I don't usually get bathed by a half-naked man I just met. But that's apparently what you do at a Turkish hamam--and frankly, I loved it. After all, Mike was right beside me, with his head and toes sticking out from under a mountain of bubbles. We were taking part in a tradition that's continued at this public bath in Istanbul, Turkey, for hundreds of years.

We were at the city's Suleymaniye Hamam, which was built in 1557 by the renowned Turkish architect Mimar Sinan for Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566. Outside the very room in which we bathed was a plaque that told us the Sultan had also frequently bathed there. That made our treatment seem especially royal, even when my bath attendant, or tellak, smacked me on the back and doused me with icy cold water. 

I'd chosen this particular hamam not only for its history, but because it is reportedly the only one in the city that allows couples to go through the experience together--other hamams are separated by sex. At 35 euros (about $43) per person, it was also a bit less expensive than some of the other famous hamams in Istanbul.  

When we arrived, we were handed plaid cotton towels, a bikini top, and a pair of shorts. The man who ushered us to the changing room said, "Man wears bikini, woman just towel," and then laughed. After changing, we both were given little wooden shoes with black straps at the toes, which clip-clopped on the marble floor as we were led to the steam room. Inside it was as hot and humid as a Nebraska corn field in the summer. The surfaces were made of pale gray marble, and light poked through holes in the domed roof. It was a beautiful place to suffer. Mike said, "This isn't very enjoyable, but I like it." I knew exactly what he meant. Even my shins were sweating, but I felt like this was a good thing.

After about 20 minutes or so, two tellak escorted us into a side room where they cooled us off with cold water, scrubbed us with a loofah, covered us with piles of bubbles, and massaged us until we were jello. My tellak also shampooed my hair. He seemed to punctuate each step with a slap, maybe to wake me up or perhaps he was just having fun. I was, too. Looking across at Mike, he seemed more relaxed than I've seen him in months. I smiled and bubbles popped on my cheeks.
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"Welcome to Jordan," shopkeepers, waiters, perfume sellers, and taxi drivers called out as we walked down the streets of the capital, Amman, on our first evening in the country. If we stopped to say "Shukran!" ("Thank you" in Arabic), we might get the follow-up questions "First time Jordan? Where you from?" When we said we are from the U.S., we were always welcomed again. "America good," with a thumbs up. 

This is probably not the reception most Americans expect from a Muslim country bordered by Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine. But Jordanians are renowned for their hospitality. Many of the residents are of Bedouin descent. A traditionally nomadic ethnic group, the Bedouin have long endured life in a bitterly dry and hot landscape, in part through their honor code of diyafa. Every traveler, even an enemy, must be offered shelter, food, and protection if she or he approaches a Bedouin tent in the desert. 

In the modern city of Amman, diyafa showed up in a handful of salted melon seeds our taxi driver passed back to us without a word. On our walk to dinner, a vendor gave us a free taste of a freshly cracked almond--he broke the shell with his hands--and a dried fig covered in powdered sugar. At the outdoor eatery Hashem (where I had the most creamy, garlicky, spicy, delicious hummus of my life), the table next door passed over a falafel ball stuff with onions and peppers. They hardly paid attention as we ate it, as though we were already members of their family. The waiter, Said, wearing a muscle T-shirt and a big toothy smile, shook my hand. "Welcome to Jordan," he said. 

To get to Dubai from Muscat, we bused through northern Oman, past flatlands of bone white desert and scrubby, half-dead trees. Outside it was about 115 °F. If heat had a physical form, it would be this landscape. Once in the United Arab Emirates--which consists of seven independent city-states, including Dubai--we passed a road sign indicating a camel crossing. Far in the distance of this dry, hot world, I saw two tall, golden, humped shapes nibbling on the shrubs.   

Dubai surfaced from the emptiness like Las Vegas does. All of the sudden, freeways snaked around us. McMansions fronted the roads. Shopping malls hulked. Silver-paned skyscrapers watched over it all with cool, elegant indifference.

It wasn't until sunset, when we explored the area around our hotel, the XVA, that I realized I might actually enjoy this city. Dubai is divided by a "creek," which is really a large inlet from the Persian Gulf. Walking along it, we watched the criss-crossing of water taxis, each one filled with a collection of women in black-robed abayas, men in the long white shirt-dresses called dishdashas, and tourists in their mishmash of T-shirts and sports sandals. Old wooden dhows crowded the banks, and behind them stood the blocky modern buildings of banks, including one from Iran, located just across the Gulf. People from all over the world passed by us, wearing colorful saris, headscarves, floppy hats, and taqiyah (Muslim caps). With the skyscraper lights starting to glitter on the water, the scent of jasmine and frankincense perfume in the air, and the sound of the call-to-prayer undulating from the nearby mosque, I felt I had been transported to the capital of another planet and another time. The Mos Eisley Cantina from Star Wars might have been just around the corner. 

