P.S.

From now on, follow me on: Dekaro Diary
:-)

Exhibitions report

Hi Guys! I write a last post with videos and articles regarding my photo exhibitions. Sadly are all in Italian...


Video Report of Archiattack



Interview by Radio Citta'




Article in front cover of "Il Quaderno"



Art'Ap Exhibition



Article on "SANNIO quotidiano" 9/8/09


I had also an exhibition in the premises of Mojito Art and I went in a TV program (Areopago on CDS) to talk about Aftica. :-)




This is instead a little video I made on the road between Kenya and Ethiopia (the dangerous one because of bandits)

So, that is. Tomorrow I go back to London (passing trough Warsaw to say hello to some friends).

Thank you for following me, GOODBYE!!! :-))

Photos of Ethiopia and the final map

Hi Everybody! The trip is terminated, I'm back in Italy. This is the final map:


Visualizza Africa in una mappa di dimensioni maggiori

And two photo album: Lalibela, in the north, and Harar, a city in the east of Ethiopia.





Thank you! CIAO! :-)

The terrible journey from Nairobi to Addis Ababa!

Hi guys! I'm in Ethiopia. I did a terrible and adventurous journey of 5 days from Nairobi to Addis Ababa. I took lifts from trucks and the road was very dangerous due the bandits that are active on it, even in the same day when we passed trough it!! Also we were blocked many times from the terrible conditions of the roads. But at the end it was also fun and adventurous.

About the photo this time I have to put them in an alternative way because otherwise it would take too long. The reason is that in Ethiopia blogger.com is censured!! It is impossible to post and also to see it (of course not for me, my colleagues know that! ;-)

Then the photos are here:


Photos of the journey from Nairobi to Addis Ababa

Lake Bunyonyi (Uganda) and the journey back to Nairobi (Kenya)

Hi everyone, I’m writing from Nairobi, or “Nairobbery” for friends, where I arrived this morning after another 15 hours on a bus from Kampala, but at least this time the bus had working shock absorbers.
I had already been to Nairobi about ten years ago, and I remembered it as uglier and more stressful than it feels now. Since this morning I’ve just been wandering around the city centre quite happily.
Let me tell you about the last few days.

After the last time I wrote, I arrived in Kabale, in the southwest of Uganda, practically just a few kilometres from Rwanda to the south and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. From there, I went to Lake Bunyonyi, a truly spectacular place, because it contains a small archipelago of dozens of green islands. One of these islands was entirely taken up by the guesthouse where I stayed for a week, with an extraordinary view and total peace, really one of the most tranquil places I have ever been.
You could hear and see a huge variety of birds, from very tiny ones to larger ones like small hawks, ibises, and herons. It also had a small library, with books on African history in particular, so I managed to clear up a few things in my head. There was also a small room where they screened films in the evening, but apart from the first night we were always without electricity, by candlelight.

One day I took a canoe tour of the lake with a guide. It turned out to be quite demanding. I had assumed the guide would do all the rowing, but as soon as we set off he handed me a paddle, and we only reached the shore after a full two hours.
We were right on the border with Rwanda. From there we walked for about an hour through green fields to a pygmy village, although to be honest they weren’t actually that short.
As the guide had suggested, I gave the village chief, a cheerful old man, a small amount of money, about the equivalent of 3 euros, and maybe for that reason they felt they should put on a dance for me. I don’t usually enjoy watching dances, but this one was really bizarre. It made no sense at all. Some people started singing and others dancing, but it was clear it wasn’t any kind of traditional dance, it was simply everyone doing their own thing in a very rough, improvised way. Some were jumping, some were running back and forth with their arms in the air, some were even throwing themselves on the ground. Apart from the children, who were dancing happily and having fun, the rest seemed like complete nonsense to me. Some of the men also looked a bit drunk. Then finally the dance ended, and everyone went back to what they had been doing before I arrived, working the land, cutting branches, preparing food, and so on...

