And the winner is . . .

. . . Esther Phiri is a unanimous decision over Duda Yankovich for the WIBC Light Welterweight Title.

SA Flight 63

I've made it on the South Africa - no thanks to South African flight 63. I've found South African to be a real nice airline, but today was an adventure. I caught the shuttle from the Taj Pamodzi (which is a fantastic hotel - although I made the unpleasant discovery this morning that my room was not actually prepaid afterall, which meant another $900 had to be added to my already overwhelmed credit card) around 11:15 this morning, and getting to the Lusaka airport was no trouble. Things were pretty busy/chaotic at the airport with some tangled, meandering, glacially slow lines to check in. Luckily I was standing in line to a new friend, a German woman named Maya who also attended the conference. So we could swap stories about her daughter (aged one) and my son (aged twenty-two) - plus she had arrived early with her boss and went on this amazing flight down to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls as well as what sounded like a wonderful visit to some lodge on the river. It included a trip up and down the river in a boat, with elephants, giraffes and other wildlife just yards away - just made me want to go back to Zambia even more. I got stuck in a souvenir shop trying to spend excess kwacha - I would have bought more but the guy behind the counter was so slow that I thought I'd miss my flight. His answer to my concern - "oh, they'll wait, don't worry.". The plane was fine, but the majority of the crew seemed to be making their first official run, if not their first flight. The very young man and woman who were serving the meals (obviously this was not a flight on a US airlines because they actually fed us a hot meal - and on a short flight) were moving at a comically leisurely pace. At one point I saw the more experienced attendant in the front catch their eye and give them the hand signal to hurry up - except that it was more like "hurry the hell up and don't make me come back there!". At one point I heard the pilot say that we were something forty miles outside of Johannesburg and they were still several rows away from me. My assumption at that point was that they were going to cancel the meal service, but instead they soldiered on. And then we hit the turbulence - and some serious turbulence, the kind where you're lifted off the seats and the seatbelt actually catches you (I was flashing back to the first episode of Lost). The young woman lost control of the aluminum trays and four went flying majestically through the aie - two landing on the floor, and two landing in the lap of the young man sitting next to me. He handled it better than I would have, and smiled bravely as a hot mass of fish and vegetables soaked into his crotch. Oh, and he was reading Crime and Punishment (submit your own literary or moral joke here). The rest of the flight was uneventful and we actually arrived almost on time (although I've never actually ate while the plane was in its final descent before) - and my luggage made it. I hung around a little to see if Maya's suitcase was going to arrive, before I figured out that her luggage had been checked on through to Frankfurt even though she had not been given the ticket for the Joburg-Frankfurt part of the trip back in Lusaka. I tried ti convince that she just needed to check in and that her suitcase was in fact already on its way to the Frankfurt plane but she said that she had been told in Lusaka to pick up her suitcase in Frankfurt and check in in again. My response - "and exactly what did you see in the Lusaka airport that makes you think that they had any idea what they were talking about?" convinced her that all was well and off she trundled to try and get her boarding pass. No harm no foul, except that she had to go through customs twice instead of just transitting (international travel is kooky). Anyway, I arrived safely in Joburg and my friend Zanetta picked me up and delivered me safely to my hotel in Pretoria. Along the way we had a great meal in a quirky and great restaurant with a Brazil/Mozambique theme, but more on that later.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

The big sports news in Zambia - besides the just announced football match between the Zambian national team (Zim) and Brazil - is tonight's Women International Boxing Association light-welterweight title match between Duda "Diamond" Yankovich and Zambia's own Esther Phiri, which will take place in the auditorium at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre (where the eLearning conference was held). Esther Phiri has never lost at home. I love this comment from Yankovich - "I have heard lots of good things about Esther . . . Not that I expected to hear anything bad about her in her own country anyway."

Dance

Just wanted to post a few quick pictures (or as quick as the grindingly slow wifi will allow) of the traditional dancers from today's lunch. It made me want to get outside of Lusaka on my next trip to Zambia - or into the countryside in some African country - to see some of the "real" Africa, although what I've seen in Lusaka is every bit the reality that Africa is becoming.

