Where Are Ron and Ellen?
Portugal (Ron and Ellen), Southeastern Africa (Ron), 19 September 2013 - 13 January 2014
Ron and Ellen in Porto, Portugal, October 2013
The African Queen
14 November 2013
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
Ron is obviously having a fine time meeting all sorts of new people. In contrast, I'm having a fine time at home -- not meeting all sorts of new people. Reading Ron's first message from Africa, from Nakuru in Kenya, a good friend emailed me and said, "Ron is amazing! Infinitely -- infinitely, I say -- more people oriented than am I." To which I replied that he was a lot more people-oriented than me as well. Not to mention more adventurous. I had a lovely dinner and evening with our daughter and son-in-law and grandsons (and granddog) yesterday at their house, which is much more my style.
There are a few things in Ron's message I don't understand, e.g. the Protestant hotel, but rather than ask him and then wait for an explanation, I'm sending the message. I've added a few explanatory notes in brackets within Ron's text.
Love to all,
Ellen
The African Queen
14 November 2013
On the MV Liemba - African Queen - Lake TanzaniaHello, my dear, from the MV Liemba on Lake Tanzania where at 10:30 PM on Wednesday Nov 13 I just saw a most unusual sight.
The MV Liemba was swarmed by a multitude of small boats, coming out of the darkness and illuminated from the lights of the MV Liemba. Men were climbing from the small boats up the sides of the large boat with buckets of cooked fish, something wrapped in banana leaves, dinner for the third class passengers, and various produce and bundles of what looks like dried bamboo. One small boat must have had at least 60 people on it, mostly women with very young babies on their backs and young children. The children were passed up from one person to the next and the women finally climbed aboard. After about half hour the boat sounded a horn, departing passengers climbed into the small boats and the swamp of small boats disappeared into the dark.
Yes, I caught what I thought was the African Queen but it turns out I was wrong. There was no real African Queen boat, but the movie [The African Queen, Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, 1951; if you have never seen this movie, you should!] was based on the boat I am on. It was built by the Germans and brought to Das Es Salaam in pieces and transported to Kigoma by a special train built for this purpose and assembled under the direction of a small group of German engineers in 1915 and fitted with guns to fight the English. There was one other smaller German boat that was sunk by the English. When Germany lost the war in 1918 they removed the engines, packed them in oil and buried them in the jungle, then sunk the boat so it would not fall into the hands of the English. Then some time later the English brought up the hull, found the engines, and put the boat back into use. When Tanzania got their freedom from colonial rule, they acquired the boat. I guess it was not possible for the British to take the boat elsewhere. But in any case, I am on it heading to the last stop with a dock on the Tanzania side of Lake Tanzania, Kasanga, just before the boat stops in Zambia.
In Rwanda I started thinking I had better move a bit faster if I wanted to catch the MV Liemba so I cut my visit in Kigali short. It was a good decision because I have now been told it only goes every other week.
I spent a long afternoon at the Genocide Museum [in Rwanda] which was well designed and informative. I understand a quarter of a million people are buried on the site. Now I better understand what and why things happened here. There was also a section dedicated to other genocide sites around the world including Auschwitz, in Poland, which we visited together in 1989, and Cambodia, which I have visited.
In the museum I noticed a class being held and discovered it was a class for teachers, organized by University of Southern California to train teachers how to discuss the genocide in their classrooms. See iwitness.usc.edu
At the museum I met Marlene W., a Canadian of Ukrainian descent living in Australia who travels to world wide sites to view eclipses. There has just been one where she joined thousands of others to view it in northern Uganda. She is a physics major after considering astronomy, and is specializing in the physics of oil deposits. We shared a recorded tour program about the museum (www.orpheo.org). I have always been amazed by Canadian women who travel the world independently starting at a young age. [In 1971 Ron backpacked through much of South America with a Canadian woman.]
I wonder if she ever met any astronomers from NRAO [National Radio Astronomy Observatory, where I have worked since 1975] who also travel to experience the eclipses. In couple of year there will be one in the US viewable from a swath across the SE Including Virginia. I invited her to come to Afton and maybe she could visit NRAO. Do you have the focused path and dates for the US Eclipse? [There is a total solar eclipse visible from North American on 21 August 2017.]
In the evening we met for dinner at Shokola near Marlene's hostel. The next day she departed to climb a volcano near the Serengeti and I took the bus called Volcano from Kigali, Rwanda, to Bujumbura, Burundi, arriving late Sunday, which would give me one day to make arrangements and one day to find your friend's project and get to the river to see the hippos a guy from Sweden told me about.
