cut I got when coming out of the surf, so I couldn't run til today.

I want to get back to writing posts of some merit more than these blase updates but I'm horribly lacking in motivation during this limbo period.

I really wanted to start this sentence with the word "so," but I refrained. Have you ever notice how people tend to use that word a lot lately in beginning a sentence? Someone raised that question recently. Its almost taken the place of "like" although I doubt "like" will ever really go away in my lifetime. "So" goes at the start of the sentence, usually, though. Seems like maybe its half verbal stutter (like "um") and half transition or prefacing.

Lately another one I've heard that I'm not sure I particularly like but I may have even used it myself at times is "I know, right?" This might be attributable to the movie Juno. I'm not sure.

Anyway, (there's another one I use all the time!) its almost October and I didn't really have a chance to write much of anything this month. Although I haven't been with a client, things have still been crazy (nobody ever believes this, but I think sometimes not having one is even worse). And I can't even use watching the A's fight for a playoff spot as an excuse, because, well, they didn't.

I fly tomorrow back home for Margy's wedding, and there's been a lot of...shall I say, prep-work and prayer going into that. Plus I'm staying the following week and hoping to meet up with a partner on a project we recently sold out there and see if I can weasel a way onto it in the near future. And perhaps surf, if I happen to find myself south of Santa Cruz dressed in a wetsuit.

I realized I needed to post today because my blog has come up in exactly 3 unique conversations, and my posting as of late has been next to nonexistent. So to direct some of you to the places you might be looking for: if its the snake story (yes, it is true), you can find that here. If you want to see the blog we did for the Youth Group missions trip to Uganda, the post with that link is here. And if its sermon notes we spoke about, you can find one of those here.

I fly in 8 hours and haven't packed or finished re-writing the edits on my piece for the church's literary magazine, so that's what I'm going to do now. Then maybe I'll check back in on the collapse of our financial markets (apparently the FDIC just seized WaMu and sold them to JPMorgan, and the $700 billion bailout? Yeah, that number was just kinda made up.). Then maybe eat finally.

People we're still getting mail for who don't actually live here:

Ms. Jessica Delisser (apparently she was into the arts - some museum down on Bowery)
Ms. Corey Geremia (dance theater workshop, maybe she was roommates with Jessica?)
Pilar Menendez (Loehmann's - they're having a shoe sale)
Eric Andrus (Fashion Institute of Technology)

There's been a number of others but those are the only ones we got today.

Kilimanjaro. (doing this before Ghana because I don't have the Ghana pictures online yet)

After wrapping up the project in Nairobi with Jane on Friday night, I headed out for dinner with Melissa and some other ex-pats, and then got back to the hotel to pack things up. The next morning I met Louise in the lobby of the Jacaranda, she was waiting for the same bus to Kili as me, an older gal on her first trip to Africa - although she has her own small consulting gig with orgs like the UN, so we were able to talk a bit of turkey.

Our van was late but finally got there and then we were off to Tanz. When we got to the border I had a bit of a back-and-forth with the passport guy who decided to double the price on me mid-transaction when he realized I was about to pay the local price in Kenyan schillings rather than the USD $100 they like to scam mzungus for, the greedy bastard. Fortunately there were two British sweethearts in line behind me who lent me the cash I didn't have until I could get it out of my bag back on the bus. It took about 2 hours for the whole bus-load of us to get through so there was a lot of standing around and getting to know each other before we were back on the road.

The air in Tanz that day wasn't very clear and so we didn't see much of the mountain until we were very close, and even then it was covered in cloud. Louise, the brit girls, and myself were all staying at the same hotel in Moshi, and after getting settled we had a nice dinner and then all crashed pretty early. The next morning they were off (the 3 of them) to hike the Rongai trail with their outfit, and I was off with my guys (when they finally showed up) for a solo-hike up Machame.

The route was freaking crowded, the busiest on the mountain after the Coca-cola route (Marungu, the one with the huts so that porters don't have to carry tents). But we got off in pretty good time and spent the first day hiking through the rain-forest on the bottom quarter of the mountain, just me and my guide, Eugen. I found out a few interesting things about him on the first day - one being that he was one of the most experienced guides on the mountain (at 50 years of age), another being that he liked to smoke and drink. He had a beer that morning before starting the hike and had a couple cigs on the way up. Hmm.

The porters had camp all set up when we got there and cooked up some popcorn and warm groundnuts (like small peanuts, basically). After that and tea, Julius the cook started cooking a massive dinner. Unlike the higher-end outfits where there was a whole tent complete with chairs and tables for the hikers to eat / chill in, I got to eat in the porter tent on the floor with these guys. Eugen did that typical African "Oh man! We forgot to bring the chair and table!" thing when we were already halfway through our first days' hike so there wasn't much I could do about it at that point. I didn't mind, as it gave the whole experience more of a real-hiking feel, but I was paying enough to get what everyone else was. Oh well.

