Adventures in Onionism

dude, over here. source of the Nile solid waste disposal George Mack Not really. I went to Kampala to visit a buddy. We went to Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, ate good Indian food, smoked a hookah, and bought soy milk and bourbon at a western-style supermarket. I also got a new puppy. I think I might name him George, but I'm open to suggestions.

I am, of course, referring to Barack Obama. Both generally and specifically. If I had taken my other job offer and was now living in DC, I'd gladly go get arrested protesting the Keystone pipeline, which Obama could prevent with the executive stroke of his pen if he had actually meant anything he said during his campaign. Instead, James Hansen says it's game over for the climate. The only good thing about this situation is my constantly imagining Bill Paxton describing the fucking of the planet. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY ) Read about it on Salon ( http://www.salon.com/news/global_warming/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/08/24/obama_s_keystone_problem ) or with a development economics perspective at the Center for Global Development ( http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2011/08/obama-set-to-lob-canadian-carbon-bomb-at-india.php ).

Here's my latest adventure idea: http://10to4.org/ (not a very helpful link) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwm0gbTbkJw (a little more helpful). It's the only mountain bike race I can find in Kenya. It looks like there was a series called Rift Valley Adventures in 2009, but I don't think it's still going on. Obviously I've never raced before, and I realized today that I put my feet down _all the time_ while riding to get over abrupt ditches and stuff, meaning I have next to no technical skill, but if this isn't too steep of a downhill race, it looks like it could be awesome.

It's sappy beyond belief, ham-fistedly religious at times, the gear product placement is obnoxious, the hikers all wear jeans, and I have no desire to do a long roadwalk through Western Europe where there is no wilderness, but still, it's a movie about hiking (and the lifestyle that accompanies it), and I cried like a little girl. In "The Way," Martin Sheen goes to France to pick up his estranged son's ashes and ends up carrying them on El camino de Santiago. Obviously he meets "zany characters" (quirky, if you prefer) and "learns valuable life lessons" along the way. He probably also learns that "it's not the destination, it's the journey that matters" and a bunch of other annoying crap that, although annoying and crappy, happens to be true. Shut up, I am not crying! How I got this movie, since it apparently hasn't come out yet in the States, I don't know. ( http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_way_2011/ )

Today I went to Mundika to visit Ouma's house. I saw the whole history of expats in Busia (JR, OO, SB, IT, LC, EK, KC) in his pictures, had lunch, and, wait for it, two types of moonshine. The first was pretty straightforward chang'aa--maize alcohol that he'd made himself, but unfortunately not the batch in which he put OO's oak chips to make it "bourbon." Then on the way home we stopped at a pub and drank some millet brew called majira (maraji?). 40 people in the back room all drinking out of the same clay pot through individual 12-foot long reed straws. Good times, but they didn't want me taking pictures.

Here's today's ride: http://bit.ly/oeBAti I'm a little bummed that you have to ride on pavement for so long if you want to ride from the house to Lake Victoria in Kenya. On the Kenya side you have to ride the road 12+km to Matayos to take the only bridge over whatever river that is. On the Uganda side you basically take the first left after crossing the border and you're golden. I wasn't quite feeling a super long ride today, and I left the house too late to make it to the lake, so I thought I'd just explore everything within the boundaries of the Busia-Kisumu road, the river, and the border. Mission muddily accomplished.

Who's with me? http://bit.ly/o0AWs7 Obviously I'd start and end in Busia, I just mapped it this way because there's a ferry I couldn't get google to include. It'd be a little over 1500km. That's doable on a bike in two weeks, right? I'd definitely do it during the dry season when the roads are better. Speaking of dry season, that is _not_ right now. I'm going to have to become a morning person to get my running in--a storm starts at 6PM every evening, frequently with lightning and occasionally hail.

Finished reading Dexter Filkin's "The Forever War." It won all sorts of awards, so I was looking forward to it. I had no desire to read a blow by blow account of Bush's horrible decisions surrounding the war in Iraq, but this was just a personal on-the-ground account from an NYT reporter whose Fresh Air interviews I like, so it had potential. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bunch of short unrelated anecdotes in random order. Some of the anecdotes are touching and engaging, but I got pretty tired of jumping around in time and space and basically not learning anything. Feeling better today, and feeling like I need to get out of town this weekend. Might just ride my bike south and try to make it to the lake at Sio Port, or maybe I'll just go to Kisumu to get away from everybody.

