Brrrrr!

Hello from freezing cold Johannesburg! We arrived safely yesterday and despite my fears have been kept safe and comfortable thanks to our hosts at Sleek Backpacker's hostel! We were met at the airport by the owner who gave us a quick tour through the city on the way back to the hostel. It was a Sunday afternoon so it was pretty quiet but she took us through some areas where she said we should never walk around alone. The city looks like a lot of big cities back home except for the stalls set up for street vendors and the run down state of the buildings in the poorer areas. We were dropped off at an African craft market in a shopping mall for a couple of hours and Maya was in paradise: her first chance in 10 months to walk around a shopping mall! It really felt like we were bacj home. The craft market had lots of beautiful souvenirs and Kim enjoyed his first big, strong, Canadian style coffee since he left home.

The hostel we're staying at is wonderful. The owner Charlotte, is also a part time tour guide so she has given us lots of information to help us in our travels and told us many interesting stories about her adventures, including the time their open-topped safari car tipped over in the dark beside a family of lions in Kruger park. Marlene is the live in staff here and she is lovely and very charming! She reminds me of someone out of a British sitcom. We spent a long time discussing the missing eggs (there were two put out for each guest and some have gone astray)... There are a lot of women from Botswana staying here for a conference as well as a woman from Namibia waiting to get a Canadian visa so she can attend an AIDS conference.

Tomorrow we head off for Kruger National park. They have a really accessible national park system here compared to the extremely expensive ones in Kenya and Tanzania. We'll be staying in huts and renting a car to explore what is supposedly one of the nicer game parks in Africa. Hopefully the next blog will contain a description of our sightings of lions, crocodiles, hippos, giraffes and elephants.

Our stay in Yemen was wonderful, though somewhat frustrating and amusing. We had a two night stopover there while we waited for our connecting flight to Yohannesburg. The frustrating and amusing part involved dealing with immigration. They collect all your passports on arrival, but when it comes to picking them up upon leaving the country their system lacked a bit of organization. With ten minutes to go before boarding, about 60 of us from a variety of countries waited anxiously as the man held up one passport at a time and called out names. I could see that there were no Canadian passports in his pile and finally someone went and tracked them down. Everyone was highly amused by our anxiety over the whole thing and everyone did seem to get on the plane, so next time through I'll just relax and trust that it will work itself out!

The airline put us up in a very fancy hotel and kept us well fed while we were there (lots of cumin seasoned dishes!). The kids were thrilled with our huge suite, with treats like hot water and satelite tv. Simon loved it so much that he stayed there while the rest of us took a mini-bus to town and visited the old city, a Unesco world heritage site. This part of Sanaa has kept it's old multistory buildings (the world's first skyscrapers) and thin, winding streets so I used up half a roll of film there. The streets were full of shops selling beautiful scarves, jewlery, and to the boys' delight, the daggers and belts that all the men there wear. Simon and Lukas each left with a very blunt dagger, and Shelley and Maya and I got some beautiful woven scarves. Kim now has a Yasar Arafat style head scarf which he looks quite exotic in! Kim also was intrigued by quat, the green, coca leaf like substance that all the men stuff into their mouths and chew on for a few hours in the late afternoon. We saw some very big cheeks on some of the guys as we walked through the streets near our hotel later that evening. Kim settled on mango smoothies though as the opportunity to buy quat never presented itself. It supposedly has a very weak effect, providing energy and cutting down your feelings of hunger. Though alcohol is illegal in this Muslim country, there doesn't seem to be a problem with chewing quat.

I was thrilled to learn that unlike in Eritrea, in Yemen people understand you when you attempt to communicate with them in their language. Ten months of Arabic lessons have paid off and it was wonderful to be able to communicate with people. I had been worried that as a women we would have little interaction with the people (mostly men) in the streets and shops, but tourists are treated differently than the Yemeni women in that way. We kept on our headscarves and long sleeves and skirts and were treated very warmly by everyone. It would be great to return to this country sometime with a bit of time to explore it more.

We've had a great visit with Kim's cousin Shelley, who also spent a couple months visiting us in Eritrea, our one and only Canadian visitor so far. We visited Asmara (which is cold and rainy these days) and she spent several days in Keren, where our neighbours and friends were anxious to meet her and show her some good Eritrean hospitality. We were invited for ga'at (remember the sticky ball of cooked barley flour served with rancid butter and yoghurt?) . Luckily for Shelley, she has a wheat allergy so she got out of eating it. Kim and I actually like the stuff so we were able to eat enough so that our hosts weren't offended (she told us that this is a special treat reserved for big occasions and special guests). We were also treated to a few coffee ceremonies (which Shelley enjoyed more) and our Indian friends made a delicious multi-course meal for us. Our Arabic tutor also came over one day and cooked us up some hamle, the famous green that comes out once a year and that the month of July is named after in Tigrinha. So it looks like having visitors over leads to us all being very spoiled by our friends. We're hoping that some more of our Canadian friends and family will read this and decide to come out for a visit!
The last part of Shelley's visit to Eritrea included a trip down to Masawa. We had been warned that it was very hot at this time of the year, and it was very true. It averaged around 45 degrees there, but unlike Keren it was very muggy and didn't cool down at night. Our hotel had air conditioning so we survived until the last night there, when the electricity was cut from midnight to six am and I woke up several times feeling like I was in a sauna. But overall, the visit was very nice. We visited the beach twice and Shelley was thrilled to swim in the Red Sea. Unlike during our last visit there, the water was a bit cooler and we were able to swim around for quite some time. We also had some very good fish suppers there and except for the pack of wild cats that hung out around our table, it was great.

Before I sign out, I've been requested by the kids to make a plea. We are now the lucky owners of a portable DVD player. A VSO couple has been transfered to Asmara, where they are no longer allowed to keep the communal VSO Dvd player as they are supposedly now living a more luxurious lifestyle in the big city. (We've also inherited a laptop, gas stove, several tables, and speakers from our VSO buddies who've finished their stay in Eritrea, so next year will be a lot more luxurious!) So...if anyone has any old DVDs that they no longer watch, our kids would be thrilled to have them. Just send them unmarked and hidden inside something (a notebook?) so that they're not held up for months by the censorship people here. Our address is Barb Ryeburn, c/o Anseba Islamic Institute, P.O.Box 71, Keren, Eritrea. Thanks!

That's all for now. I'll try to write again from Maputo, Mozambique,

Take care,

Barb