Monday, November 28, 2011

Eight Weeks of Something Different

As the above title suggests, I have eight weeks of traditional work here in the United States: carpal-tunnel-related, weight-gaining, eye-straining work. All of which pays homage to the theme of this blog, but probably won't thrill you to the edge of your chair. However, I have received emails from a bunch of you inquiring as to where they can get their weekly or biweekly dose of African adventures (which is truly, truly touching, it means a lot to me). So to honor their request, I'll be supplementing the blog until I return to Africa instead of laying this beast into a two-month wintry hibernation.

For the next eight weeks, I will try to give you ten to fifteen segments of my writings (as some of you know, I am in and out of the process of publishing a book depending on my vacillating levels of responsibility and the whims of my publisher, who is fantastic and merciful if they are reading this). It'll be a combination of my interviews with the fairer occupation of privateering soldier and glimpses into the world of the legal and illegal gemstone trade in Africa through my post-adolescent eye.

It relates to the blog, it'll keep me on point, hopefully you will find it enjoyable and the first one will appear tomorrow. So for eight weeks before I can once again convey live blogging from foreign lands, I hope you enjoy.

Check in tomorrow at your most convenient awkward moment: Instead of pretending to read nonexistent text messages, you can read inconsistent prose,

Steven

(you can even receive these posts by email)

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Blantyre and The Bus.

Lovers of Turkey, Tofurkey and Idiots,

I'm back in the US.

Consider it a short hiatus based on a profound love of turkey, freezing temperatures and missing the beginning of the rainy season. In January, I will return to my adopted land for the next stage of work. But back to basics. Since our latest cyber render-vous, I have had the pleasure of spending an exhilarating couple of days in lovely Blantyre, center of the African tobacco trade, before beginning a long and deranged voyage back to the US.

Blantyre and its strip-mall, slumdog sister city, Limbe, are bustling traditional African cities, with a downtown of multi-story buildings, fancy banks and a collection of hotels for the wealthy. While I expected to enjoy the city after weekday meetings, I only had two days to do so when the ever-reliable Air Malawi informed me my flight had been cancelled a mere three days beforehand. Undeterred, I took moments to find pizza, play squash and eat everything from ethiopian Injera Wot to Palm leaf burritos.


To avert disaster and not miss my flight home from Johannesburg Monday evening, I found a bus company that would take me (in an advertised 25 hours) from Blantyre to Johannesburg, leaving Saturday morning and giving me a whole day to take in Jo-burg. I showed up for the bus on Saturday and immediately signs pointed to tardiness: we left three hours late, made it to the Mozambican border where there was no electricity and I got into a verbal shouting match with border officials who refused to issue me a transit visa without electricity (bribe hunters). Finally, the electricity burst back to life and we made it past the border moving at a snails' pace through Mozambique and arriving at the Zimbabwean border at 8:30, hours after it had closed.

We spent the night in the sketchiest border town, hunched in our sleeping seats like jack in a boxes. I even had the distinct pleasure of being woken around midnight by three local policemen who had heard that there was a "Mizungo" (white person) on board the bus. they asked me if I would like to join them for dinner, I said no thank you, and they said for my impoliteness, I
should definitely join them or give them a gift. Pissed off, and half-asleep, I paid them off with a stale carton of Oreos, which I told them were a delicacy (I got the oreos from an expat in Blantyre).

The next morning we awoke at 4 to cross into Zimbabwe, where we were delayed another four hours before zipping through lovely Zimbabwe and into South Africa, with numerous other attempts at any money I had. We finally arrived in Jo-burg 30 hours late, with just a few hours before my flight. Highlights of the trip include a budding friendship between me and Chief Steven Kasonga, who called himself a kind, wore a rolex and other gold chains and said that he, like me, "was reduced to the serf-like passage by bus" because he missed his plane as well. He refused to be touched at borders without customs officials asking permission of "his highness." The whole act was very comical. But, at the end of the trip he insisted on buying me a $200 bottle of spirits as we were now soul mates (different meaning than US, but not really) and he would expect me t
o await him with a royal procession when he eventually visited the US.

Altogether it has been a nice week 51 hours by boat, 7 hours by bus, 55 hours by bus, 23 hours by plane = 136 hours. Glad to be back. More to come next week on my return to Africa.

In the spirit of Celine Dion, the blog will go on.

