How much is an idea worth? How about a kernel of an idea? What about a friendship? Those are just a few of the questions asked and to some degree answered in David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network, a quasi-historical account of the founding of Facebook.
I was skeptical when I first heard about this project for a number of reasons. First of all these events barely qualify as capital “H”-history since they happened just seven years ago and the true impact of Facebook remains unknown (although there is an interesting scene where Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s anti-hero founder, is attending a lecture given by Bill Gates where he talks about the challenges of creating BASIC and you realize that in the internet age, Microsoft hails from an entirely different epoch than Facebook; the difference between the two isn’t so much Ford and Toyota as it is the horse-drawn carriage and BMW). Second: how do you effectively dramatize a bunch of kids coding in their dorm rooms and sniping at each other through lawyers over intellectual property theft? The answer in cheeky hindsight is that you get Aaron Sorkin to script it and David Fincher to direct.
Somehow this was more compelling than watching a guy age backwards--go figure.
Sorkin, perhaps best known for his work on the much lauded The West Wing (which I’ve never seen--an admission liable to get my liberal-pass revoked), springboarding from Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires” has crafted a beast of a script. All the characters speak with the type of wit and humor that generally comes to us long after a conversation has ended if ever. He sort of inverts the rule of less is more: why say in five words what you can say in fifty? Most of the actors employ a rapid fire "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" delivery that keeps the film humming. This technique gives the movie a kinetic verve that's quite impressive to behold (keep an ear out during the first meeting with Sean Parker: pure fireworks).
The opening scene is the aural equivalent of Saving Private Ryan's brutal Omaha Beach invasion. Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg hanging out with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend speaks with growing ardency about the infamous Harvard Final clubs, places that only allow the elite-est of the elite. It soon escalates into a verbal sparring match that culminates in both sides launching volleys of insecurity-seeking missiles. Later that night, the jilted Zuckerberg in a drunken hissy-fit creates a website that inadvertently leads to the creation of Facebook.
The film's perspective comes mainly from Eduardo Saverin, the somewhat hapless but well-intentioned co-founder of Facebook played with dewy-eyed innocence by Andrew Garfield. We watch as he gets slowly excised from the increasingly lucrative enterprise after providing the seed money for Zuckerberg to get it off the ground. If the film has a weakness, it's that it doesn't really take the time to establish how close he and Zuckerberg were before impending fame and fortune tore them apart. From the outset Zuckerberg just treats him with so much passive-aggressive vindictiveness, we wonder why Saverin is friends with such an obvious tool.
Granted there are ungodly sums of money involved in the dispute, but the film does an excellent job of conveying the idea that it wasn't ultimately about the money. After a certain point, tacking on zeroes becomes like gaining the high score in a video game: you’re just looking to distance yourself from the competition and leave them in awe of your prowess. None of the film’s characters' great-grandchildren will ever have to worry about money, specifically the litigants who felt Zuckerberg screwed them over.
No what these people are fighting over is something beyond money. Zuckerberg believes he’s invented something that will profoundly impact life in the 21st century. He’s not thinking jackpot; he’s thinking legacy: Gates, Rockefeller, Ford, Vanderbilt, men who left an imprint on the world. He starts off as a kid determined to infiltrate the exclusive social circles of the world’s most prestigious university. Mark wants entree into the inner sanctum of the wealthy scions and aristocratic jocks for reasons never fully explored (validation? recognition? coolest parties?). As he begins to realize the potential of Facebook, he sets his sights higher, much higher.
Jesse Eisenberg deserves a ton of accolades for his portrayal of Zuckerberg. He just looks physically tight as if he finds the world itself a constricting and discomforting place. He only ever relaxes when sitting in front of a computer monitor. You believe him as this awkward genius who despite his verbal dexterity is unable to connect with people in a normal way. The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Armie Hammer who with some technical wizardry plays...ah, I don't wanna spoil it, but it's a nifty trick.
