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
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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