Happy Thanksgiving,
President Chester Arthur

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Ilala Ferry

Friends and Followers,
I have arrived in the commercial capital of Malawi, Blantyre, but not without first experiencing the long and tedious Ilala Ferry: Malawi's #1 travel option! I began this journey on Monday evening, preparing for the ferry to arrive around noon and depart at eight in the evening. I was assured I would even have time to do a night dive as the sun set at 6 and still board the boat in time for its departure. Lo and behold, by 6, the ferry had still not arrived and the shouting and dancing queue ready to board it had grown tiresome after hours of pre-ferry dancing and shouting.

The night dive was incredible. We wound through massive underground rock sculptures with a posse of dolfinfish (three to six feet long blind barracuda-like fish) following our every move, eager that we might lead them to prey. Which we did, playing Poseidon, I would shine my flashlight on a sleeping fish and watch the dolfinfish snap it up, feeling it out with the electric current around their buddies and making an electric snap when they caught it. It was unreal.

But as we finished the dive, I began to grow concerned for the boat as it still hadn't arrived and it was already past 8. Timeliness is not always the priority here. When the ferry finally arrived at 9, it didn't take off til 2:30. It is a hefty, thick bottomed boat and when traveling it makes 12 stops and has three distinct classes: Cabin, First Class and Economy. The experience is like an early 20th century cross-Atlantic voyage, combined with a truly African atmosphere that is the only reminder that you are in the modern age. Each stop took minimum four hours as rafts came out to swap passengers and sacks of produce from the shore with those on the boat. I slept on the top deck (First class) under the stars on hard, ancient wooden planks. But there was a fine bar, and a dismal "saloon" with a leering, hostile waitress who I had the displeasure of having to eat in front of while she stared at me like the bane of her existence.

The trip took 51 hours, was 21 hours late to its final destination, and I hopped on midway through. I ventured down to the economy class twice during my sejour: Once when boarding the boast, shoving back at the men women and children carrying vast sacks of grain or stalks of bananas and pushing, scratching and biting to claim their spot in the rat infested bottom level (I got bit by a little kid, not a rat). The whole place was an advertisement for overwhelming body odor and the finer things in life, like drunk men throwing up on their pregnant wives or rastafarians lighting up and blowing into the face of goats.

I saw a lifeboat with 25 people sink (they all survived), a man do a triple backflip off the top deck (impressive) and a plump, inebriated irish grandmother sat on my face while I was sleeping,

Next, a few days in Blantyre working before a 26 hour bus trip to Jo-berg because Air Malawi "withholds the right to cancel flights up to three days before."

Time to change my shirt,
Steven

Saturday, November 12, 2011

The bush, the beach and the breed-by-mouth fish

Greetings Comrades,
I come to you from Nkhata Bay, Malawi. This little rocky paradise by the water is a fantastic collection of local busy life, alienating rastas selling everything from wooden carvings to headphones to heaps of marijuana. There is a vibrant tourist life here, but I have spent a mixture of time with the other whiteys and then venturing off along the coastline to look at warm springs that are fantastically interesting as potential sources of improving the miserably inconsistent electricity here.

Before getting ahead of myself though... After arriving in Mzuzu a couple of days ago I went deep into the bush near the border with Zambia and had a chance to use my hardcore camping and defeating the Heart of Darkness equipment. I even had my shovel/pick-axe out for a while as we took samples off a rock formation. If I haven't blogged it before, my tent (which I prefer not to use) is called: The Coffin. It looks, feels and is starting to smell (from being at the bottom of my bag) like it's namesake. I spent two nights in the bush listening through my slot in the Coffin, it was as pleasant as it sounds. But the days were fantastic as we trooped around talking up the locals, learning about thermal anomalies as a result of the Rift Valley etc.

Finally we left the bush to arrive here in Nkhata and I have been sweeping around town and out of it without the coffin as my home. I'm staying at a nice little community and besides work I've taken in the rest of Nkhata underwater. Diving in Lake Malawi is one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. Giant catfish and blind dolfinfish that use electricity fields around their body to navigate come darting out of crevices all around me. The water is like a bowl of fruity pebbles with all of the different brightly colored fish (cichlids). But by far the coolest thing I've seen is the "Mouth Breeder:" a bigger cichlid which protects its school of babies by swallowing them when it senses danger and then releasing them again. It's like watching some artsy movie about regurgitation. But its with brightly colored fish.