The real revelation here is Justin Timberlake. While he’s never embarrassed himself on screen (he had some decent turns in Alpha Dog and Black Snake Moan, not to mention his stints on SNL), he’s also never threatened to hijack an entire movie as he does with his portrayal of Napster co-founder Sean Parker, the erstwhile Silicon Valley prodigy turned flameout. Timberlake delivers an atropine shot to the film every time he’s on screen. His Sean Parker is possessed of an almost preternatural charisma that ropes in the audience as much as it does Mark Zuckerberg. As my friend said on the way out, "One day this guy is going to win an Oscar." In the words of Antoine Dodson, "You can run and tell that!"
Of course you can't do a movie about Facebook without showing it. Kudos to the filmmakers for how smoothly they managed to integrate it into the film. There are a few scenes that rang pretty authentic to me like this exchange:
"How come your status is single on Facebook?"
"What? That's what it was when I started and I don't know how to change it!"
"You're telling me you're the CFO of Facebook and you don't know how to change your status?"
"Yes, you should look at that as a sign of trust that I'd even admit that to you!"
At its core, The Social Network is about class and the upheaval the Zuckerbergs of the world are creating in the upper stratosphere. He doesn't just represent "new money," but a sort of regime change. There's a particularly cutting line of dialogue in the film where Zuckerberg is telling his lawyer that the blue blood twins who are suing him are only doing so because, "for the first time in their lives, things aren't going the way they want them to." Individuals like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, Sergei Brinn and Larry Page--they are the new masters of the universe. They control the gates now and they're letting they're friends inside. And the old elite can't stand it. At least that's what the movie seems to drive at.
The Social Network makes a perfect bookend with another film about American capitalism: P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood. In Anderson's film the ferocious oilman Daniel Plainview embodied the ruthless spirit of early 20th century capitalism. Zuckerberg isn't the 21st-century equivalent of Plainview, at least not in this film. But as depicted on screen, he does embody a new class of entrepreneur, one for whom ideas are the most valuable commodity one can possess. After all, the difference in form and function between say Myspace and Facebook is a matter of degree, but one is worth about ten times the other.
It should be noted that the real-life Zuckerberg is probably a far more fascinating character than the fictionalized one. Here's a kid who at twenty-three had a cold enough pokerface to not even bat an eyelash when Microsoft's Steve Ballmer offered $15 billion dollars for his company in 2007. One day I hope to see a movie about that guy. Until then, The Social Network will more than suffice.
Extraneous thought, tangentially related: As a Facebook user, I kept thinking how the application had become a part of my life and that of my friends. I’m still not sure what it is. It’s as pervasive as the cell phone at this point and has probably done more to shift an entire generation’s views on privacy than anything else. When people talk about Facebook, it's an organic thing integrated into their lives like television or Starbucks. Several times in the movie, Zuckerberg and company talk about how they've invented this "cool thing," but have no idea what it will/can become. I think we're all still trying to find that out.
A few months ago a close friend of mine asked if I’d be willing to join him and a small group on an expedition to Mount Kilimanjaro. At the time I only had a passing familiarity with the place. I knew Kilimanjaro was in Africa, but I had no idea where. Discovering it was in Tanzania didn’t really help since outside of maybe a dozen countries the continent was an unsolved jigsaw to me.
International geography like history is one of those subjects we get exposed to before we might find it really interesting or useful and then we're never directed towards it again. Thinking about it, I’m rather embarrassed at how limited my knowledge is regarding where things are located in the world. Looking at a map of the region, I'd completely forgotten the Indian Ocean existed. Figure I need to spend some time with my old friend Carmen Sandiego.
I’m a bit lackadaisical when it comes to preparing for trips so, despite having several months lead time, I didn’t get the bulk of the recommended equipment until two days before I left. A bit of advice for anyone interested in mountaineering: it ain’t a cheap hobby. Kheiry, our trip's organizer, provided a novella-length checklist, a procrastinator's nightmare.