Friday Night

I ended up having a delightfully odd evening. The last day of the conference was pretty good with some good sessions - and a great lunch, complete with some traditional dancing, which I'll post pictures of in my next posting. On the way home I ended up with another really friendly taxi driver. Apparently Zambia has the nicest, most honest taxi drivers in the world - I've posted elsewhere about some of my adventures with taxis in the Middle East and India. Here every taxi driver was very friendly and they all charged exactly the same amount - 30,000 kwacha ($6) - for the ride from the hotel to the conference centre, even later in the evening. My driver's name was Andrew and he was from an Islamic tribe, and wore a very distinctive hat. He was quiet until I asked him about the Zambian national football team, and then he completely opened up (the secret to getting on the good side of taxi drivers around the world) - we discussed the replacement of the Zambian coach and the steady growth of the team, and their recent match with Chile. I'll try and post a picture of him, although the Internet is being painfully slow tonight. When I returned to the hotel it was too early to eat at the restaurant (at least for the buffet, which is great - especially Friday night, when it is Indian night) so I plopped down at the bar, ordered a Castle Lager (an eminently wonderful Zambian beer, which may now be my all-time favorite beer) and wrote in my journal. It was one of those inexplicably great moments when you can't quite figure out why you're so happy. I just sat there writing in my journal and drank a second Castle - and feeling that all was right with the world. Eventually a two man house band showed up and began to play this eclectic collection of songs - for example, here are four in a row: the theme from The Godfather, George Michaels' Careless Whisper, Can't Stop Loving You, and A Whiter Shade of Pale. Later they played Fernando by Abba, which would have clearly made my friend Sandy Zale smile. So, I emailed Sandy, Andy Burkhardt, Erik Eskilsen, Mike Lange and Steve Wehmeyer (the Gentlemen of Excellence of chicken wing eating fame) to share the Abba news - which resulted in a return email from Sandy discussing the role of Abba as a redemptive force in the world (one of his constant theories). After a while I walked over to the Jacaranda restaurant itself and, despite the temptations of the Indian buffet, ordered a meal off the menu that I had been considering all week - chicken with a mushroom and tarragon sauce - it was amazing. I finished it up, stopping just short of licking the plate, and then had vanilla ice cream and a cafe latte - and finished writing in my journal. All in all, a lovely evening.

Lunch

I wish I would have had the chance to get outside of Lusaka on this trip, but maybe on my next trip to Zambia - and if I've learned anything it's that there is always a next trip to every place. I've gotten a little taste of Zambian food at the conference lunches, and the food, not surprisingly, seems very similar to Kenyan food - and, like it was in Kenya, they serve ungodly portions for lunch (although, obviously, the average Zambian isn't eating like that - just like the average Chinese peasant isn't eating what you'd get in a Chinese restaurant). Apparently the staple of the Zambian diet is nshima, which is very similar to something I had in Kenya with a different name - it sort of looks like a cross between porridge and a mashed potato, although it is made out of maize. Zambians eat it plain, or with some sort of vegetable broth - or some meat if they are better off. I'll try and post a picture of the plate I had today under the big top tent during our lunch break. The pile of white porridge like material in the back is nshima. The biggest pile is something like okra, and maybe it's the southerner in me but I loved it - here and in Kenya - and also in China last summer. The meat in the right rear corner is ox tail - apparently ox tail stew is a Zambian specialty. What looks like shredded vegetables in the front of the plate is actually very tiny fish - very tasty, so much so that you don't even mind the little eyes looking up at you. The food I had was very nicely spiced and I really enjoyed it.

