Trips With James September 2016

Cricket Anyone? – Zimbabwe 2012

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day 4

It was Saturday and Keith took me to see my first cricket match. We drove around downtown Harare on the way to the cricket stadium. The Brits laid out this city in a beautiful way. Wide streets and on a partial grid that makes it somewhat easy to get around in.

The constant jaywalking and almost non-existent traffic laws takes a little getting used to. I forget that Americans seem to have some of the most rigid traffic laws in the world. Here it is a complete mess with everyone going everywhere at once but it seems to work somehow. Driving here for the new comer would be extremely overwhelming. I have not had to make that choice yet, as everyone as been so kind to take me where I need to go, or I am walking distance from shopping areas. http://wikitravel.org/en/Harare

We got to the stadium to watch Zimbabwe’s national team play South Africa in a Pan-African Cricket tournament. I knew something of the game but not enough to describe anything to anyone. WOW. I love cricket. We were watching a type call Twenty20 cricket as opposed to Fifty/50 or One Day cricket which takes all day, or the 5 day classic Test match cricket. Can you imagine watching a 5 day match of the same two teams playing the same game for 5 days and still maybe ending in a tie. My head would explode, but people here are totally into it.

I cannot explain the game here in just a few words, because it is as complex as baseball in the record keeping and strategic moves. Yet once you get the basics down it is a really fun and exciting game to cheer for. Zim lost, but due to a tournament rule they somehow got into the finals.

We were in private boxes enjoying the game. Like watching football in a luxury box – only way to watch a sport really! I was taken to two other boxes as I continue to meet the sponsors of the drama festival here in Zim.

I am a bit of a local celebrity or curiosity since I have come all this way to do the festival on my own dime. Some appreciate it, some are worried that I will bring an American influence to a festival that is 100 years old next year, and some are worried that I will underestimate Zim’s education system. It is strange to be an American on the ground in a small country. They respect us and dislike us with equal measure. They know more about our country and elections then we do because we are such a huge influence in the world that what we do affects them as much as ourselves. I cannot tell you how many conversations that I have had about how they see the Obama/Romney contest.

It is like we are the Mafia Don at the end of the street protecting his neighborhood. We can provide protection and benefits to the local street, but it comes at a really big price. And even when we do nothing, it affects them. They have taken the Chinese money because of all the international sanctions that were leveled at President Mugabe because of his Land Reform measures where his government seized white owned farms and gave them to native Zimbabweans.

The sanctions are against him and his government personally, but the effect trickles down to all the businesses and people here. Whether the sanctions were right or not, they are one reason that the Zim economy is a disaster. They did not effect the leaders, it effected the every day person destroying jobs, pensions, and savings.

While we were fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese quietly came in to Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular and have bought all the minerals rights. So Zimbabwe has taken all that the Chinese will give them, because they were getting very little now from the US and Europe.

The final score to the cricket match was 129 to 126. I can kind of explain the scoring if you are interested at some other time, but I can tell you it was a nail biter right down to the last over. Yes, I said Over. It is like an inning/turn/bat in baseball but shorter.

Then I went to over to Gavin’s house for a really quick dinner and off to the local theatre called Reps. Not professional, it is more like a community theatre. Reps Theatre is a private non-profit enterprise with two theatres, one large and one small and an excellent pub bar that is open all during the show. I saw part of the Norman Conquest trilogy. It was ok. Couple of really good actors, but felt like an actor’s showcase in LA.

Back on home and to bed. Tomorrow I am going on SAFARI.

Cheers

Ethiopia and Harare – Zimbabwe 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Travel Day

Day 1

I am flying high over the Atlantic on Ethiopian Airlines. Talk about luxury. Certainly no American airline offers this kind of service any more. Blankets and pillows for everyone. Free meal and free booze and basically free everything. The people are incredibly friendly. They ask what I am doing and when I tell them, they all give me advice on how to survive in Zim and Africa in general. People are friendly everywhere if you take the time with them, and are courteous yourself. But this was really very pleasant.