By Monday I am off again down the lake by boat until I arrive in Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi. Expect my next post then, wait with baited breath.

Yours truly,
Steven Eugene Remmer Fox

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Golf, Charlie and Pumpkin Eater

With this post I believe I am caught up in my delayed posts. Congratulations to me.

Life in Malawi continues to be a success. After crossing the border I spent the night unexpectedly in Monkey Bay, a picturesque spot on Lake Malawi (and apparently not even close to the most beautiful place in Malawi). I had the entire hostel to myself except for an ex-mercenary and his wife. The coincidence was creepy especially after we named some mutual acquaintances. But he was an interesting chap and got utterly plastered before I even showered up and he revealed his great dream of owning a crocodile farm.

He would then wade into the water (which you are not supposed to do at night because there are crocodiles that attack, more than 20 attacks in this spot each year), and shout for his little "croc breus" to come to him. Delightful.

I continued on to the capital city of Lilongwe where I had business and got to explore this sprawling green city. The city is surprisingly developed into a suburban stripmall in some places, beautiful armored ex-pat houses in other places, a deadening commercial center and then vast African marketplaces and lean-to housing. The combination is bewildering.

But I made the most of it, I made a friend at the US embassy who is helping me out in a major way to gather information on who is doing what in the industries I am most interested in. We capped off a day there by playing 18 holes of GOLF! at the Lilongwe Golf Club, which is basically a country club for the expats and rich Lilongweans complete with squash courts, tennis and a pool. I had a fantastic caddy named Charlie who has improved my game and the whole experience cost $28. Gotta love it.

I have now headed north and arrived in Mzuzu where I met a silly little artist who legally changed his name to Pumpkin Eater (he showed me his ID card). And I have met up with a geologist. He and I are off into the bush tomorrow to look at some hot springs and geothermal activity, but I'm also hoping to get in at least an afternoon at a nearby national park.

Pumpkin Eater is asking if I want him to make a wicker basket in the shape of my whole body,
Steven

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Last Time Frosting, This Time the Cake.

North American Coterie of Steven Fox Readers,
I apologize for the shortness of my last blog and I'll try to have this one fill in some of the details, especially of the non-work stuff. After leaving Inhambane on the coast (See last post about swimming with Whale Sharks, we also swam with sailfish and marlins which was scarier because they move very quickly), I made the long trip up to Beira, the industrial capital of Mozambique and Zimbabwe's major access to shipping. There, I met up with a friend from Richmond, Zach Lager, who has been living 1000 kilometers from the city in a poor village and working on his own NGO helping the community with sustainable agriculture. It is a neat project and we spent a couple days in his neck of the woods biking around in eighth-hand bikes, under the blazing sun.

We then followed the coast north through Quelimane and Nampula (towns about the size of Boston) to Mozambique Island, a spectacular slice of paradise located 3 km off the coast. The city combines a historical significance, culturally diverse and unique vibe and stunning set of views that are new to me. We arrived late on our first night after getting into a series of arguments and getting dropped in the middle of nowhere by two local bus drivers and finally hitching a ride with a manager on the island and commercial diver. Along the way to the island we also picker up the victim of a vicious accident and helped load a poor bloodied motocycle driver who collided with a bicyclist into the back of the flatbed truck. The island can only be reached by a one lane bridge spanning 3 km, or by taking a local dugout canoe or swimming. It was the capital of Portuguese Africa and of Mozambique for many years and is home to a massive fort, historical churches and mansions, the oldest western hospital in Africa and a host of off coast shipwrecks.

The place is awesome, tiny 3km (in perimeter), holds 7000 locals, has limited tourists, good eats and snorkeling, diving, fishing etc. It is a paradise for all ages. Tell your kids and grandparents. I'll be back.

I've since gone back through the depressing city of Nampula (more like a central Africa with grimy halls for transient laborers, a steady group of chinese eating and chain smoking in their own restaurants), where we got up for the 3AM train to Cuamba. It took 12 hours but we got there, spent the night and even found popcorn. Now I have crossed the border into Malawi (quite sketchily, with a motorcycle, a truck over a dirt road and a couple of lame attempts at extortion) and I'll be able to update you next time from the shores of Lake Malawi/Niassa.