I’m indebted (in gratitude and coin) to the wonderful salespeople at Tent and Trails in lower Manhattan. Their assistance was indispensable. They made sure I had everything I needed down to the skivvies (tagline of the brand I bought, Ex-Officio: "17 countries, 6 weeks, 1 pair of underwear"--the clerk made a point to let me know these were under no circumstances returnable; apparently this had been an issue in the past).
After I filled the third basket, I stopped mentally calculating the damage, but the cashier told me to take a deep breath and brace myself before I looked at the receipt. As has been noted, beware all enterprises that require new clothes.
From Prada's 2011 Darque Continent Collection
The trip’s biggest selling point was that it would provide my first foray into Africa. I've thought of going many times, but the continent is so vast that I had no idea where to start. Kilimanjaro solved that problem for me quite nicely.
The trip would go a long way towards chiseling away the stubborn idea of Africa as a monolithic entity. It's never been a collection of homogeneous nations, but we often discuss it that way ("The problem with Africa..."); I've found myself falling prey to that tendency in the past. My visits to Beirut and Dubai helped break that habit with respect to the Middle East; I figured a trip to Tanzania would have a similar effect.
Stepping onto the tarmac at Kili International Airport the first thing I noticed was the quiet. Transported a million miles from a single electronic billboard, there were no herds of passengers simultaneously scrambling for their cellphones, no talking heads incessantly droning on from flatscreens, no skyscrapers illuminating the skyline in the distance. The constant assault on the senses that city dwellers become inured to after a while had ceased. Instead darkness and calm spread in every direction. It was like coming off a drug.
From the moment the immigration agent saw my passport, I heard a question that would arise countless times:
“What part of Africa are you from?”
“No, I’m from America.”
“Oh, what part of Africa are your parents from?”
“Um, Detroit?”
I tried to explain the origin of my name in the simplest terms. I’m not sure it made sense to them. Whenever I struck up conversation with one of the tour guides, he would always have a puzzled look on his face after I told him I had no family in Africa as far as I knew. That line was bifurcated a few centuries ago.
I explained that I'd have to do genetic testing to trace the tree back that far. Slave owners weren’t the best bookkeepers unfortunately. If it was too expensive, one guide told me I'd be better off using the money for another vacation perhaps to the West coast of Africa; I at least might run into somebody who looks like me. The guides also tried to parse the meaning of my name and came up with “No people.” In Swahili: “Si” – no, “Watu” – people. I found this mildly perturbing.
I will spare readers the details about how comfortable our group became discussing the particulars of certain bodily functions. I’ll just say we spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the regularity, color and consistency of our “ones” and “twos”—usually over meals. And it seemed perfectly natural like talking about how things were going at work. The wilderness does strange things to a person.
What follows are observations, thoughts and reflections on the climb and my trips into the city of Moshi afterward. If nothing else, I hope the pictures are interesting.
Day One – Dressed to Kili – Camp Simba, elev. 2650m
All hail the porter! Earth's mightiest heroes!
We spent more time driving than hiking the first day. Kheiry had chosen the Rongai route which would require five-and-a-half days to summit the mountain and one day to get back down. In order to get to this route, we had to start on the side of the mountain near the Kenyan border, a four-hour drive. The long drive allowed us to get acquainted with the Kilimanjaro community.
Villages sprawled across the lower region of the mountain. We passed countless homes, shops and schools. All the shops had the exact same sign--a young caramel-skinned woman with wavy hair in profile swigging a Coke. The names varied, but every store used that same sign. I really wanted to go to the store that sold those signs. Human traffic streamed up and down the sides of the roads as we drove past, mainly school children in color-coordinated uniforms and women carrying impossibly balanced cargo on their heads: bushels of corn, clothes, wood, supplies, etc.