Tribes

One of the most interesting things about travelling in Africa is watching the interplay between the various tribes. Sometimes the tension is extraordinarily horrible as in the genocide in Rwanda ten years ago (although I've always found it interesting that the US and Europe draws a distinction between ethnic tensions, as in the former Yugoslavia (which they view as an unfortunate but almost necessary process of state building), and tribal tensions (which they view as proof of African inferiority and inability to function successfully in the modern world). At other times the tribal differences are much more subtle and generally harmless, but nevertheless always there. I remember going to a Nairobi museum one time with a Nigerian friend and it's amazing how often tribal recognition came up - that is, identifying the tribes of certain artists or predicting the tribes of people we talked to in the museum - not in a bad way, but it was obvious that this how he, and others, processed information and he assumed I would need that information. It came back to me yesterdqy when I was having lunch with my friend Wainaina and we were discussing our efforts over the last couple years to promote the Global Modules at his university. One of the points he made was that maybe too many of the professors, him included, who we had chosen to roll out the GMs were kikuyu (Kenya's largest and most influential tribe) and thus some professors from other tribes would view this as just another prize thrown to the kikuyu. Fascinating. And another wrinkle that makes my job so fascinating/challenging.

Odds and Ends

I'm sitting here suffering through the effects of another huge African lunch (more on that with pictures later). It's midway through the second day of the conference. After another bad night of sleep I nevertheless rallied at 6:00 so that I could do cardio and lift weights. It's funny how slavish I am in my dedication to working out - if I had only done this when I was young or even younger it might have actually made a difference. Had a nice chat with the young taxi driver who conveyed me to the conference center. I gave him my theory about how everyplace I go in the world people always make two claims about their country - that, one, they are the nicest people and best cooks in the world, and, two, that they are the worst drivers. He wasn't so sure about the latter (and being a taxi driver he was in a precarious position in answering that one) but mainly agreed with the former. The Zambians I've met have been unfailingly nice and polite, and the guidebook said that they were famous for their warmth and hospitality. I met a nice German woman last night at the reception who has travelled all over Africa and she assured me that Zambia is boring. This led to a discussion about the lives we choose to lead wherein we can make statements like that and we're not even trying to sound self-important (for instance, I caught myself one time pointing that my fourth visit to Petra was my favorite - and thinking back on it it just sounds pretentious, although it was in response to a question). Anyway, she said that Tanzania was her favorite part of Africa, which would have made my good friend Trish smile. Actually, I'm beginning to warm to Africa - and was even thinking yesterday of coming back and doing a Zambia/Namibia/Tanzania trip just as a vacation - and I would have never thought that possible before this trip. So, I guess the moral of the story is that one person's boring is another person's comfortable.

Conference Redux

So, I'm sitting here during the plenary when I realized that four professors (three of them African) sitting next to me were using the conference's free wifi to update their Facebook pages. That said, I can't feel too morally superior to them since I'm using my Blackberry to blog. The panel really isn't too bad, and one of them looks suspiciously like Idi Amin (which is keeping my attention). The thing I found most interesting today is the Cloud technology that allows ten or more video screens to act as virtual work-stations off one PC. I'm going to have to ask my more technologically savvy friends Sarah and Andy to explain that one to me. It seems like it has potential to make the Internet affordable for the devekoping world, although m-learning (using mobile phones) is another possibility (one of many)..

At the Conference

I'm finishing up the first full day of the African eLearning conference and it's been a mixed bag, although definitely more good than bad. I woke up around 3:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, which might ezplain the bad. After breakfast I had no trouble catching a taxi to the Mulungushi International Conference Centre - 30,000 kwacha ($6). It took me an hour to check in for a conference for which I had pre-registered and pre-paid, but I take it that things were much more chaotic yesterday. The president of Zambia was supposed to welcome us, nut at the last moment he backed out and we had to wait for the vice-president to show up - which meant that everything got started and hour and a half late. Of all the "times" - India time, Arab time, Africa time etc - Africa time is the most "flexible," so I was not really surprised. On the plus side my presentation was very received. Over one-hundred-fifty people showed up, and around twenty hung around afterwards to get information, I ran into my friend Wainaina and we had a great lunch together. He's thinking about starting a model high school in Kenya and asked me to serve on the board of directors - for some reason I find this very moving and think it's one of the greatest honors I've ever received. Right now I'm sitting through the last plenary of the day before the reception - free food, which helps.me stretch my travel budget. For some reason I have the blues tonight. It seemed that although last spring was really horrible - and I was a million miles from what I wanted - that at least I could tell myself that things would get better. And now I've worked for a year and I think two million miles away (grin). Oh well, at least I'm productive. I'm sure it's a temporary bump and one that a cold Mosi will alleviate.