My stop-over in Washington was completely uneventful. I landed at 1:45 AM, and I had booked a hotel room. I am just too old to try to sleep in a row of chairs in the airport. It was worth it, because I was exhausted after a day of taking care of last-minute details and the stress that I have every time I fly. Plus is was really nice to spend one last night in what I perceive as American style luxury. TV, ESPN, ac, coffee in the room and a very large hot shower.

I am currently watching the cutest little Ethiopian boy run up and down the aisles. Big smile on his face as he laughingly runs back and forth. How can you not smile at that? The pure joy of just being able to run around with no cares.

Even with the help of alcohol and a few pills it is very hard for me to sleep on a plane. Although for one stretch I did manage to until a beautiful air hostess woke me up because I was drooling. How romantic and sexy is that image?

I am about halfway to Addis Abeba, and I still have 9 more hours after I land there. I will arrive in Harare around 12 PM on Thursday. This jet lag is going to be awful.

(For spelling junkies – Addis Ababa can be spelled two ways. I choose to use the spelling used by the official Ethiopian Mapping Authority Addis Abeba.)

I will try to send this out when I get to Addis Abeba as there is no internet on my planes. I marvel at people who can do all their work from the skies, but unfortunately I am not booked on one of those flights.

My two seat mates are two Ethiopian men who are returning home after long times away. One is a college professor in computer science in North Carolina, and the other is a man who has not been home for over 15 years who lives in Seattle and has three kids. They have been very kind answering all my stupid questions about Ethiopia and trying to teach me useful words.

Listening to Miles Davis at the moment – on the airline sound system – he is so cool, that he makes me feel cool just listening to him.

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France.

Sunday, June 24, 2012
Day 2

(It is hard to get online here for a number reasons. So please bare with me. I will write as often as I can.)

I have been flying for about 10 hours now and it is dawn. I am watching the sunrise over the east coast of Africa and it is amazing. It is the same sunrise as in any part of world, but since I have never seen anything in Africa this is especially amazing. I am flying over Somalia and Khartoum. The view screen on the back of our seats shows us flying over places that I have seen on maps all my life but never imagined that I would ever come near too.

As we flew into into Addis Abeba, it was grey and dreary. It is winter here and grey seems the main color. The airport seems in a total state of chaos, but it makes sense to them. Must be 20 or more duty-free shops selling everything that you can imagine. Pray rooms in all corners of the airport for men and women to pray separately. No clear idea of what gate that a flight is landing or taking off from, yet everyone but me seems to know exactly where to go. Someone in LA taught me a phrase in Ethiopian that means “good health to you”. A common greeting I was told. So I have tried it on about 10 people in the last day or so. I usually get a strange stare. It is due to my amazing and very special pronunciation I am sure.

The plane that I am taking to Harare is the size of a sardine can. We have not even taken off the man behind me is already snoozing loudly and every third person on this flight is Chinese. Talking with people on the other plane they confirm that while we were fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese have bought all the minerals in Africa. They own Africa just like the Europeans owned it in the last century. This is the new form of colonialism, so has anything really changed? It just seems a new master is all.

Finally I am in Harare dog-tired, yet I still have customs. The people are very nice but the process is clumsy at best. I stood in three lines over an hour while one man in one booth processed about 60 people. I arrived with a temporary work permit, my passport, my contract with the Festival and proof of my ticket out of the country – all required to enter the country. They never asked of any of it. They only wanted my 45 dollar fee for my visa. Oh well.

I finally got through and met Gavin Peter, the festival director. We have spoken for months by email and Facebook – but to finally meet him in person was great. A big, friendly, gregarious man who drove me through Harare to the home of my hosts for the next week, Keith and Jeannette ——. Keith is the chairman of the board of the NIAA who sponsors the festival.