I think I'll play nine holes of golf tomorrow,
Steven

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Mozambique Continued

Hey all,
My internet access has been as inconsistent as the quality of roadside bananas here, so excuse my tardiness. Since I last checked in I have been making the tedious journey northward and have spent time with some analysts of the massive Cahorra Bassa Dam and checked out some cool distribution of electicity, I have made my way to the coast and swam with Whale Sharks (Google it, they are huge and amazing). I have met up with an old friend from Richmond and a geologist and now we are moving up the coast even farther north to Mozambique Island where we will spend a relalxing two days before I head inland by train to Malawi.

All is well, I will update mroe when I have better internet, but let me briefly describe the first leg of my journey northward: I was wedged between two arm-heavy african Mamisetas (code for sweet fat ladies), a goat and piles of luggage in the back of a bus for 8 hours while playing backgammon with a little kid who kept trying to bite me if I beat him. Then our back two tires blew out and we had to wait for a new bus, which we switched over to. Then another tire blew out, which we managed to replace (including all the men lifting a schoolbus together and almost flipping it). Finally we reached Beira, from inhambane and I met up with my buddy, Lager who took me around town to a strange ex-pat birthday party, into the local markets and out deep into the countryside to see his agricultural project. We drank palm beer, swam with a hundred naked children in a leech filled rural river and met a South African fellow who is making millions on a plantation.

I love this land, More soon,
Steven

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Mozambique

Hey all,
I realize it has been a bit since my last entry, and I'll try to keep this quick, since I am spending a fortune for this internet by my increasingly frugal standards.

I arrived in Mozambique last Friday after a wonderful sejour in Mozambique and spent a fascinating weekend exploring the surprisingly modern, with a south-american flavor capital of Maputo. The place is an odd mixture of Stalinist-era buildings, fresh modern Afro-Portuguese villas and as always the imposing American embassy complete with 20 foot razor-wired wall and signs warning of doing anything around the place except walk away. Repping America, the best we can. Even the streets are odes to some of the weirdest collection of despots and communist leaders of all time: Karl Marx Ave, Ho Chi Minh St, Robert Mugabe Park or Friedrich Engels Boulevard. But you would sometimes hardly know you are in Africa with all the ex-pats wondering out of chic cafes and watching soccer over a draft beer, looking out into the pictueresque Mozambican channel. It is a stunning, confusing and well-groomed ode to different thoughts and times.

My hostel was of particular interest. It was a collection of dirty hippies from around the globe (Literally 8 dudes with waist long dreadlocks) in a funky party atmosphere. There was also this one very peculiar Chinese fellow in a trucker hat, dress pants and a shirt that read "I want more Sesame Avenue" (He didn't change for three days). He took control over the only TV (with satellite reception) and refused to switch it from his beloved Kung-Fu channel, or Learn-Chinese soap operas. Whenever someone asked if they could watch the news or sports, or they even got up and changed it. he would produce a remote and switch it back ignoring all protests.

Everyone here in Mozambique is extremely pleasant and I have headed north to look at some power plants, interview a couple of mercenary fellows and meet up with a geologist and a friend for a true tour into the bush.

Expect more soon,
Steven

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Much as happened since I last checked in, most of it having to do with the vague work that I am doing, but it has led me on some awesome trips into the heart of rural Madagascar and then finally back to the capital with a day stop over at the country's most stunning National Park, Isalo.

I spent a few more days along the Western coast, scorching in the thick heat and sweating so much that my driver once asked me if I wanted to change my shirt, and that it is not normal to go swimming in your shirt. Pascal's "observations" have been lost on me, as i have trekking onto shore-side hilltops interviewing locals and taking evaluations of the amount of electricity that they use, how they get their electricity and who uses it and how much. My tests have been less than flattering of the capacity of the Madgascar energy services and the future of putting a plasma TV in every home worldwide.

Apart from my work, I had a chance to stop for a day at Isalo National Park on my return voyage to the capital, Antananarivo. Isalo is like the Grand Canyon meets Rohan from Lord of the Rings, meets the animated Madagascar 2. It is a collection of towering sandstone massifs and colorful savannah-like planes speckled with vast boulders. Too top it off, there are vast green valleys with vibrant streams and waterfuls crisscrossing the park with fearless lemurs diving from branch to branch. Although the less intimidating climbing spots of the park are sometimes flooded with fat, open-shirted French tourists, my guide and I had the higher plateaus to ourselves and we trekked 23 miles with a camp overnight and a dawn swim underneath a natural waterfall. Nothing like fifteen lemurs watching you take a bath, to make you feel like you are really in the thick of it.