Thoughts on the Run

OK, it's been a busy day so I have no time to write anything in detail - so just a couple random notes. First off, I know it's a combination of the fact that we're still pretty close to the equator and we're moving into fall here in Zambia, but the fact that it's completely dark a couple minutes after 6:00 p.m. is just bizarre. On the positive side, the weather is extraordinary - mainly in the low 70's and very sunny (this is a nice break since it is supposed to be sizzling back in VT). Secondly, I received a very pleasant surprise today. My good friend Michael Wainaina - or just Wainaina, it takes Kenyans a long time to share their first name with anyone (I guess it's sort of like when everyone just calls me Scudder, except that is explained by the fact that I have no friends) - from Kenyatta University is here at the eLearning Conference. Wainaina is the one who introduced me to the lovely west African saying, "my people are quiet," which is spoken in response to "How are you doing?" It means that everything is OK.

Planned Parenthood of Zambia

Walking back today along Church Road I came across a couple interesting sites, both relating, at least indirectly, to the HIV/AIDS problem. According to some research I did before I took off I think the HIV/AIDS rate in Zambia stands around 10%, and it is such a problem that the life expectancy here is only around forty years. However, much as I saw in Kenya, they aren't ignoring the problem because it is an unpleasant topic - although, to be fair, with a problem this big I guess it's difficult to ignore it. I passed by a chapter of the Planned Parenthood of Zambia, this one the Rachael Lumpa Memorial Reproductive Health Centre. I'm including a couple pictures of the services offered, which were prominently displayed along the street. About a block away there was a church which made AIDS prevention and testing a major part of their millennium program. The popular perception in the US is that the African churches are very conservative (at least as compared to their American counterparts), but obviously it's not that simple.

Walking in Lusaka

Since I got off to a late start this morning I didn't end up tackling any major sight-seeing today. Instead I decided to take off on a long walk. Unfortunately, there's not a lot to see right around the hotel. However, that's never stopped me in the past so I took off to see what I could see. So, I took a right turn, heading west, on Church Road and followed it a couple miles until it deadended into Cairo Road. My Lonely Planet Guidebook had warned that there the area around the corner of Church and Cairo was a haven for pickpockets, but it seemed OK when I was there - of course, it was also mid-afternoon and many of the shops were closed. The guidebook had also warned against going there at night, but I had no trouble today - that is, no one came up to pester me, offering to walk around and accompany me before asking for a loan (which has happened to me in Mumbai and Nairobi and Johannesburg, etc.). According to the guidebook Lusaka is a town of few charms - that is, not a lot of history or architecture. I did see a few substantial buildings, including the Bank of Zambia building which is pictured. I didn't see any western chain stores - no McDonald's or Burger Kings or Starbucks - but maybe that's just because this was an older area. I did see groupings of what I took to be local chain stores - Chicken Inn and Creamy Inn and Bakery Inn, which usually shared a common space. I went into a very modern grocery store called Shoprite on Cairo Road. It seemed very well-stocked with just about anything you might imagine buying. The prices were cheaper than you'd find in the US, although less than you'd think. I've included a picture of a ten pack of eggs that went for just over 9100 kwacha (about two dollars), which doesn't seem noticeably cheaper than than you'd find at Shaw's back home. Of course, I don't suspect that most Zambians would do their shopping at this particular grocery store.

15,000 Kwacha for coffee . . .