On the way back by canoe, a light drizzle started, and then suddenly it turned into a total downpour. It’s hard to describe how much rain was falling. We hurried to reach the shore and took shelter there, as best we could, under some banana trees. The rain just wouldn’t stop. At some point I started shivering from the cold, and then I still had another hour and a half of rowing to get back to the guesthouse.
Later on, I had a strange thought: could the storm have been triggered by the pygmy dance?? 😄

From Kabale I was thinking of spending a few days in Rwanda, but in the end I didn’t go, partly because the visas alone were costing me too much (it would have been 60 dollars to enter, plus another 50 dollars to get a new Ugandan visa), and partly because I don’t have much time. In fact, I have an appointment on April 15 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where a dear Italian friend of mine, Tiziano, will be joining me.
About the visas on this trip, I didn’t mention before that they are usually quite expensive: 80 dollars for Zambia, 50 dollars for Tanzania, 20 dollars for a transit visa for Kenya (which I’ve already had to get twice), 50 dollars for Uganda, and this morning 30 for the Ethiopian one.

Now, to reach Ethiopia, I’m facing the hardest and most difficult part of the whole trip, as those who have done the route in the opposite direction, coming from there, have unfortunately confirmed to me. “We were told to expect the worst, and the worst is exactly what it was” a couple of Israelis told me. And, among other things, it’s very likely that the stretch from here to the Ethiopian border will have to be done on top of a truck across the desert! There is only one bus a week, but nobody has been able to tell me which day it runs. As soon as I finish this post, I’ll head to the outskirts of Nairobi to try to figure out how to leave. And luckily, a Swiss couple I met when I was at the lake told me that the rules have changed and it is no longer possible to get the visa at the border, but you have to get it here in Nairobi. Otherwise I would have gone all the way there (about 20 hours if I manage to get a bus, or around 30 hours on a truck) and then had to come all the way back! As happened, in fact, to a poor guy they had met.
To make things even more entertaining, there are bands of bandits roaming the border area, and if they show up, they simply take everything.
Anyway, no one ordered me to do this, so there’s no point in complaining. But just so you know, I’m doing it for you, only for you, dear blog readers! 😄

Finally, I’ll tell you that last night, while travelling, there were a couple of strange situations with the police. I remember that before leaving I had read all sorts of crazy stories on forums and blogs about African police and how they are always trying to rip you off, but to be honest, maybe I’ve just been lucky, so far they’ve always been very kind to me everywhere.
Nothing particularly serious happened yesterday either. The first incident was at the border, when after getting my passport stamped and the visa, I was walking the stretch of road to reach the bus.
These stretches of road at any border are usually a real ordeal. In particular, there are often hundreds of people hanging around trying to exchange money either at blatantly unfairly low rates or blatantly unfairly high ones (because in that case the money is fake).
Last night, however, there was no one around, but at some point a soldier with a big rifle suddenly appeared out of the dark. He asked for my passport, and I gave it to him. Then he asked for the yellow fever vaccination certificate. And that was a problem, because I don’t have it. In fact, until the very last moment I had been unsure whether to get the vaccine in Kampala, but several travellers had assured me they never ask for it.
I actually had the vaccine almost 10 years ago, and its validity is exactly 10 years, so in reality I’m in order, but I’ve lost the certificate in the meantime. So I started answering a bit vaguely: yes, everything’s fine, I have it!
But he kept insisting on seeing the certificate. It was clear he was really just trying to squeeze some money out of me, and I wouldn’t have minded giving him a few euros, but I was afraid that by doing so I would be admitting I wasn’t in order, and then he might ask for a much higher amount. Because in fact it is mandatory to enter Kenya (and also Ethiopia... let’s hope I won’t be asked for it when I arrive there). So I kept being vague, saying that I was just in transit anyway, but he kept insisting. In the end, I pretended to look for it among some papers and then told him I had it in my backpack on the bus. Luckily, he didn’t feel like walking all the way to the bus. He asked a couple more times: so, what are we going to do about this? But in the end, he shook his head, smiled as if to give up, and waved me on.

