The Top Five Ways to Decapitate an Owl

5. Ozzy Osbourne’s way. That would be biting its head off in front of a large crowd of screaming, churning metal fans while saluting the Dark Lord of the Underworld, Taylor Swift. Surprisingly, metal does not have a strong following anywhere in Africa.

4. An elaborate system of levers and pulleys. Likely as part of an assembly line that produces decapitated owls (or owl heads). Probably to power a home or business.

3. A space laser. Proposed by President Reagan in 1982, it was hoped to counter the Soviet build-up in owl-decapitation missiles. Owls, of course, being the equivalent of the Internet in the 1980’s, it was considered a strategic advantage to knock out a superpower’s owl supply in a pre-emptive strike to decapitate its command and control systems during a crisis.

2. The French Owl Revolution. Though it started as an overthrow of the corrupt French Owl monarchy, it quickly degenerated into a bloodbath of civil disorder among the various Owl factions, particularly by the Jacobin Owls. Mass guillotining ensued.

1. Dave’s way. About two weeks into the trip, we stopped on the side of the road in Tanzania (I think) for a pit stop. One of the girls came back, reporting that an owl had broken its wing and was flopping around ineffectually on the ground. Rather than leave it to an unknown, but likely brutal fate, dying of starvation or eaten alive by a predator, Dave took out his knife and decapitated it in one swift motion. It was frontier euthanasia. A stark reminder of the harsh cycle of nature and mankind’s limited ability to intervene in it.

The Top Five Things I Will Miss

5. Random encounters. From the people on the truck from all corners of the Western world, to Paul, our world judo champion / driver in Zanzibar, to Ali T, our cockney-accented tour guide, to the former inmate / current tour guide at Robben Island, every day was a new person to meet and a new thing to learn. The total lack of familiarity with anything and everyone was a refreshing change of pace. Repetition and routine are the enemies of clear thinking and critical perspective.

4. Sleeping in a tent. Simplicity realized. Despite the exterior changing every day, the interior remained the same. It is a nice feeling to pack up your home in a bag and take it wherever to it is needed. It was better on the last half the trip, when I got one to myself. I will not miss having to share a tent, but I will definitely miss being able to lie on the ground every night to sleep. It was a nice callback to our ancestral roots, though I’m grateful for the modern inventions of pads and sleeping bags that can handle zero degree temperatures.

3. $1 packs of cigarettes. The nice thing about being a smoker is that it provides opportunities to socialize otherwise unavailable to non-smokers. It’s how I bonded with Cyrus, our driver, and getting an opportunity to speak with a rotating parade of other locals and other tourists. It’s how I learned the difference between jambo and hujambo in two different Swahili dialects. The sociability aspect is partially the reason I took up the habit. Even at $1, it was still overpriced because the locals could get packs for fifty cents.

2. Monkeys as a public nuisance. They’re like raccoons, only smarter. Humans are only slightly above them in terms of intelligence, given how often they would steal our food when we weren’t looking. I don’t actually miss this, but it was a nice reminder of how similar and different Africa was compared to North America.

1. Going someplace new everyday, and that place being awesome and filled with exciting wildlife, interesting people, and beautiful scenery. There is a reason that Africa has three or four top predators and six top herbivores, while the rest of the continents usually have only one or two of those. There is something special to stepping out of your tent in the early morning and seeing a herd of zebras grazing across the landscape. The sheer scale of the biodiversity of the continent boggles the mind. The same can be said about diversity among peoples. There is everything, and so much of it.

Top Five Things I Won’t Miss

5. Borders. A necessary annoyance. Entering a country wasn’t so much an issue, but every time we left, it was apparently required that we fill out a tourism bureau form. Knowing what I know about government survey documents in Canada, I can only imagine how useless this enterprise is in east and south Africa.

4. Hawkers. No, I don’t want a pair of sunglasses, I’m already wearing a pair. No, I don’t want a CD of pop songs in Swahili, but please ask me 45 more times. Yes, I’m sure you will give me a good price on your wood carvings that are clearly manufactured in a central location and shipped everywhere in Africa, because I’ve seen them everywhere. No, I will not trade you my pants for a wood keychain. Yes, please shake my hand for 15 minutes while dragging me to your stall, it’s not incredibly invasive at all.

3. Having the same lunch every day for 45 days. White bread. Boloney. American cheese. Mustard. Banana and orange slices. Repeat. Thank the gods there was usually leftover curry or pasta.