But I've sine wound through the 12 hours of hills and steep drops back to the capital and after finishing my meeting today, tomorrow I depart for Mozambique. Madagascar has been a strange site, but a welcome re-introduction into the continent which enchants me. I'll be meeting more mercenaries, looking at precious gem mines and evaluating small solar and wind distributers in Moz, so if you continue to read, prepare yourself for step 2.

I've got a day off today, but there isn't a dugout or clubhouse for me to pound a couple of beers, and play video games, so I'll work instead,
Steven

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Coast to Coast.

Since I last checked in,
I retook the pleasure train back to my jumping off city of Fianarantsoa, this time it ran only 11 hours and was far less crowded. Although I did get to watch a poor fifteen year old girl, burdened with what seemed all of her family's possessions (Which they had clandestinely snuck onto our first class car and hid amongst our belongings while the police were in the wind) all chucked out of the moving train. It was a matter of the police completing a filthy task in front of a slew of Nikon and Canon-sporting tourists, but regardless, first went her bags of food and supplies off bridges and into gulleys, and then when the train herky-jerked to a halt for mechanical failures, she too went overboard.

But for that unfortunate incident, I arrived swimmingly in Fianarantsoa and spent the night at a weird mammoth of a hotel, made and meant for the Chinese: but it had a pool and I got a barbeque chicken pizza.

I have since met my driver, Pascal. He is a toad-faced, soft-spoken single dude in his fifties. Our conversations have been as diverse as discussing the weather and what is his favorite rock. But he serves his purpose and I have made my way coast to coast, to the smoldering Toliara, filled with old, fat French men and their pretty young prostitutes, mangrove lined beaches with trash replacing what I would expect to be white sand. It is a pleasant, and slow-paced place.

I have been meeting with people in the Sapphire industry, a staple of the region, and the prices for raw stones are pretty rock bottom if you go to the source. I have also been meeting with more solar companies in the region and ooahing and aahing their small, inefficient and somewhat corrupt projects.

There is a wheelchair acrobatics show at the beach tonight,
Steven

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Trained by Train

Yesterday, I took a train from Fianarantsoa to Manakara, my current location on the splendid Indian Ocean. I have a beautiful view of the picturesque ocean from my bungalow by the sea, fresh, cheap seafood at my disposal and enough sun to turn my pasty, white, flacid thighs into crispy brown drumsticks.

But it wasn't without arduous input by myself.

The train to get here took 12 ands a half hours. Even by my "first class seat," this was a rough time. The landscape and views from this ancient caboose were spectacular, but the lack of space to move, the overwhelming body odor and the vomit of my neighbor on my bag, I could have done without. Regardless, we arrived, five hours late, but Manakara so far has been quite lovely. Today, I am touring projects of the area with a solar distributer, Tough Stuff, and tomorrow night I have dinner by the port with a deputy director of Public Works in Madagascar. I intend to make the most of my free time by taking a pirogue, a canoe-ish water vehicle for those of you not in the African lingo, up the Pangalese canal. The enorlous canal will offer me obstacles to dodge such as crocodile, some small rapids and merchants harrassing you by throwing their wares (huge stacks of bananas or occasionally goats) onto your boat to try to make you pay by kindergarten "He is closer-it's not mine" rules.

But don't worry Mom, every moustached, bowl-cutted Frenchmen under 70 and over 50 seems to be doing it,
Steven

Monday, October 10, 2011

Into the Brousse

Bon journee,
Since I last checked in I have erupted into travel with a 9 hour cramped bus to Fianarantsoa (The shortest city name in Madagascar is 6 letters) then a trip to the National Park Ranomofana for the weekend.

The system of transport, unless you have your own car here is mainly by hippie buses called Taxi-Brousses. They are cramped, four rows with 20 people per bus usually, and the top of the bus wavers along the road with the typical supply of people's bags, food and live animals. The stations where you might find one are mudpits teeming with hordes of teenagers and poor old men looking to make a buck by carrying your bags, escorting you past the hordes of their compatriots etc.

Negotiations with these lackeys are short and they quickly lose their footing on their steep asking price. But if you are quick and refuse to succumb to their ratty ways, you can handle your own stuff with a firm resolution and a whole lot of "No's."