Shortly after we left on the bus, there was the second episode. We were stopped at a checkpoint. Nothing unusual here, African roads are full of checkpoints. Whether you’re on a bus, a minibus, or on your own (like when I was driving in Namibia or riding a scooter in Zanzibar), you get stopped countless times. It’s usually a very quick check, lots of smiles, maybe a joke or two, and then you’re off again. Sometimes there are more thorough searches (I remember in Botswana Pablo was once searched for a very long time, and we on the bus had to wait a long time before they finally let him go). Oh, and another curious thing I hadn’t mentioned yet: especially in Botswana and Zambia, every now and then the bus stops, everyone gets off, and you have to walk over a kind of soaked mat on the ground. Why? Because this way the bacteria on your shoes are supposedly killed and can’t enter the territory you’re heading into. I don’t really know much about this kind of thing, but it does seem a bit absurd to me.
Last night, however, the police who stopped us were strange and immediately behaved in a very aggressive way. They seemed tired and stressed.
First of all, they made us get off the bus with everything we had with us, in my case my camera bag. Then they made us line up right in front of the bus headlights. In one line were the women, and in the other, us men. It was a strange situation, and whenever someone moved even slightly out of line they shouted at them to get back in position. After about ten minutes of standing there like that, they started checking passports and bags, all while shining a powerful flashlight just a few centimetres from people’s faces.
At one point, the guy checking the passports kept saying to me: “It’s not you! Not you!” I was completely blinded by this damn torch until I finally realised he didn’t have my passport in his hand, but someone else’s, and so, despite being tanned, I was clearly not the man in the photo.
Then I went back towards the bus, but another police officer standing at the entrance started hitting my bag repeatedly with a kind of stick, saying: “And what have you got here, what have you got here?” I told him: “Stop! There’s a camera in there!” “And what do you use it for?” “Photos.” “Oh, so you’re a journalist?” “No.” “And so?”... At that point I didn’t know what to answer. I don’t know if such an absurd interrogation was pure madness or some well-planned tactic designed to make you break down and admit everything (but looking at the policeman’s face I’d lean towards the first option). Luckily, just then a colleague called him and he walked away.
So I finally wanted to get on the bus, but nothing was allowed to be taken on board. All luggage had to be stored underneath. Some people had accepted it and got back on, while others were complaining because, in fact, if you have anything fragile in your bag, it will definitely get smashed down there. The driver, somewhere between scared and pleading, kept saying: “No, please don’t protest, just do what they say, they’re doing it for our own good!” I wasn’t complaining, of course. I was just waiting for everyone to put their bags inside so I could hopefully find a reasonably good spot for my camera. But for some reason, the same strange officer from the interrogation called me over, spoke briefly with a colleague, maybe in Swahili, and then said that I, and only I, was allowed to keep my bag with me on board.
By the way, I was also the only one who wasn’t searched. Must be the usual muzungu privileges (another thing I hadn’t mentioned: in all the places I’ve been so far, regardless of the language spoken, white people, and especially non-African white people, are called muzungu. It’s not a derogatory term, maybe a bit ironic, yes).
Anyway, they might be worried about terrorist attacks, because everywhere, before getting back on the bus (at the station before departure, after the border, after every stop), there was always a police officer checking all passengers with a metal detector.

Some photos:

Monkey.


Monet.


From here on, photos of Lake Bunyonyi and its surroundings.
























































A 16th-century Congolese mask used as an amulet for healing.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned African art so far. It’s extraordinary, especially the masks (used in rituals, theatrical performances, dances, or as amulets). More or less during our Middle Ages, they were creating works that resemble our contemporary art. Of course, in their case it’s considered “primitivism,” while in our case it’s pure “genius”.

See you!