One of my companions decided to shout “Jambo!” (‘hello’ in Swahili) in an amiable manner at all the people we passed. He got about a 90% response rate complete with waves and smiles. I hate to generalize about an entire country of people but I have to say, Tanzanians, in my admittedly limited experience, are some of the most unfailingly polite and genuinely helpful individuals I’ve ever met. They do expect tourists to tip for pretty much everything imaginable, but even in this the people I dealt with were never pushy or overly aggressive.
Camping was not a part of my upbringing. The last time I’d been in a tent was probably during middle school when my friends would sleep over in the summer. We’d tuck a sheet into the plastic frame of my box fan, turn it on and voila! instant tent. I have no recollection of ever sleeping outdoors in the wilderness, not even in the backyard.
In the city you might briefly mistake the wing-lights from an outbound plane for a star, but out in the wild you're beneath a canopy of brilliant constellations. Sure New York can be magnificent, but our relatively blank skies are still a sharp reminder of how tightly cocooned we are. There is something oddly comforting about sleeping outdoors. One of my travel mates said we'd miss it when we got back. I could see that.
Presidential Suite @ the Kili Hilton
Our chief guide looked to be in his late twenties, early thirties. His name was Joseph, but he went by Photo. This nickname came from his profession before he was a guide. He made a living taking pictures at weddings and graduations. I never asked if he still did photography as a hobby. “6:45, we will wake you up. 7:15, warm water for washing. 7:30, breakfast. 8:00, finish packing. 8:30, we get moving.” He would repeat this list to us every morning.
If someone tried to force him to skip ahead, he’d balk, staring at you silently for a moment before restarting his list from the beginning. His monotone recitation reminded me of the automated voice-recording we used to call in order to get the time. After a while it became one of those things that was simultaneously endearing and nerve-wracking.
Mawenzi peak, 3 days travel time
Day Two – A Time To Kili – Second Cave Camp, elev. 3450m
Day two set the routine for the trip: get up early, eat breakfast, hike for roughly three to four hours. Arrive at a new camp, eat lunch, hike to higher altitude for acclimatization purposes, eat dinner around 6-6:30, attempt to sleep by 8 or 9 at the latest. That may seem early, but your body is so exhausted you’ll want to collapse right after dinner. The biggest difficulty was forcing ourselves to stay up a bit later so we didn't wake up restless in the tar black pre-dawn. Thank god for Uno.
We'd come during the dry season. Our feet kicked up billowing clouds of reddish-brown dust as we hiked along the trail. You couldn't avoid the stuff. By the end of the day, I felt powdered head-to-toe like a doughnut. I could taste the grit in my mouth and my nose turned into a coal mine. I would have gladly donned one of those white masks the germaphobes wear when there's an exotic flu outbreak.
The first day we walked through rainforest, but by the second day the landscape had become far more rugged with sparser vegetation and lots of rocks. We were entering the desert portion of our trip which meant...even more dust. Yay.
Nice camo
Day Three – Kili Me Softly – Camp Kikelelwa, elev. 3600m
I felt a cold coming on. My nose was quickly becoming a faucet and a source of constant aggravation. We trekked through the alpine desert, much of the terrain blanketed in a thick mist. As we pressed on, the fog lifted and the contours of the mountain became visible. The vistas were magnificent with valleys and peaks stretching as far as the eye could see.
One of the first phrases we learned in Swahili was "pole, pole" (pronounced po-lay, po-lay) which means "slowly, slowly." It was our guides' favorite phrase and apparently a national catchphrase as I saw it on a bunch of merchandise later. Our hikes were always to go "pole, pole" for two reasons. The first was that they didn't want us to exhaust ourselves since we'd be hiking for more than a quarter of the day. The second was that we had to give the porters time to get ahead of us and set up camp.
The porters would always overtake us at the outset of our hikes. They moved effortlessly somehow mounted with a ton of provisions and equipment. Most of the men had been up the mountain more than eighty times. They had grown up around the mountain so they were pretty acclimated to the altitude and all of its various terrains. Here I was in expensive hiking boots and some of these guys were wearing trainers. Unbelievable.
