And so it was that all good things come to an end. I've posted fewer and fewer times about computers and social network analysis, and more times about culture and language. My mind is currently wondering whether the blue doors of Zanzibar are culturally blue like those in the middle east to ward off the evil eye, and why dolphins don't get the bends (and, for that matter, how they drink) and what the evolutionary advantage of silly-looking punk rock haircuts is to Red Colibus Monkeys.
And whether $11 is too much to pay for a Tom Clancy thriller in the duty-free. And who I can convince to tilt back a glass of Konyagi (Tanzanian Gin) with me.
I'm still bemused by the dolphin boat captain on the edge of Zanzibar who was curious about Bush or Kerry, and my feelings on gay marriage1. About sitting around a drum and chanting circle on a Thursday night in Zanzibar, sipping soda and chatting with a couple of guys sitting around, just enjoying the waves and the water and the wind: the first time I had a conversation that didn't end with trying to sell me a batik. My head is still wobbling a little from the choppy waters in the diving boat yesterday, and the ferry ride this morning, which stopped dead in order to repair "rudder on the propellers."
I'm still proud of the patches on the soles of my shoes. $5, cannibalized from a dead pair of Converses. (I'll show you.)
In other words, I've had a good vacation. I've stuck my nose into somewhere else, and begun to feel like I was getting a little bit of a hint of another place and another culture.
I've got a few more reflections -- on the oldest town in Zanzibar, and on what happened to the Zanzibar wealth (the revolution was not kind to it) and on ferry rides and everything being negotiable -- but perhaps right now isn't the time.
I have a flight home to take. Nairobi to London, in four hours. London to Chicago, then Chicago to Seattle. And a temporary home in Seattle that I'll have to start turning into my own place.
I have photos to sort and post. A mailbox to get into, and boxes upon boxes waiting for me to sort through. Loads of wash to clean up. Souveniers to sort. Pictures of fornicating giraffes2 to scan.
Thanks for following along with me. I'll be back soon to clean up a little, to remove spam, and to complain about jetlag.
1 This might have been a reflection on the fact that all of us on the trip were male: six guys in a boat with him. He let us know that one male-male couple who had visited him had later gone home with two Tanzanian wives, one of whom is pregnant.
2 Sorry, Paul, but no baboons. At least not on the runway, and not fornicating. And not enough to delay a flight.
October 29, 2004 08:24 AM | TrackBack | in TravelogueThe bends are caused by inhaling pressurized air, which has a consequence of increasing the concentration of nitrogen in your blood, and then rapid decompression causes nitrogen bubbles to form in your joints. Dolphins don't use regulators and only inhale at the surface, so, like skin divers, they don't have to worry about the bends. Or was that a rhetorical question?
Posted by: Nikita at October 29, 2004 09:19 AMActually, Nikita, I believe it's more complicated than that. As I understand it, a skin-diver would still get the bends if he descended deep enough, because the gas that remained in the lungs (and was not already dissolved into the blood) would start getting driven into the blood by the increased pressure, even without inhaling new pressurized gas. I believe they also allow the pressure to collapse a lot of their body structures, squeezing excess gas out of their lungs to prevent this problem.
Aha: this says that dolphins also have blood that can keep a lot more nitrogen in solution than ours can.
Posted by: Auros at October 29, 2004 03:54 PM