Uganda and rafting at the source of the Nile

I was driving west—from Nairobi to Kampala. It was early Sunday morning, and the road, running over creased, hilly land, was empty. On the asphalt ahead of me, the rays of the sun created lakes of light, glistening, vibrating. As I approached, the light would vanish, the asphalt would be gray for a moment, then turn to black, but soon the next lake would flame up, and the next. The journey was being transformed into a cruise through a realm of radiant waters, abruptly igniting and dying out, like strobe lights in a crazed discotheque... Well, up to this point I copied it entirely from Kapuściński (The Shadow of the Sun) 😉 Now let’s move on to Dekaro, with his slightly more sparse, odd, and sometimes ungrammatical style, though no less pleasant, it must be said. So. It wasn’t a Sunday morning but a Thursday when I was on that stretch of road, and I certainly didn’t feel like being poetic at the time. If anything, I felt like swearing. But let’s start from the beginning.

I forced myself to leave the beach bungalow in Zanzibar and throw myself back into the chaos of buses, minibuses, and all kinds of stress. I spent a day in Dar es Salaam and then made it to a city in north-central Tanzania, Arusha, where, with a local guy, I visited on foot several small Maasai villages around the city, where they speak only the Maasai language, not even Swahili.

Since I had already visited Kenya on a previous trip, after a couple of days I decided to continue on to Uganda. I still had to pass through Nairobi, using the only available means of transport: a huge, completely rickety bus at an obscenely low price.
On that bus it was as if the suspension didn’t exist — every bump, even the smallest one, sent you literally flying into the air! After just ten minutes I couldn’t take it anymore. It lasted 18 hours, from 5 in the afternoon until 11 the next morning. It was a constant bouncing, and during some of those “flights,” everything fell from the overhead racks. The floor was covered in broken glass and various spilled liquids. It was awful. At least, as seems to be tradition on this trip whenever I take long overnight bus journeys, I had a nice girl sitting next to me, Dalin, from Tanzania, who is studying at university in Kampala.

Eventually, I reached Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It’s not a beautiful city and the traffic is absolutely chaotic, yet it’s still quite pleasant to stay in. The city centre is on a hill, where the parliament and luxury hotels are located, while heading down towards the main bus station it turns into total chaos, with stalls spilling into the streets on both sides or completely taking them over. The best way to get around is by motorbike taxis, which, although a bit recklessly, manage to weave through the traffic.
In the trees and on the poles there are some strange birds, maybe pelicans. Very curious to look at, kind of ugly and clumsy. It’s funny watching them, when they move it looks like they’re always on the verge of falling, and when they fly short distances it almost seems like they can’t manage to carry their own weight. But once they’re up in the air, they glide around in a majestic and elegant way (like Baudelaire’s albatross).

My hotel was right next to a majestic mosque perched on another hill and visible from all over the city. The problem with staying next to mosques is that every now and then they blast the prayers at full volume through loudspeakers. They sound like endless, heartbreaking wails. I had already experienced this in Stone Town, but especially in Arusha, where in the middle of the night I would be woken up by a loud, mournful cry coming from the mosque next door. It was still pitch dark and it just wouldn’t stop. Then, just as I managed to fall asleep again, other mosques would start up. On the second night I checked the time: 5 a.m.!