. . . Oh, yeah, thanks. One of the fun parts of travelling is negotiating the different currencies and exchange rates. It only becomes a challenge if you're tired or distracted or are on a long trip passing through several different countries. One time I almost paid $200 for a Christmas decoration in Budapest because I lost sight of the exchange rate of the forint (I had momentarily and erroneously calculated it out as $20, which was more than I wanted to pay but not insane). The exchange rate between the Zambian kwacha to the dollar is around 5000 kwacha to the dollar, which is easy to calculate but a little off-setting. So, when I slept through breakfast this morning I came down to grab a cup of coffee (the ubiquitous Nescafe) and read the Times of Zambia. The pot of coffee came to 15.000 kwacha, which is $3 and about what you'd think for a nicer hotel - same with the 50,000 kwacha cheeseburger (with egg on top - similar to the $30 cheeseburger I had last year in Dubai, and harkening back to the egg burger I popularized in college) I had for lunch today at the Jacaranda Restaurant here at the hotel.

Exhausted in Lusaka

For some reason I am preternaturally tired today. I don't know if it's a product of the 25 hours it took to get here or the virus I was fighting for the week before I left or the requisite, albeit mild, African stomach unrest, but I am just exhausted today. I went to bed last night around 9:00 and didn't wake up this morning until past 10:30 - which meant that it both threw off my schedule and blew my one free meal of the day. Doh! I hate to waste a day when I'm overseas but I may spend the day lounging. I scoured my Lonely Planet guide for things to do today - a museum sounded good - but the guidebook didn't suggest one. I may just go for a long walk instead. The Taj Pamodzi is located on Church Road, and that runs into Cairo Road, and that is more bustling (although also a haven for pickpockets). The conference doesn't start until tomorrow and I would like to go outside and do something.

Zambia

I've made it safe and sound to Zambia, and have checked into the posh Taj Pazmodzi. The driver was waiting and getting through customs was easy - and my suitcase made it all the way from Burlington to Lusaka. I have a nice room, with a balcony overlooking some blossoming jacaranda trees. Now, I'm heading over to work out and hit the pool - if I stop moving I'm going to collapse. I need to get my internal clock fixed. Later I'll head out to dinner and maybe try a Mosi, the Zambian national beer.

Back to Africa

OK, so I've made it as far as Johannesburg. I'm sitting in the gleaming Johannesburg International Airport, enjoying a caffe latte and a muffin. I had a pretty good breakfast an hour or so before the end of the marathon 15 hour flight from JFK, but I don't know if we'll eat on the flight to Lusaka - and I don't know how things will go once I get to Zambia. The entire terminal is awash with World Cup signs and souvenirs. The flight over on South African Airways was very comfortable, aided immeasurably by scoring a bulkhead (I used World Cup fever, and how it compared to what it was like in Atlanta during the Olympics, as my intro into chatting up the counterperson when I talked my way into a bulkhead). It also helped to have an individual video screen and a movie library, even if you're not that hot to see the movies. In between napping and eating three times I managed to watch six movies: Sherlock Holmes, Wolverine, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 27 Dresses, Must Love Dogs, and Something's Gotta Give. It does eat up a lot of hours. Now I just hope they flip over the movie list before my flight back. I'm just about exhausted - I figure by the time I land in Lusaka I'll have been travelling for a little over 25 hours. I think years of profound sleep apnea has left me uniquely qualified for international travel. That said, I really hope the driver is waiting for me at the airport - and I'm glad I went ahead and spent the money to get the Zambian visa early and not waited to do it at the airport. I want to get checked in, find a place to work out, and maybe grab a swim.