Day Four – Brokeblack Mountain – Mawenzi Tarn Hut, elev. 4330m
The head cold was taking its toll. During the second hike for acclimatization, I found myself a bit wobbly and generally depleted. All I wanted to do was sleep. One of the guides named Kareem had taken to looking after me; he kept me from falling on the way back, taking me by the hand and guiding me over some of the steeper embankments. Being sick on a mountain combines all kinds of awful. I wanted a hot shower and a bed with a comforter and a shot of Nyquil.
The jagged peaks of Mawenzi were climbable at some point, but the rock was too porous to withstand the repeated use of more invasive mountain-climbing gear. The Tanzanian government has prohibited climbers from even attempting to climb past a certain point for some years now. I hope this allows the peaks to be preserved for many decades to come. They are quite breathtaking.
The intrepid Dr. B
The one thing I was quite thankful for was the food. Every day we received three square meals. Breakfast usually consisted of a healthy variety of fruits: mango, tangerines, oranges, watermelon, etc. followed by fried eggs and sausage with piles of toast. We also got porridge which everybody else thought was too watery, but I quite enjoyed. Reminded me of Malt-o-Meal. Almost every day we got a hot lunch: fried fish, chicken, stew, rice, beef and a host of other dishes.
Every dinner began with a surprisingly delicious soup. I had no clue there was a such thing as cucumber soup or that it could actually taste amazing. I usually had three or four bowls of whatever the soup du jour happened to be. A couple of times we got the national dish, a "vegetarian" stew (as Kareem hilariously described it once) with plantains, potatoes and beef. Other nights it was pasta with meat skewers or rice with a rich meat sauce. I ate better on the mountain than I had in months.
Day Five – Through the Black Gates of Mordor – Kibo Hut, elev. 4700m
The previous night I made the mistake of taking a half-dose of Diamox, the drug used to treat acute mountain sickness. I hadn’t been experiencing any negative effects from the altitude, but somebody recommended it as a preventative measure. I’d also taken a Thera-flu-like medication to help me sleep through the night without waking up to constantly clear my sinuses.
I didn’t realize the Diamox was a diuretic which completely defeated the purpose of the other medication. I ended up scrambling out of the tent no less than three times that night in the freezing cold to relieve myself. Suffice it to say, this did not help my condition. Lucky for me there would be only one hike scheduled for the day—Kibo Hut, the highest elevation we’d be stationed at before the ascent to the summit of Kili. One three-hour hike I could manage. Once we arrived I could rest, at least for a few hours. We were scheduled to begin our ascent around 11:30pm.
Kheiry gave us a final talk during dinner about the summit climb. He explained that the height we were ascending to (nearly 6,000m) would trigger unpredictable physical responses. The oxygen levels are significantly lower and you’ll feel your body working that much harder. So far, I’d only noticed an increased heart-rate. Symptoms to look out for included nausea, dizziness, vomiting and shortness of breath. Kheiry let it be known that this would be ten times harder than any physical endeavor we’d ever undertaken, mentally and physically.
Statistically speaking, one or more our band of seven wouldn’t make the peak (40% of people don’t summit Kili). More straight talk than pep. Reminded me of those medical school dramatizations where they tell everybody to look to their left and right, because one of them wouldn't make it through. Photo was a bit more encouraging explaining that due to the longer acclimatization we’d undertaken and the fact that we’d all made it this far boded well for an attempt to reach the summit. He did mention that puking three times was within the realm of acceptable; beyond three though and they might escort you back down the mountain. Three times?
We were roused from our various states of rest at a quarter to eleven. I’d been dressed since dinner, so I didn’t have much to do. It was less cold than I anticipated, but that could have been the tremendous amount of layering I’d done. I had on a windbreaker, a soft down shell, a fleece, a long-sleeved shirt, a polyester t-shirt and a thermal top along with windbreaker pants, hiking pants, thermal bottoms, liner socks, extra-thick socks, a balaclava, a skullcap, and thick-padded gloves. I felt like a Russian nesting doll.