After two days in Kampala, I went to Jinja to do one of the most fun things of the entire trip: rafting at the source of the Nile. Extraordinary. I’m not really a rafting enthusiast, but according to experts I’ve done two of the best rafting experiences in the world: here in Uganda and in Nepal. This one, however, was more demanding. In Nepal they had given us some instructions on what to do if you fell out of the raft, but here it was basically assumed that it would happen at least once. So before setting off, we practiced on some small rapids how to behave once we ended up in the river.
Even the raft capsizing was considered almost certain, and we practiced for that as well. So off we went. 31 kilometers of pure adrenaline! In reality, many stretches are calm and you can relax, drifting slowly and enjoying breathtaking scenery, between the green of the river and the surrounding vegetation. Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. (This one is also borrowed, but this time I’ll leave it to you to guess where it comes from).
Anyway, of course, the main attraction was the rapids. Sometimes, before certain sections, we could choose between the difficult or the easier route, but needless to say, in those situations you always go for the dangerous one (otherwise we wouldn’t have gone at all).
Even as we approached the first rapid, the guide asked us whether we wanted the easy or the hard option—in the difficult one, it was very likely the raft would flip over. And all of us: go for it! It won’t flip! Let’s do it! And of course, we flipped over. But it’s nothing dramatic, you suddenly find yourself in the water without even knowing how, and you try (current allowing) to get back to the raft.
But after that, I messed up the part where you flip the raft back over. The procedure for righting the raft was as follows: we all hung onto one side of the raft, pulling it down, while the guide, standing on top, flipped it back upright. So for a moment we all ended up under the raft and had to swim out from underneath it as quickly as possible. I hadn’t really understood it properly. The guide told us to take a deep breath, but I didn’t even have time to do so before I suddenly found myself under the raft. I had no air left, and my head was being pressed down by the bottom of the raft. I started swimming around blindly, trying to find an exit, but I had no idea where to go, especially because the raft above me was still moving as well. Then, just when I genuinely felt I had no air left at all, I suddenly found myself back outside, gasping for breath. Pure adrenaline!
And it was more or less like that for the whole trip. That was the only time we actually capsized, but some of the rapids were absolutely thrilling, like small waterfalls. There were as many as three Grade 5 rapids, which is the highest level in the world of rafting (there is also a Grade 6 rapid, which means that no one has ever managed to run it without flipping over. If someone ever does, it is automatically downgraded to Grade 5).

In the evening and at night we relaxed, drinking and eating on the terrace of the guesthouse, with a view of the river flowing slowly about fifty metres below. For sleeping, I set up my tent, which I hadn’t used for a long time.

The next morning, I had just woken up when I started hearing heavy drops falling right on the tip of the tent (it is an igloo-shaped one). But it wasn’t raining. Strange. Then a large lump of something fell again on the very top, silhouetted against the light. I suddenly had a terrible suspicion, which unfortunately turned out to be correct: a monkey up in the tree pissed and pooped on my tent! Disgusting. I went out and there was no one in the tree, but right next to the tent there was indeed a large monkey. His testicles were bright blue, I’m not kidding! Since there were no others around, he was almost certainly the guilty one, so I cursed him out loud and signalled for him to get lost. But he didn’t move and instead stood perfectly upright, as if posing. I got a bit closer, and still nothing, he just stayed there, almost as if he was challenging me. I picked up my shoe and I really was about to throw it at his head when finally, somewhat reluctantly and very slowly, he left.

In the afternoon I went with three girls to visit Jinja and the exact point where the Nile is born, branching off from Lake Victoria and eventually reaching the Mediterranean Sea after about three months. There, Mahatma Gandhi chose to have some of his ashes scattered. A decision that left many people puzzled: why there? But it’s obvious: because he wanted to be the first man to go rafting on the Nile! May peace be with you.

Photos:


Arusha bus station, Tanzania.



Small church in a Maasai village near Arusha.



School in a Maasai village near Arusha.









Goat.



Eye.



The strange bird in Kampala, Uganda.



The mosque near my hotel in Kampala.



Football match, Kampala.



The source of the Nile, where it branches off from Lake Victoria.



The Nile, seen from the guesthouse terrace near Jinja.


And now some photos of my rafting! In the photo at the beginning of the post, you can see the group: four Pakistanis at the front, a Danish couple in the middle, me at the back, and the guide behind us.

Let’s start with the highlight: the capsizing sequence!


I’m the one with the yellow helmet, already almost underwater.



Here only one of my arms is visible.



And that’s it.



Eh eh...

Other photos, I’m the one with the yellow helmet in the back.

























Pure adrenaline!!

I reply to a comment:

Hi Pierre! Yes, I saw many interesting places since then. The best I think is Zanzibar, it was wonderful!! :-)
I will show all the pics in full resolution when I will be in London, I think maybe at the end of may. See you soon! :-)