There's a reason why Dubai feels so otherworldly. More than 80 percent of the city's population is foreign-born, with especially large groups of immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. The result is a cosmopolitan mix that centers more on the East than the West, unlike in other bustling international cities like London and New York. 

After wandering down the textile souq, where rainbow piles of fabric lined the stores and vendors called out "Pashminas! 10 dirhams!," we had dinner at Bait Al Wakeel. The food was expensive and poorly prepared, but the the view was worth it. Sitting on a balcony overlooking the creek and its busy boat traffic, we felt we were in the middle of the water, with the alive, awake energy of nighttime Dubai swooshing around us.

On our way back to the hotel, we followed a stream of people turning down a small alleyway. Suddenly we were in a tiny corridor, filled with Indians and little shops selling fragrant garlands of jasmine and marigolds, hundreds of tiny statues of Hindu gods, and smoky incense. Piles of shoes rested at the foot of several staircases, which led up to a temple. There were no tourists around. We had found a passage to India, a street named Hindi Lane, in the middle of the Middle East. 

That's when I thought, I love Dubai. 

Since the movie night in Malawi (last post) in March, I've gone on a walking safari in Zambia, river rafted the Zambezi in Zimbabwe, navigated the waterways of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, slept under the stars in the desert in Namibia, road-tripped through South Africa, pony-trekked in Lesotho, gotten a speeding ticket in Swaziland, boogie-boarded on the beach in Mozambique, and bought frankincense in Muscat, Oman. It's been an absolutely amazing trip. Unfortunately, wireless Internet access, which I need to complete a blog post, has either been very limited, very expensive, or very slow throughout most of this journey. I think a blog should cover relatively current information, so I've decided to begin my writing again with my most recent travels in Dubai. I'll look for another way to publish stories about my adventures in southern Africa. 

Thanks so much for reading! It's been such a pleasure to share these travels with you.

Jennica

At the Malawian fishing village of Cape Maclear (also called Chembe), an unexpected invitation led to one of the highlights of our trip. A retired Dutch man named Gerrit van Engelen, who spends several months a year in Cape Maclear, has imported a movie projector and screen. He uses these to show children’s movies to kids under the stars twice a week. Gerrit calls this non-profit project Tipezananso (“We see each other again!” in the local language of Chichewa). In March, Gerrit was staying at the same lodge as us, Fat Monkeys, and he asked us if we’d like to join him for a screening.

We walked with Gerrit through the village of about 15,000, down the dirt road past candle-lit, thatched-roof shops selling bottled sodas, candies, eggs, and milk. The central part of the town had electricity and was buzzing with local people enjoying the cool evening air. A block away, a crowd of kids was still gathered in the last light around a swingset that Gerrit had built. We also passed by a set of monkey bars and a merry-go-round he is constructing. Gerrit told us that this is the only public play equipment in town. 

Nearly half of the people in Malawi live on less than $1 a day. So although about 45 percent of Malawi’s population is under the age of 15, there is little money available to buy youth the kinds of high-tech toys, backyard jungle-gyms, and Disney DVDs that are common in homes in the U.S. Cape Maclear does have a few movie houses—really just small buildings with walls of sheet metal. When we passed one we could see the light of the film flickering through the cracks and hear the soundtrack of machine guns firing and bombs exploding. Gerrit explained that these places mainly show copies of violent Western films like “Rambo” or “Terminator,” not flicks appropriate for young ones.

About five minutes outside of the center of town, we reached the spot where Gerrit’s local team of helpers had already set up the projector and hung the screen against the outer wall of a store.  A couple hundred kids were already sitting cross-legged on the dirt ground in front of it. They were watching African music videos. As soon as Gerrit arrived and started fiddling with the projector, the children began to cheer. They knew the real show was about to start.

First up were a couple of Pink Panther cartoons. I’d never appreciated before how well these shorts entertain with so few words, almost like pantomime. The kids giggled at the Panther’s shenanigans, always outsmarting Inspector Clouseau. One scene showed the Panther getting burned by a hot water bottle. Gerrit pointed out that the kids in this warm, humid town have probably never seen a hot water bottle, but they roared at the sight of the pink cat jumping out of bed from the heat.