The full moon illuminated the mountainside. We wouldn’t need our headlamps. The shimmering blue and gray surface was made up of a material called scree: a mixture of crushed and pulverized rock. During the day, the scree has a sand-like consistency making it very difficult to traverse vertically. The scree freezes in the frigid night clime, making it compact and easier to gain traction. With each measured step you could hear the stuff crunch beneath your boots as you zigzagged your way up the mountain.
It would take about six hours. The whole time I looked at my feet and the boots of the person ahead of me. You couldn’t really look anywhere else lest you trip over an errant rock or miss a turn. Also if you stopped to look up, you could get discouraged as the mountain seemed to extend forever into the sky. The trail of headlamps snaking their way towards the top above and below us was quite mesmerizing though.
Day Six - Last Night a DJ Saved My Life – Summit, Uhuru Peak, elev. 5895m
I’m not sure how everybody else dealt with the monotony of the climb, but I thank Steve Jobs for my sanity. I created a playlist of a few hundred songs on my Nano; I figured I’d run out of mountain before I ran out of music. I plowed through a few Radiohead and Nirvana albums, mellowing things out with a bit of Tricky and Bjork later on.
When we had just one hour left to go and I felt myself mentally and physically ready to succumb to the rigor of what we were trying to do, I knew I could only turn to one man for help: Gucci Mane. Who else could generate enough mind-obliterating ignorance to annihilate my ability to form coherent thought? I needed to be on total auto-pilot.
Sunrise on the roof of Africa
We reached Gillman's Point, the penultimate summit at 6:00a.m. roughly, right on schedule. Kareem acted as a human crutch, pushing and prodding me to the first checkpoint. Each time my step felt unsure, he was there to brace me and guide me upwards and onwards. The hour-and-a-half trek to Uhuru, the true summit, I gutted out with Kheiry and Kareem at my side. We were the first three from our group to make it to the tip-top.
When we finally reached the summit at Uhuru, I dropped my poles and turned to hug Kareem. He seemed as happy for me as I was. My eyes welled with tears and I was overwhelmed. I told Kheiry that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to punch him or kiss him.
I am not a religious man. So I've never quite understood the idea of feeling humbled yet elated in the presence of a higher power. Yet I felt something very akin to that when we reached the summit. Standing on the top of the mountain, it started making perfect sense.
Perhaps it was the combination of exhaustion, relief and the lack of oxygen, but I was overcome with a profound sense of joy and humility that brought me near to tears several times. The world felt so enormous and I felt so small and fragile. I thought to myself no matter how insignificant I may be in the scheme of it all, I'm still a part of all of this somehow and that left me speechless. It's not every day you have a profound experience.
The scene was surreal. Around me people were either smiling deliriously with tears in their eyes or looking as though they’d just been dragged from the grave. I also passed a few people retching their guts out. How terrible that must be since you still have to climb down the mountain to get your body back to normal. I wanted to go over and tell them as long as that wasn't the fourth time, they'd be okay.
It’s practically another world up there. You see glaciers banded with brilliant hues of blue and white in the near distance and on the other side a vast crater reminiscent of Mars. Kili is a dormant volcano and the whole time I'm glancing down the side of the rim thinking how easy it would be for me to tumble down the side. If this were in America, they'd have to install handrails to avoid lawsuits.
The glaciers used to be even more massive, but global warming...
The descent proved to actually be fun as we literally slalomed down the face of the mountain, our feet gliding over the scree rock. In the distance clouds of dust from other climbers headed down billowed up. I still had to stop every twenty or so minutes to catch my breath. Kareem kept admonishing me not to sleep as I would close my eyes for the briefest of moments when we sat down to break. By the time I made it back to camp it was 10:00a.m. It took about two hours to get down. I peeled off my boots and fell asleep before my head hit the packed sleeping bag that served as my makeshift pillow.