A quick shower and a brief nap. I was so knackered, but I got up so that I could try to get on the Zim schedule. It was still about 4 PM, so they showed me around their property. The homes in the suburbs seem to consist of large to moderate homes on large tracts of land (2 to 3 acres) surrounded by high walls and fences. Their garden is amazing with so many beautiful plants and flowers that blazed with color even in winter. Then a very pleasant evening in their lovely home with a fire (it is winter here), dinner and a bottle of wine. What a very lovely introduction to this interesting country and what promises to be a very life-changing adventure.

Zimbabwe 2012

In 2012, I accepted an offer to take a temporary job in Africa. At the time I did not know that this opportunity would quite literally change the entire fabric of my life. This trip would be so much more than just an adventure but in fact would be an overwhelming experience that would lead me to change the entire direction and focus of my life.

In 2011, my life was kind of falling apart. A three-year relationship with a woman who I loved very much had ended. I was still reeling from the aftermath of the world-wide economic downtown that had closed my real estate investment business and was forcing my house toward foreclosure. To cover the expenses of running my suddenly upside down house, I was renting out every extra bedroom that I had to college students who went to school at the close-by University of Southern California. My only other income at the time was running a small non-profit theatre where I served as Producing Artistic Director. Theatre is one of the great passions of my life, but after 25 years leading a small non-profit arts group, I was exhausted and burned out.

I desperately needed a break, or as one friend put it best – I needed an escape from my life. Yet, there was no life-line nor escape. As my house edged ever closer to foreclosure, my despair grew and my options were shrinking fast.

It was at that moment that one morning an email arrived in my inbox. It was an email that I had been expecting, but I was not really sure how I felt about it. I had been communicating about a possible job with an arts group in Zimbabwe. One of my former theatre students when I taught at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA., was from Zimbabwe, and her mother was a volunteer administrator for this organization. My former student had put us together and on a lark I had applied to work for them.

The job was to be the Judge or Adjudicator for a national drama festival that takes place in Zimbabwe every year. The drama festival was part of an even larger series of arts festivals run by a group known as the National Institute of Allied Arts. The National Institute of Allied Arts is a 100-year-old volunteer organization founded by the British colonials to instill public speaking, drama, music, literature and visual arts into the white children of Zimbabwe. But over time and with the change of governments and Zimbabwe getting its freedom in 1980, the organization become one of the first to open its doors to all the children of Zim. Every year about 30 thousand+ children take part in 4 festivals a year in music, visual arts, literature and drama. If hired I would be the first American to adjudicate their national drama festival.

The job would take about 2 to 3 weeks and the adjudicator would see about 15000 children perform in various theatre and public speaking categories. The job paid a small salary and promised all living expenses would be covered. The catch was the adjudicator had to figure out a way to get to Zimbabwe, and pay for it themselves. But whom ever came as a reward, they would be given a two-week tour around Zimbabwe. They would see places with names that I had never heard but would soon become very familiar with in the coming weeks and years. Places like Harare, the capital city, Kwekwe, Gweru, Great Zim, Matopos National Park, Vic Falls, Bulawayo, and so many more.

The email offered me the job and seeing this as the escape that I needed and desperately wanted, I quickly said yes. The Festival would be in June and so the plans began in earnest. Being broke and not having the money to pay for the trip, I lied and told them I did. I swiftly started a campaign to raise the money. I wrote a small grant through my theatre, held a garage sale, and ran a Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Plus I also got 500 dollars from the US Embassy in Zimbabwe, but more on that later. In a matter of 3 weeks, I raised the 1500 dollars needed for the flight.

Zimbabwe here I come!!!

The entries that you are about to read are from my first travel blog called Dispatches. You can find the blogs here if you want to read ahead. I will be posting them here as part of my 2012 series with new photos, more stories both published and new, plus comments.

http://jamesrcarey.blogspot.com/

This epic trip did not end with Zimbabwe. I had landed another guest artist position with a theatre in Rome for a couple of weeks which was going to start right after I left Zimbabwe. This was going to lead to a month of roaming around Europe before I headed back to Los Angeles. The stories of Italy will also be part of this 2012 series.
Continue reading “Zimbabwe 2012”

Whitewater Rafting in Kernville

So after the day at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, we woke up early and drove the 40+ miles to Kernville through some really beautiful country on California 178. At the town of Lake Isabelle, you turn on to California 155 that takes you up to Kernville.