Life in Vermont

Yes, I'm insanely running around finishing reports and packing, but, nevertheless, took off a few hours to attend a roller derby doubleheader. The Green Mountain Derby Dames, our new roller derby team that plays once a month, has been so popular - and has attracted so many women looking to play - that they actually split in half and now we have two teams: the GMDD Black Ice Brawlers and the GMDD Grade A Fancy! It was the first game for the Black Ice Brawlers and they were absolutely destroyed by the Ithaca Bluestockings (it was something like 140-15 at half-time, and eventually the Bluestockings scored so many points that it eventually broke the scoreboard - the final score was 250-50). The second game was very close and our beloved Grade A Fancy lost a heartbreaker to the visiting Rhode Island Killah Bees. It was a raucous crowd. The women all skate under assumed names - our best skater goes by Star Slayer, and her number is 3.14. She was a little off tonight, and most of the hard work was done by Basher Barbie (#1BFF is her number). My favorite was The Atomic Muffin, and her number is 8HER. And, if you haven't figured it out from the name alone, it is becoming sort of a lesbian phenomenon - although the crowd was very diverse. The best player on the Killah Bees was number 72, Rhoda Perdition. At one point, in regards to a bizarre event during the match, the announcer said, "It rubs the lotion on its skin" - I just about fell backward over the bleachers I was laughing so hard. Unlike the roller derby I grew up watching, this was actually real and the women really enjoyed themselves - and there was a tremendous amount of collegiality in between the two teams, when they weren't actively trying to beat the hell out of each other. I'll definitely be back for the 12 June match!!

Saturday Night in Vermont

Yes, it's hard to keep up with the wild pace of life in Vermont. Recently I had the opportunity to experience it first hand. My friend Mike Lange invited me to attend the St. Albans Maple Festival Banquet. He had received two tickets for having judged the maple bake-off competition (which apparently almost put him into a diabetic coma, but what a way to go). So, after spending some time walking around the Maple Festival itself in the lovely town of St. Albans (it's about a half-hour or so of Burlington), we headed over to the banquet itself. Mike and I ended up sitting at a table with three very nice older couples from northern Vermont - and I did my best to try and convince them that the two male professors from the sin capital of Burlington were not actually married or CU'd (civil unioned) by starting every other sentence with the words "so, as I was saying to my girlfriend the other night . . ." (and if I actually had a girlfriend this wouldn't be so pathetic of a story). Of course, during the door prize session of the evening I won a flower, which wasn't helping my argument, so I immediately gave it to one of the nice ladies at our table - although Mike won another flower three drawings later and kept it. The meal was classic small town - the slab of ham they gave me was so big that it literally covered the plate (all of the other food was safely protected until the pork product "roof." The best part was maple on snow - that is, fresh maple syrup on vanilla ice cream. Oh my good god.

Out with the Boy

Here's a nice picture of my son. We've been able to spend some nice time together lately, although we're both hoping to carve off more time now that the summer is here. He drove me out to the Shelburne Pond nature trail and we had a really lovely walk. He really is a great kid.

Preparations

OK, things are, amidst the general chaos of my life (which just continues to spiral out of control), coming together for the Africa trip. I now have places to stay at every step along the way: the Taj Pamodzi in Lusaka, Zambia for five nights, the Lodge Menlo Park in Pretoria for four nights, and then the Radisson Blu Hotel in Port Elizabeth for two nights. They all look pretty nice. I tend to scrimp on hotels when I travel through Europe, but make up for it when I'm passing through Africa. What amazed me was how expensive the hotels were in Zambia (I knew they would be expensive in South Africa, especially in light of the upcoming World Cup). I had managed to forget that I was flying out of Burlington at 6:00 a.m. this coming Sunday morning (I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time). Actually, there wasn't much of a choice - my flight to Johannesburg leaves at 11:15 a.m. on Sunday morning, which doesn't leave a lot of options (short of staying over the night before). South African Airway flight 204 - 15 hours from JFK to Johannesburg - yikes! Then a two hour layover in Johannesburg on then a two hour flight to Lusaka (still working on the ride in to the airport in Lusaka - again, I never arrange flights at the airport, but Lusaka sounds like it may call for one). I don't know a soul in Lusaka, but I have a good friend in Johannesburg who will help with driving me around, and a GM contact at Port Elizabeth for help. So, if I make it through Zambia I should be fine. I've also picked up my latest malaria prescription, which is different than what I've used in the past (and, typically, CIGNA won't cover it - as compared to the cost of actually treating me for malaria, it, although expensive, seems like a drop in the bucket) - apparently the stuff I've used in the past no longer works in southern Africa (which is always good to hear). Now, if I could just get over this wretched virus I have (and get my voice back) I might be ready to go.