I went to the field today for the first time today. On an unrelated note, my intestines are on fire and heading for the nearest exit. I think the least they could do is pull these pranks during the work day so I could have an excuse to stay home. On a more pleasant note, I've been doing laps on the airstrip a few times now. A high school student started running with me the other day, which is way more fun than when the little kids do it--they just scream "mzungu" and can't keep up for very long. Unfortunately I've been rained out the last couple days. Gumball-sized hail yesterday.

My grandmother (and last surviving grandparent) died last week. Unfortunately I hadn't seen her in seven years. My memories are all good, however. Every year or two as a kid we'd go to her log cabin that she and my grandpa built on a lake outside Hunstville, Ontario. She had an RV, "the camper," that I thought was the coolest thing ever, a big black and white cat with really long hair (and fleas) named Star, and a pool. She and Grandpa took me to the National Storytelling Festival. Awesomely, she and George drove to Maine to pick me up at the end of my first big hike, the Appalachian Trail. Rest in peace, Grandma.

Yesterday was the last day of UC Berkeley health insurance. Big deal. I bought short-term stuff to cover me until October when (if all goes well) I become an Emory University employee. More importantly, yesterday was also the last day of proxy Internet server access to academic journal articles. I feel less intellectually superior to the great unwashed today.

I think that mountain in the picture might be Mt. Elgon. So I guess I did see it pretty well. Didn't realize I curved around to the east, so left was north.

I rode my bike past Malaba and back yesterday. Here's the gmap-- http://bit.ly/qtIRzn It was 87km roundtrip, my butt hurt, and I got a ridiculous sunburn. I was bummed that I didn't get good views of Mt. Elgon, but I did see two dead green mambas and a dead hedgehog, and raced some random people along the way. Malaba didn't seem much different than Busia--a border town with a line of gas trucks a mile long. Maybe on a longer weekend I'll bike to Mt. Elgon, lock up the bike, and hire a guide (mandatory, unfortunately) to hike in the national park. Some weekend soon I'll bike to Lake Victoria at Sio Port, it's not much further a ride than I did yesterday, only the route is a little more confusing, so it'd be helpful if I had a smartphone with which to look at google maps. (My GPS is totally not helpful.) Swahili lessons are going well, and thunder storms are intense here. John Reader's Africa: A Biography of the Continent is boring because I don't care...

4 minutes, 8 seconds. 42.2 times in a row. Ain't no thang, right? That's the goal, anyway. Waddya have to say for yourself now, AIDS? ( http://sites.google.com/site/worldaidsmarathonkisumu/ ) For what it's worth, assuming that the Busia airstrip is 1km long, that's about as fast as I could manage for one lap going nearly all out this evening, but I've got 3.5 months, so I think I might have a chance. We'll see.

An interesting discussion from NYRB about psychiatry and whether drugs work. Part 1 , Part 2 , and an exchange . My conclusion? Everyone, myself included, should go for longer runs. Today's article on how the system is rigged (in addition to all the financial ties highlighted in the above) is a great piece by Barbara Ehrenreich on "How America turned poverty into a crime."

Ninatoka Berkeley katika California, lakini sasa ninafanya kazi Busia katika Kenya kama post-doc. Funeral wakes here are held from 10PM to 4 or 5 in the morning, with speakers blasting crappy world-beat amusement park ride music at ridiculous levels right in your neighborhood for up to two weeks at a time. Apparently they attract drunks walking around at night who then play little betting games with the DJ to raise money for the family. Or so I've heard. After two nights of sleepless torture (earplugs were insufficient), I finally beat them last night by putting 6 hours of white noise on my iPod.

My buddy SH came and visited from Kampala this weekend. We mostly just hung out and talked about the futility of existence, but we did enjoy the best feast I've had in a good while. I also moved into MSF house on Thursday night. On closer inspection, the place looks like a frat house--it's had 1,000 different people live in it for short periods of time for several years, so nobody has much incentive to fix or clean anything. The yard and the dog are still as awesome as expected, and there was a praying mantis to greet me in my room, so it's all good. P&O were back in town with P's parents, and the office had a goat roast for them at Mbugwa's house. Mbugwa is a very nice taxi driver in town that we like to use because he does awesome things like drive safely and clean the battery terminals in his car while he's waiting. He also lives a couple houses down. P&O paid him to slaughter a goat and several chickens for us. I watched with rapt attention for a cou...