Speaking about buses, I must tell you about the technology on the Jaquar Bus from Kampala, Uganda, to Kigali, Rwanda. First I noticed an electrical plug next to my seat, then I discovered the bus had Wifi and Internet access. It gave me pleasure to email from a bus named Jaquar while traveling in Uganda.
In Burundi I bought a sim card which gave me access to the Internet. maps and email where ever I was and I learned how to set up a hot spot with my phone so I could access the Internet on my touch pad.
A very big man who I understand was a developer, befriended me on the bus to Bujumbura, Burundi, and took me in his taxi to a Protestant hotel in my price range. Being Sunday everything was closed.
First thing Monday morning I set out to the docks to book my ticket on the African Queen. I finally was taken to a very inside back office where there were only four women, all in uniforms. After a lengthy discussion, with only one of the women speaking English, I was told the MV Liemba has not stopped at Bujumbura since 2000. Then there was some more discussion and I was escorted upstairs to another office with four men in even neater uniforms. Again there was a long discussion, the woman bowed herself out, some phone calls were made and I left with a little piece of paper with the name of a small bus station at Chez Sion (city market) and was told the bus to Kigoma Tanzania leaves only on Tuesday and Sat.
After going to the market, finding the small bus booking office (not an easy task in the rain) and being the first booking for the bus I hoped it would qualify me for the shotgun seat for the three hour trip. I did get the front window seat for a trip that turned out to be about nine hours. Much more comfortable then the little fold-down seat in the aisle I sat on for the trip to Bujumbura.
I returned to the hotel and met three Russians who had checked in and who I met again in Kigoma and who are now on the boat with me.
Then I tried to get a motor scooter to take me to the river and was told it was three hours away. Looking at the map I could not be sure which river I wanted to go to so I gave this idea up since it was already late afternoon. Then I returned to the small market where I had convinced the sales clerk to put a big bottle of my choice of water in the cooler. The water was very cold and refreshing and in the discussion I discovered she was 25 and a lawyer who could not find a job.
Next morning I was up at 5 to get to the bus by 6 to get my good seat on the bus (large van) leaving at 6:30.
Kigoma. There were two African guys I met on the bus. One was from Zambia, traveling with an American passport. He was around 20 when he arrived in the US as a refugee and was now returning to visit family and is now on the boat with me. The other was a young guy from the Congo who had lived in refugee camps and was now traveling back to the coast and then South Africa where he is now living.
My first task of course was to book a ticket on the MV Liemba so I went directly to the port and did so. First Class was $95 in US cash for what I understand will leave at 4pm and will be for two nights, arriving very early in the morning. Since it didn't leave until around 6:30pm perhaps it will not arrive so early.
Leaving the ticket office I met an older German lady, Edelgard A., who is also on the boat. She was raised in Egypt and is now visiting her father who is retired and living in Mombassa, rebuilding school tables and chairs. She was trained as a biologist but after raising her kids has begun a new career as a gold and gem expert. Her husband is a doctor and is in the process of retiring from his practice. She has traveled in Tanzania many times and I am learning a lot from her.
She told me about the Tanzania Hotel located at the other end of the soccer field next to the port but it was $85 so I continued my exploration, learning a lot about the small town of Kigoma, exchanging money, buying water, and ended up further up the street at the Aqua Hotel, away from town, but close to the Tanzania Hotel where I ate.
The Aqua was rather run down and very disorganized but I finally got a room with working lights, fan and electric sockets, and a screened patio for the sunset over the beach. In a separate wing there was a large group of special education teachers doing their internship in a local project. At night they built a bonfire on the beach and invited me to join them. There was also a Swiss couple at the Aqua who are also on the boat.
I am now sitting in the dining room on the boat beside a Spanish guy, Jose del B., who is working in the Spanish Embassy in Mombassa, with his job having something to do with the oil business, I think. Across from him is Yukon A., a Japanese woman with a Ph.D, a linguist from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies who would really like to go to the Congo to study a certain language found there. Across from me is Edelgard who is reading a book while the rest of us read or write on our electronic devices as we all wait for lunch.
I have now ordered rice and fish. There was a collection of boat tickets and no problem for those who left them in their cabins. Then there was a discussion of bed and lunch instead of bed and breakfast. However later they came to charge the three of us left drinking our tea or coffee. So much for our original bed and lunch concept which we liked. Or were we being conned?
Edelgard says she always takes back to Germany a large supply of the instant coffee: Africape Instant Pure Coffee packed by teablend@ttb.co.tz in Dar es Salaam. She says her friends back home love it.
Whenever I find an Internet connection I hope this will be sent automatically. Every now and then we pass a village with phone service and some emails are downloaded, so maybe this will go at some point.
Love and miss you,
Ron
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Last updated: 27 November 2013
