You know you are in Africa when...

mmmm, lunch

- You strap a dead goat carcass to the roof of a car. This isn't because you have accidentally hit a farmer's goat or are clearing the road of road kill. It’s a work mates gift for his wife back home.

- Training for clinicians and nurses in a rural clinic is ended early due to elephants. Everyone walking or biking home needs to be given plenty of time to avoid the section of road that elephants usually cross on their daily trek to the river in the dry season.

- You realize you have multiple options when being pulled over by a police officer (all of which involve arguing extensively):
1) You pay full price for a ticket and get a receipt, which depending on the offense, can easily be $50 on the spot. I believe there is a way to contest a ticket in court, but would require navigating an INTENSE bureaucracy.
2) Talk your way into a warning.
3) Negotiate with the policeman to pay a 'fine' that is a fraction of the ticket. No receipt. The money goes directly into the policeman's pocket. This amount can be 10-25% of the value of the fine, and the policeman is perfectly happy to go home with more money to feed his family or buy himself a beer.

There is a 4th option I haven't tried: not stopping. The police officer's here either have checkpoints where you slow down to talk to them, or are waiting at the top of a hill and wave you over to the shoulder. Note that police officers here very rarely have cars or guns (In fact, if you call after a robbery, usually the first question is whether they were/armed with a gun or not, and the second, only if the answer to the first is in the negative, is to ask for gas money or a ride to pick up the officer and take them to the scene of the crime). What if you just didn’t stop when the officer flagged you down? They are on foot... You have a car...

- The center and shoulder lines on a highway are painted by hand. Using string, rocks and small paint brushes (one size up from Bob Ross). And the highway is still open. Can you imagine painting all the road markings from Boston to Washington D.C. on I-95 by hand?

- You realize that all the fancy T-shirts sporting American slogans have ZERO bearing on the personality of the wearer. I'm talking about Madonna T-shirts on large black men. The next time you design a T-shirt with a clever / risque saying, please picture a 12 year old African boy wearing the shirt - because that's where it will eventually end up.

- You aren't sure what the most dangerous part of driving in Africa is because there are so many options:
1) Goats (or larger animals) bolting across the road at random times
2) Attempting to overtake a slow-moving truck on a two-lane highway and having to stop due to a cow in the other lane.
3) Potholes that will debilitate your car. Seriously, some of the potholes on the main highways span both lanes of the road, are at least 5 ft in width and 2 ft in depth.
4) Trucks that break down all the time and at the worst sections of road - like going uphill around a corner. There is no shoulder, so the truck is stopped in your lane, requiring you to swerve into the lane of oncoming traffic. You know in advance by a few branches cut and placed carefully in the middle of the road. The truck driver is sleeping underneath his vehicle or sitting by a fire on the shoulder.

Oh could this list go on!

Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My: um, African version

How much has Western culture invaded the far reaches of the globe? Will their soon be Starbucks and McDonald's on every street corner? The first thing that comes to mind in terms of Westernization is this most obvious of sights - the Golden Arches, CocaCola, a Nike Swoosh. But what about those places still considered remote - what about the wild, the bush, the African game reserves?

If you have never been on Safari, its because 1) you haven't been to Africa or 2) you can't afford it. Most of the safaris in Africa are highly regulated and pricey. They cater to jet-setting travelers with little heed to the amount of money they are spending or how much is actually going to the local population - just as long as they are guaranteed to see lions, leopards and rhinos in their 3 day African experience and go home happy. Most guided safari trips range from hundreds to thousands of dollars each day.

And yet, most of the local population has never seen an elephant or a lion. For most of them, it's not on the list of things to do. If they live in a city, its after years, if not generations of struggle against the bush and its native inhabitants. Going camping for the thrill to see a lion is not a popular local activity. The push to protect African wildlife seems almost hypocritical, after most first world nations have completely wiped out any large animal populations of their own. Don't get me wrong, I am all for protection of the environment, flora and fauna and majestic locations, including the amazing diversity of life and terrain that Africa offers, but I can't help but think of this of just one more hypocrisy the developed world holds over the developing.

Last weekend we helped count game in a National Park in Zimbabwe. On foot. Amidst lions and leopards and hippos, oh my. No ranger. No guide. No gun. Two feet, three fellow expat companions, a pair of binoculars and a GPS. There aren't many places left on the globe that allow for this amount of freedom in the wild. We joined in 3 walks of about 3-5km each, counting as many of anything that moved that we could. One group of 40, we combed a large swath of land near the Zambezi river densely packed with wildlife. Even in our camp, hippos would emerge from the river and waddle by the tents. A giant elephant stopped to make sure we knew he was boss by marking his territory 15 ft from our tents, and the proceeded to park himself between us and the bathroom for most of the night. Water buffalo hung out in the trees just beyond the camp throughout the day. Baboons knocked our tents over while we were out - looking for food or just to create a bit of mischief. Hyenas and jackals regularly prowled the camp at dusk. A few of the groups got a ranger with a gun when going through the known danger areas, but many groups saw lions and leopards during their walks - without a guide. And often, it isn't the lions and leopards that are the most dangerous animals, but the herds of buffalo and mother elephants that pose the greatest threat. We had a ranger for our first walk that took us through the 'badlands', where a 25 strong lion pride roamed. He wielded a rifle that looked like it came from WWI. When asked how many bullets he was carrying, he said 30. I doubt it. When asking the seasoned veterans of the camp about risks or dangers, lions were almost the last think that came to mind - but the mantra was always go slow and be careful. They haven't had an incident in the 20+ years they have held the count. An impressive safety record indeed. None of them thought of the game count as a particularly dangerous activity, and were eager to ask what animals each group saw after their walks. This makes me think, how much of the 'fear' of the bush is instilled from one off stories and stupid mistakes - ala Grizzly Man. Given the right amount of knowledge and preparedness, is walking through the bush no less dangerous than the crime ridden streets of Johannesburg? Is this just one more Western way imposing itself? Are most African parks protecting themselves from lawsuit happy foreigners rather than protecting the foreigners from the charismatic mega-fauna that live there? Or was what I did last weekend really, really dumb?