I took a trip down from Tana through the winding hills of the inner plateaus of Madagascar, on the major road, a two-laner. And it is at times altogether frightening, moving at high speeds, taking sharp turns and avoiding packs of cows and pushcarts. But you get use to it quick.

After a night in Fianarantsoa, I took another 3 hour ride out to the national park, where I saw lemurs, chameleons and mongooses by deep rainforest walks with my guide Solo, or my friend at an Household Solar company, Fredric. I've got lots of good pictures I'll put up soon. All is well, but I must be off to catch my forest train to the coast where I will see some sweet tidal energy projects and talk to some local government leaders about possibly working on a project to put in a wind turbine or two. Until then...

Tom Brady, Quarterback, Rice Fields,
Steven

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Tana First Time Around

Hello Again,

After a couple days of adjustment and settling into the pace & lifestlye. I'm reinvigorated to bare my soul. An update: I moved out of my jazzy first-class room into an economy option with shared showers and toilets, but my own small room complete with bunkbeds (In case I feel like switching up my nightly altititude) and a phenomenal view, albeit from a window the size of a toilet seat.

I have had a couple of meetings that seem to be going quite well, although people seem to make their own differing opinions of my presence within 30 seconds.I am all at once an investor, a researcher, a corporate liason and in my usual way, an American spy. I haven't visited the US embassy yet, where I will surely add "dumb kid" to my list. But business is interesting although Madagascar infrastructure and shaky political situation pose higher barriers than I had initially anticipated. Corruption is thick amongst the Malagasy, but rarely imposes on the lives of us etrangers.

Antananarivo continues to perplex me as a dichotomy of European architecture, city planning and in many ways customs. Yet it's African flavor dominates. And hell, there are times when I might as well be in Beijing. The city is unique for me in its blend of pedestrian and transportation domain. The streets are a battleground of daring pedestrians being hunted by outrageous drivers. The sidewalks would usually serve as a safeground, but cars seem free to bound onto the sidewalk without concern for limbs or goods. The city does have one respite for the constantly hounded pedestrians: Stairs. They are everywhere, because of how hilly the city is the planners wrote in vast stairs running through the cities; like Machu-Pichu fairways running through Paris, it is weird, exhausting and if one was handicapped they would be isolated to an island within a city within an island.

Tomorrow I get up early to board my small hippie bus with 30 other passengers into the south to see some energy projects and begin my on the ground work.

The man to my right has just been scammed into saving a Nigerian princess via email,
Steven

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Bananana-tananarivo

I've arrived in Madagascar after a 27 hour commute. The capital is dusty and supremely African. I guess I figured it would be more Island-esque like Jamaicans and Indonesians bred together in a volcanic mass surrounded by water. Instead it is dry and crowded, like all African capitals, but has a distinctly poor-European suburb feel to it, like walking in any direction out of Paris. It's hot as a squirrel sandwich, but I have made it to my makeshift hotel room (It's got a TV with Cartoon Network and National Madagascar Channel, the ONLY channels). I treated myself to dinner with some weird german girl I met on the plane over, who doesn't speak any French or English, but we are communicating in my basic Portuguese and giggling.

Tomorrow, I begin work heading out to the US Embassy and then on to interview two new mercenary pals who have promised me grand adventures across Madagascar. They are stand outs from the famous Bob Denard's conquest of Islands of Africa (Wikipedia it). Then I head down to the rainforest to question some people who haven't the dimmest sense what a lightbulb is about how they would use electricity every day and truly begin my adventure into the external arteries of darkness.

I have to sign off as my internet that I'm stealing from the four-star hotel down the block has become spotty and I'm passing out. I'll check in as soon as I can,

Yours in Sweatinesss,
Foxy

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Leaving

Hello Again,
After my hiatus from the blogosphere, I have returned afresh to delight you with snippets of my journeys in the African continent. In this particular adventure, I am traveling to Madagascar, Mozambique and Malawi over the next 8 weeks. While I am there, I will be splitting my time between two work projects: mapping renewable energy projects and evaluating small scale energy markets. I will also be continuing my research on private military companies and the movement of precious materials (oil and diamonds) across the African continent.

That being said, I will also be taking time to take in the highlights that each of these three country shave to offer. I'll send it all back to you via photos, anecdotes and hopefully anything else I can get back to you.

Leaving tomorrow at 5:30 AM, I promise to check in soon,

Steven