The Kern River is a river in the state of California, approximately 165 miles (270 km) long. It drains an area of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains northeast of Bakersfield. Fed by snow melt near Mount Whitney, the river passes through scenic canyons in the mountains and is a popular destination for whitewater rafting and kayaking. It is the only major river in the Sierra Nevada mountain range that drains in a southerly direction. Nearly all of the river is publicly accessible. Its swift flow at low elevation makes the river below the reservoir an extremely popular location for rafting.

The Kern is well-known for its danger, and is sometimes referred to as the “Killer Kern”. A sign at the mouth of Kern Canyon warns visitors: “Danger. Stay Out. Stay Alive” and tallies the deaths since 1968; as of June 9, 2012 the count was 266. Merle Haggard’s song “Kern River” fictionally recounts such a tragedy. Most of the people who died in the Kern River were recreational users who entered the water without proper life vests. Less than 2% of the deaths in the Kern River have occurred during commercial raft trips. (Wikipedia)

Kernville itself, is a very small town on the Kern River of only about 1300+ people. For its size, Kernville has a large tourist industry focused on the white water rapids of the Kern River. While white water rafting is the main attraction, one can also enjoy mountain biking,rock climbing, and other outdoor activities. Fly fishing is also popular; in particular, the golden trout is highly sought after for catch and release fishing. Downtown Kernville which consists of a large tree-shaded square and buildings on three sides with highway 155 on the 4 side, has an Old West look and contains a number of restaurants, antique shops, bars and motels.

We had taken advantage of a Groupon special for the last weekends of rafting with a company called SoCal Rafting. TripAdvisor gives them a 4.5 rating out of 5.

It was 4th of July weekend so it was extremely busy with people literally everywhere waiting for their tour or buying items for the float. The first step after checking in was getting fitted for a life jacket which they clinch up extra tight and getting your paddle.

Then there was a short safety speech about how to act on the water and such. Then on to the bus to take us to the drop in spot on the river.

While on the bus, a longer safety speech with a few tales of tragedies and mishaps on the river along with the creation of buddy teams to help watch out of each other. Also a demonstration on to float the rapids in case you fall out of the raft.

Then we were on the river in rafts of different size some holding up to 8 people and some holding just 4, all with a guide to steer the raft. Both sides of the river have beautiful homes and open areas that the locals use as their beaches. And all the way down the river, locals on both sides are splashing you with water as you pass by. So you are part of this running water battle all the way down the river with Class 2 and 3 rapids in between.

This was a lot of fun. Yet, there were some very scary moments as you went over the rapids backwards or sideways with the possibility of always falling out in the rushing water. That is not the danger – falling into the river. The danger comes from the extremely fast current and you hitting one or more of the huge rocks that could knock you out or hurt you badly. Or getting your foot caught in the rocks and breaking an ankle or drowning. Twice we had people in the front of the raft fall out and our guide was quick to respond by getting the people back into the raft swiftly.

The guides for Socal Rafting were total pros. They were knowledgeable and fun with interesting tales about the history of the area and the river. I would recommend this again. We did the short one hour run, but there were longer two-hour and four-hour tours, plus all day floats.

Because of the California drought now in its 5 straight year, the river has been down and the season for rafting is shorter each year. Please check before you go to make sure that the river is open for rafting.

After getting off the river, we were hungry and the only non-bar on the square in Kernville was Big Blue Bear. Combo gift shop and eatery, the counter person was a little intense but we got our food and it was good. It seems the main place for locals to gather so a real combo of tourists and locals. Worth checking out.

Great trip within 5 hours of LA and worth the time for something different.

Month: September 2016

Cricket Anyone? – Zimbabwe 2012

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Ethiopia and Harare – Zimbabwe 2012

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Zimbabwe 2012

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Whitewater Rafting in Kernville

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