After the Panther, Gerrit screened some home videos of the local kids on the swingset. Everyone shouted when they saw someone they knew. They were part of the show, too.

By the time of the feature presentation, hundreds more children and their parents had packed in front of the small screen. The stars shown so brightly above, and Venus looked like a spotlight. Everyone got quiet when the movie started. A little girl in a torn pink dress leaned against my leg.

Gerrit had hired a Malawian man to give a synopsis of the film’s storyline in Chichewa and videotaped his translation so the kids would know what’s going on. The film would be “Ice Age 3,” but the explanation seemed very serious. Everyone listened intently.

The movie rolled, and creatures the kids had likely never heard of—woolly mammoths, a giant sloth, an opossum—wandered about a foreign world of snow and ice on the screen. It didn’t matter that the film’s fantasyland was about as far away from Malawi as you could get. The silliness of the characters’ movements and expressions made everyone laugh.

A saber-toothed tiger appeared and was immediately the crowd favorite. It looked close enough to a lioness—a more familiar animal in Africa—that the kids giggled and shouted with great delight as it chased a gazelle and missed. It was like a jar of fireflies set free to hear those kids laugh. When the gazelle did a victory dance, it seemed the kids' hearts did, too.


A lot of political changes have happened in Malawi in the two months since we visited. The unpopular President Bingu wa Mutharika died of a heart attack and his vice-president, Joyce Banda, was sworn into the office. She is now the second female president in Africa (Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was the first). President Banda has already fired several top government officials, devalued the currency in order to regain World Bank support and aid from the U.K., and announced she will decriminalized same-sex relationships. For more information on Malawi, check out the country's page on the BBC.

The day after the soccer match, we traveled to a beautiful lodge called Paradise Malahide right on Lake Kivu. While we were waiting for our room to be ready, we heard singing. We walked toward the adjacent village to find the source. The music was coming from inside a church with mudbrick walls and an aluminum sheet roof.

Near the road, a man wearing a silky butter yellow shirt and pressed slacks greeted us and said, “Welcome.” Although the service had started a while ago, he said we could go in. He led us up a dirt slope to the entrance. Inside, Rwandans sat on wooden benches on all four sides of the building. There must have been at least 200 people in there, dressed in beautiful bright prints and nice slacks or skirts, the women in headwraps.

The choir was singing on their feet, smiling and sometimes raising their hands expressively. The language was foreign, perhaps Kinyarwanda, and the voices were high and melodic, accompanied by two men on men guitar.

When the music ended, a pastor came up holding a Bible. He said a few words and then one by one, people walked up to the front table, clutching wadded bills. A man came and sat in front of us. He introduced himself and explained in English that the church was collecting money to finish the roof. I looked up and saw that the roof was indeed covering about four-fifths of the church. I could see the sky.

Mike got 5,000 francs (about $8.00) from his wallet, and I walked the money up to the front. When I got there, I saw that the other bills from church members were 1,000s (about $1.60). The pastor said, “Merci! Merci! Merci! Thank you! Thank you!” All the church chuckled at his use of French and English instead of the local language.

Our translator said it was time to pray, and we all held hands. A little boy, about 1 ½ years old, toddled up to me and touched my lap. He looked in my eyes. Such soft cheeks! I picked him up for a moment and turned around to see his mother holding her face and laughing. 

After the service, we learned that our translator’s name was John, a simplified version of a much longer Rwandan name. He held Mike’s hand as we walked and talked. (Being physically close and holding hands is normal here between men. It is simply friendly and warm.)

As Mike and I walked back to the hotel, we felt so lucky to have chanced on such an intimate community gathering. That morning I wrote in my journal, “Rwanda has cracked me open. It’s created a rift in my heart, and poking through is the mushy raw emotion that traveling, if you’re lucky, exposes—a jungle-filled valley filled with the monkeys, vines, butterflies, and tall trees of joy, sadness, hope, wisdom.”

A few days later we visited the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali, which reveals the history of tribal favoritism during Belgium’s colonial rule that helped lead to the genocide. Then the memorial’s exhibits describe in stomach-churning detail how men, women, and children were mutilated, raped, and murdered in 1994.

When I left the memorial with tears in my eyes, I questioned how a nation could rebuild itself after such an event. I thought back to the soccer game and the church service and the genuine smiles that I saw on the faces in both of these places. I cannot begin to comprehend how Rwandans feel about the country’s deadly history--and this was not a topic that I wanted to bring up with the local people I met. What is clear is that, at least in some places, Rwandans continue to fully celebrate and appreciate life in a way that made me want to do so, too.