There were 2 other porters - Moses and Omar, both younger guys and really hard workers. Technically for the amount of gear we were carrying there should have been another porter, but Eugen did that thing I read about before the hike where he paid off porter #3 to carry up to first camp, and then go back down, while the load was then split between the cook and porters 1 and 2. He sold it to me like it was a good deal for the porters, but from everything I've read, not much on the mountain ends up being a good deal for them.

On day 2 on the mountain, we went from camp 1 at 3k meters up to 3800m, but the hiking was shorter. I still didn't have much problems with the elevation but I was drinking about 5-6 liters a day. We got to camp early in the afternoon because I was hiking pretty fast (faster than Eugen wanted to, which should have been an early warning sign). So I had most of the afternoon to chill and work on my Swahili while Eugen and the porters gambled, and I got caught up on some reading and journaling. Saw my first clear glimpse of the top that evening in the moonlight. Dinner was big again. And that night I realized that climbing on my own wasn't the best idea - it was a pretty lonely endeavor, but I didn't really have much option to do it any other way.

Day 3 at the next camp the elevation finally hit me. I don't remember how high that camp was at because I felt like crap and didn't do much of anything. We had hiked up to 4600m and then back down to 3950 where the camp was. Finally saw the peak in daylight that afternoon. We camped within view of a massive wall that the next morning we would have to climb - they call that part of the route "breakfast." I couldn't keep up with the amount of food being pushed on me at dinner still, which I realized meant a lot of extra food for them, which apparently seemed to be the point. We were also well above the cloud level at that camp which was kind of cool to see.

Day 4 we did a lot of elevation to get to the summit base camp - Barafu. We got in mid-afternoon and immediately after signing in at the ranger hut, Eugen told me he had a "scratch in his throat" and asked me "as his friend" to buy him some Konyagi (cheap cognac liquor that the ranger huts sell in these little plastic sealed bags). Whatever, it was about $0.75. But he was drinking at summit base camp...oooo k. We had an early dinner so I could "go to bed" around 7pm, in preparation for an 11:30pm wake up to start for the summit before midnight. We were camped right in the middle of camp and so there were porters and people walking around and talking the whole time, so I didn't sleep a wink, it was frustrating.

At 11:30 when they brought me my tea I was already up and ready to go, and was feeling pretty decent, no elevation effects noticeable. We finished tea and biscuits and then Eugen and I set off in the dark, a bit behind a couple lead groups but for the most part ahead of everyone else. Eugen was moving really slow but I figured he was trying to keep my pace manageable so I didn't wear myself out. We didn't need the headlamps until about 3:30 in the morning when the full moon finally set, and I saw a few fabulously bright shooting stars on the way up. Around 2 or 3 I got a really bad bloody nose that took a while to plug up, but thanks to a smart friend I had remembered my handkerchiefs and extra Kleenex.

That was when I first realized that Eugen wasn't completely there. He didn't stop the first time until he was about 20 yards ahead of me, and when I needed to stop a second time to work on it, he stopped but didn't seem very concerned that blood was gushing out of my face. He looked a little glassy-eyed and hadn't asked me how I felt since before I went to bed the last evening.

A little after that, he dropped his hiking pole (which he had been carrying rather than using), and kept walking. I picked it up and gave it to him, but he would have walked off without it if I hadn't made him aware. I started to worry a bit. And then we got to the steepest part of the route, the last 300 or 400 meters of ascent before getting to Stella Point, on the crater rim. Other groups had been passing us one after the other because Eugen's pace had slowed to barely a crawl, and he needed regular breaks.

And then he started losing the trail, stopping, looking around with his headlamp, backtracking. At a couple points he lost his footing and would have fell back on me if I hadn't had a hand ready to keep him on his feet. At that point I stopped him and made him sit down. There were no groups anywhere near us now. All of the capable ones had passed us and all of the slower ones were way behind us, and I knew that seeing the summit at all, let alone for sunrise, was in jeopardy. I stopped and did a personal inventory - breathing was under control, head felt fine, no more nosebleed, had plenty of water and half my power-gel / clif bars left. Eugen was a different story - all of a sudden I was the guide in our 2-person party, and I thought I might have to get him off the mountain. I called the outfit guy back in Moshi who actually answered his phone at 4 in the morning, but the network wasn't very good at that elevation and I lost him. I wasn't sure what to do, but Eugen got coherent enough to realize that I was straight pissed, and started arguing that he was fine. After a while he started walking again, but it was slow. After another agonizing hour and a half, we finally made it to Stella point, but he was completely off the network by that point. I sat him down in a safe spot along the trail and told him not to move til I got back. He just kind of nodded.

Uhuru peak was still a solid 45 minute hike from there and I realized I'd need to book it to make sunrise, so I did. I had plenty of energy left over after the slow pace of our climb to Stella, so I was moving pretty fast and passed a number of the groups on my way around the crater rim. I got to the peak with about 10 minutes to spare for the absolutely spectacular sunrise above the clouds, the only things visible above them being us and the peak, Mt. Meru in the distance, and the sun. Got a few quick video shots, and had a big tall Saffer guy snap a few shots of me with my disposable (he took a few with his digital too but we didn't get to exchange info back at Barafu before I left, frustratingly). At 6k meters you realize that a) there isn't much reason to stay and hang out, and b) the longer you do, the crappier you're going to feel, so after maybe 10 minutes at the peak I turned to start back towards Stella.