Me and Kareem - "There goes my hero!/He's ordi-na-ree!"
Day Seven – Harombo Camp, elev. 3700m
Seven hours of trekking lied between us and civilization. The descent took us through terrain we’d not experienced yet on the trip. The tropical rainforest was unlike the one from the beginning of the hike. On both sides of the trail there was lush dense forest with all kinds of colorful flowers that begged to be admired. There were also a series of small waterfalls scattered along the way. I wish I hadn't been so tired coming down or else I would have taken more time to document it all. As it was, I could only think: "Just a couple of hours until running water..."
Hey, hey we're the Monkees!
Day 8-9 - The Quiet American
After bidding my companions a bittersweet farewell as they departed for the recovery portion of the trip in nearby Zanzibar, I made my way into town to get a feel for Moshi. It was a leisurely half-hour walk from the resort complex to the city proper. All I had to do was follow the train tracks. There was a road, but the dust was too much. Every now and again a truck or van would come tearing up the unpaved road creating a cloud that blotted out everything. You couldn't escape the stuff.
Once in town, I suppressed my natural impulse to haggle with the shopkeepers as if I were back home shopping on Canal Street. Sure you could get a merchant to knock off a few thousand shillings from the first price offered, but what they end up losing far outweighs the paltry savings I earn. A few extra dollars stay in my pocket, but it may mean eating well for a week or more to the family of the merchant.
During my first trip into Moshi, a man named George took it upon himself to escort me around with the stipulation that I check out his curio shop. George was a clean cut, congenial young man perhaps in his mid-twenties. He spoke very fluent English. He told me about the obstacles towards owning his own tour business, particularly the cost of the license: $2,000 USD. When you adjust for the cost of living, that'd be like having to shell out fifty grand.
He was planning on becoming a guide; porter work was too strenuous and paid practically nothing. As we crossed a busy street, he joked that the traffic laws were different in Moshi than from the states. As in they don’t seem to have any. I think Lebanese drivers would fare well.
The main marketplace
George was of great assistance and I did return the favor by making a few purchases in his shop. He told me things were progressing in the country, but there was still a long way to go. Politically things were fairly stable. There were no internecine religious or tribal struggles threatening to tear the country apart. And they didn't have pirates.
They just needed to industrialize more so that they weren't so dependent on tourism. After we concluded our business, he asked if he could friend me on Facebook. God, I love technology. It's changing the world in ways we can't even comprehend right now.
Chinese Grocery. The name is just to differentiate it from other grocery stores.
Walking back to the resort, I took note of the surrounding neighborhoods. The houses had painted concrete walls, topped with corrugated tin roofs, brown with rust and dirt. They didn't seem to be shanties exactly although I did spy a number of ramshackle houses that looked susceptible to a strong gust of wind.
The only distressing thing was watching the children play barefoot in the dirt. They seemed oblivious and happy, but it just looked like abject poverty to me. I think about the resentment African immigrants in the states sometimes seem to have towards African-Americans descended from slaves. There is a sense that we've wasted the opportunities a country as rich as America has afforded us. Of course this elides a great deal, but if I came from a place with living conditions such as those in Moshi, I'd probably feel the same way.
Sandals made from used tires
When I first arrived, one of my traveling companions asked if I felt a connection to the land. I can't say I felt a kinship with the land or its people. That would be too strong a word, although there is a vague sense of recognition. Instead I'm struck with a strong desire to know the history of the place.
There is so much I don't know. What was the continent like before the Europeans divvied the place up? Everyone knows Egypt, but what of the dozens of other countries. Were they even countries or are most artificial creations like Iraq, disparate groups bound together with the stroke of a cartographer's pen? I don't even know where to begin. I suppose that's the next expedition I'll need to embark on.
Born and raised in Detroit. When food became scarce and the white man began occupying our homeland, I migrated to the island of Manhattan eventually moving to Brooklyn due to high rents.
