9.40am - chocolate croissant from Breadbar, outside of work
12.16h - Nady's Indonesian noodle dish, at Simpang Asia, with Nadya
12.16h - Nady's Indonesian noodle dish, at Simpang Asia, with Nadya
12.20h - my own Indonesian noodle dish, Mie Tek Tek, I think, at Simpang Asia, with Nady
12.52h - Chinese lychee taffy and some bolo pandan (pandan cake), which apparently owes its green color the juice of the pandan leaf (with the help of some food coloring, if you ask me). But this pandan leaf is also the stuff that is used in all the bright green Vietnamese, Thai and Malay desserts that you might see around. At Simpang Asia, with Nady.
16.47h - a corporate bagel - apparently, the lab sent over a bag for our team, at work
19.44h - Vietnamese egg rolls, at Pho99, with Ritesh
19.47h - veggie pho, at Pho 99, with Ritesh
22.43h - British prawn cocktail chips, while watching the brilliant "Battle of Algiers". Hadn't seen it since the golden undergrad days, and had forgotten what a great movie it was. Will have to include it in my personal pantheon, to the extent that you can have a pantheon of movies as opposed to directors...
And to think that when I traipsed through Algeria - volunteering first, and then traveling via Algiers and Constantine down to Ghardaia, a stunning desert oasis and UN World Heritage site somewhere south in the Sahara (via the most heart-stopping flight I've ever experienced, on a tiny, rickety old Air Algerie plane), and all this in the not very stable and welcoming period right before the Algerian Civil War - I did it to retrace the footsteps of Albert Camus, hero of my adolescence...
Not the best reason, I admit, but at least I went. I can't say I've met anyone since who's ever made the effort to see what Algeria is like, and certainly not here in the US.
I miss traveling, and living in a culture that encourages it. The problem with LA is that it is at the end of the world, and it thinks it's the center. The level of self-absorption here is legendary. It's astounding to me how many people I know here who never travel outside the US (except for a scurry just across the border to Mexico, which really doesn't count as abroad), and not because the can't afford it, but because they just can't be bothered. What can you say about people who have no interest in how other people live, and who prefer spending their money on gadgets and games and "entertaining" themselves, to the extent that they become blind to the world outside?
The guy who sold me my chocolate croissant at Breadbar this morning sounded like he was from Senegal, and indeed he was. We chatted for a little while, he told me about his family and about how Dakar has changed since I was there in the late 1990s.
At the time, we went to Senegal not by plane, but by car - driving all the way from Germany, through France and Spain, via ferry to Africa, crossing Morocco from Tangiers via Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir, south of which the paved road becomes gravel first and then sand as far as you can see. Driving across the Sahara. The disputed territory between Morocco and Mauritania. Having a car break down and being helped by the Polisario, Western Sahara independence fighters. Then joining a convoy, accompanied by Moroccan military until what they consider the end of Moroccan territory, then on our own, following traces in the sand to avoid land mines, on a trail marked by burnt out cars. A few nights, including my birthday, in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, where we were invited to a wedding by the mechanic who fixed our car. Hiring a local driver to get us through the worst of the sand outside of Nouakchott. Then driving on ourselves, joining some French car smugglers for company, until finally getting to cross the river Senegal. Our radiator blew for the second and final time, but we kept going, having learnt useful tricks to stuff the holes in it with tobacco from the inside, and soap from the outside. Stopping every 10km to let it cool down, pour in more water w/ tobacco and apply more soap, we made it all the way south to Dakar, where the car finally died, nullifying plans to go on to Mali. What a trip. In retrospect, this was pretty irresponsible traveling, and I wasn't so happy about leaving a trashed car there, either, although the guy we donated it to was pretty ecstatic about it.
And the guy who sold me my chocolate croissant didn't seem bothered either. I didn't tell him the whole story, but he said he was happy and proud that I got to see his homeland, and that in all his years in the US, he'd never met anyone who'd been to Senegal. Go figure. There's people here who haven't even been to Canada.
But who knows, I guess on some simple principle, it's better for the environment not to travel and just stay put :(
2 comments:
Great trip! What was irresponsible about it?
setting out to cross the Sahara in a two-wheel drive. Wouldn't recommend it. This is one place where you need a four-wheel drive (not to drop your kids off at school in Beverly Hills). We wouldn't have made it without help from others, and that can be an easy recipe for disaster. We were really lucky.
There's a stretch of desert in Mauritania that's so unnavigable that you have to drive right along the Atlantic coast, literally on the beach, for several hours. And as elsewhere when driving on sand, you have to go really fast or you sink and get stuck. The beach is narrow, so you have a huge sand dune on your left, and the Atlantic coming in from your right, since this beach is only open when the tide is low. So if you get stuck, you likely won't have time to shovel your car free again. You can save yourself and find some nomads a few dunes over who will organize some truck to pull you out during the next low tide, but your car's a wreck. This happens all the time. As I said, we were lucky. And I got a good workout shoveling sand.
But I so wish I'd had a video camera at the time, or at least taken pictures of the food! Great tagines in Morocco, and lots of canned tuna in the desert, from what I remember...
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