I found Eugen about halfway between Stella and the peak, trying to make it up. He looked better after another break, but I had asked the guides from the Saffer's outfit to help me keep an eye on him during the descent. He ended up doing fine.

The descent was actually pretty cool - what I hadn't realized in the dark of the climb was that the trail was, for the most part, surrounded on most sides by a scree field - loose gravel about 6-10 inches deep, pretty uniformly spread across the mountainside. I started moving through it pretty quickly, but then a girl my age came flying by me, and as I watched her I realized it was a pretty simple combination of running downhill with skiing-turn technique to slow one's self. It was actually more skiing than it was running, and pretty soon I was absolutely flying down the mountain. Probably not the smartest thing to do on tired legs, but I felt fine, was still a little high from making the summit, and it was just a lot of fun - bouncing down the mountain like I was skiing, hitting jumps and dropping small ledges and the whole shebang.

Next thing I knew I was back at Barafu at 8:30am, and Eugen was pointing out that we could descend all the way to the base that same day, if I felt up for it. I was paying for 6 days on the mountain either way, but that would give the porters an extra day off and me one night earlier back in the hotel, with showers and clean clothes and whatnot, so I said fine. We ate, packed up, and were back on the trail down by 10am.

It was a BRUTAL hike down. Eugen was moving a lot faster now, faster than I could keep up on tired legs. And it just went on and on - we hiked almost twice the distance and fully 3 times the elevation that day than we had hiked on any other day, not to mention the fact that we had hiked the summit all night instead of sleeping. The trail down was an access one that hikers don't normally take, so it was poorly maintained and really hard on the knees. The porters seemed to fly up and down it, but I was thanking God repeatedly for the hiking poles. At some point we finally made it to the rain forest but still had about 3 hours of hiking through that to get down to the park gate.

After an agonizing afternoon, we finally got there. I got my certificate from the ranger, and Jackson, the outfit guy who I had called early that morning, met us and I gave him the whole run-down. They took me back to my hotel and I crashed early and hard.

The next day I was feeling a lot better. I bagged up 3 bags of my mountain clothes - one for each of the porters, and walked into town to meet Jackson and Eugen at the bank and give them the tips. Having read about how guides often try to screw porters out of their tips (when they're already paid next to nothing), I wanted Jackson to give them directly to the porters, so I tipped Eugen separately and then gave the rest to Jackson. Spent the rest of the day at the internet cafe, having lunch at the only place with pizza in Moshi, and doing a bit of shopping / post-card sending.

That evening I went for a swim in the pool and found Louise and the brit girls sitting beside the pool - a day earlier than I expected them back. We all had dinner together and exchanged our climbing stories - apparently I had passed them when I was descending back to Stella from the peak, but none of us had recognized each other given all the gear we had on and the rather singular focus one has at that point.

The next morning I was all packed and off to the airport, where Air Tanzania informed me that my flight to Entebbe was cancelled, and it was mostly my fault for not "confirming" the flight during the week prior. That spurred some rather unpleasant hours. They sent me to a hotel and told me I'd be on a flight to Entebbe in the morning. Then they called me at the hotel and said the next one was cancelled too, so I had to fly to Dar Es Salaam that night, stay there, and fly to Entebbe from there in the morning. The real kicker is that the flight to Dar went via a town on the southern side of Lake Victoria, directly south of Entebbe by about an hour (instead of the 3 I had to spend on the plane the next morning flying to EBB).

All in all, it was a good climb (I made the summit). It wasn't nearly as hard as I had expected, which gives me hope for the next climbs I'd like to do. I climbed it comfortably (well except for the massive 1-day descent) in 5 days, pretty much the minimum for any trail, let alone Machame. Pictures from the crap-cams are here on Flickr.

Chelsea Market's Free Public WiFi User Agreement:

I promise to refrain from any hanky panky
Or anything that would make anyone get cranky.
Anything I do with this connection that is lame,
I absolve Chelsea Market et al of any blame.

I'm back in the US. Need to catch up on blogging. In store - hopefully in the near future:

A) A wrap-up on my project and Ghana - plus pictures from the slave castles on the coast there.

B) A recap of my Kilimanjaro climb.

C) A recap of the week at the TAOST school in Jinja with the youth group.

D) Other stuff...like what might be up next. And stuff.

I have a few topics I'd like to hammer out some thoughts on too but I can't really remember any of them at the moment. Maybe they'll come back to me tomorrow.

No time for blogging really since Kili (which I promise to blog about when I get back home next week - long story short I summitted solo after a very sketchy night).

I have however kind of been managing the blog that the team here in Uganda is using to cover our trip, which you can find here, complete with pictures.

More soon.