2. Sticking out like a sore thumb everywhere (except South Africa). This was the most uncomfortable transition, because I tend to value my anonymity and ability to blend into a crowd. It wasn’t a racist thing, though, more like feeling like you were a walking dollar sign, and every hustler and shyster would appear out of the woodwork at your appearance.

1. Soul-crushing poverty almost everywhere you look and the knowledge that you can’t do a godsdamn thing about it. The disparity in wealth between Canadian society and most of African society seems like an intractable, unsolvable problem. It is the great moral sin and/or intellectual failing of our time that we can have Baconayise and $5 for 5 Arby’s sandwiches but not basic health care and sanitation.

Top Five Things to Bring

5. More than two pairs of shorts. I distinctly recall putting on a new, clean pair of shorts in the morning, having breakfast, loading the bags on the truck, and sitting down in my seat only to find them covered in dirt, coffee stains, and a weird black greasy substance of unknown origin. This happened roughly every four days.

4. Stuff for bartering. Especially in east Africa, everywhere we went, people would ask for old cellphones, pants, shirts, shorts, batteries, iPods, CD players, tape players, glasses, shoes, sandals, underwear, socks, pens, paper, books, notebooks, cars, car parts, coats, overcoats, petticoats, hats, bonnets, plates, utensils, laptops, desktops, guitars, guitar cases, bikes, earrings, scarves, fish hooks, fishing rods, hammers, saws, screwdrivers, shoelaces, cups, desks, chairs, tables, table legs, table tops, pots, pans, spatulas, tongs, wine decanters, headphones, boats, yachts, canoes, kayaks, water skis, water tubes, wells, colanders, and that’s the idea.

3. A hat, and a backup hat. Within the first week, mine was lost, and I had to beg / borrow / steal one from the other truck passengers. I tried to buy one, but it seemed that the only hats for sale were Rastafarian caps. I didn’t want to be That White Guy in the Rasta Cap, so mild sunstroke was in order for a little while.

2. Stripper clothes. Very often, it was the case that pants were required in the early morning, but later shorts were required. At this time, stripper clothes that could be easily torn away would have come in handy. A strong dance beat would not be required, but not objected to either.

1. A good knife. See the first Top Five.

Top Five Things Not to Bring

5. Your mother. Especially if she likes to sunbathe topless. And complain about literally everything on the trip, from the seats on the truck being uncomfortable, to not seeing enough lions on your safari, to complaining that “the English people” are annoying because they were upset you were 20 minutes late getting back to the truck at a pit stop.

4. Your entire medicine cabinet. Turns out I did not need four different brands of anti-diarrheal medication. Or any at all, because to my pleasant surprise, none of the water I drank made me ill. Probably because I didn’t go anywhere hardcore enough. Authenticity test fail.

3. Clothes you don’t want covered permanently in an unwashable layer of dirt.

2. Thick, giant books. I took Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and The Printing Press as an Agent of Change by Elizabeth Eisenstein, each over 1,000 pages. Excellent books, but finding room for them in my bags was a long, twilight struggle.

1. A sense of self-righteousness about everything. It turns out, people that live in different countries have different ideas about what constitutes a just society. This came as quite a surprise to a number of people on the truck, who were shocked that people in countries other than their own lived differently than themselves and valued different things.

Top Five Destinations

5. Serengeti / Ngorogoro. This was the first major stop on the trip, filled with breathtaking landscapes and more natural history than all the other continents put together. Ngorogoro Crater is a massive valley where numerous hominid fossils have been discovered, leading to the assumption that it is the place where our ancestors first came down from the trees and started walking upright. The Serengeti is its own exciting landscape, an endless plain where we saw a pride of lionesses stalk a herd of kudu (mini-gazelles) while a lazy male napped in the early morning sun.

4. Cape Town. Dominated by Table Mountain, this metropolis of 3.4 million people strikes a model balance between modern development and preserving its geography’s natural heritage. There are vast stretches between its suburbs that have been set aside because of its natural aesthetics and habitat for wildlife. Especially penguins, which aren’t the kind that serve martinis at parties but remain adorable none the less. If the Canadian government were in charge of the city, there would probably be two or three casinos atop Table Mountain by now.

3. Spitzkoppe, Namibia. A group of bald granite peaks situated in an endless desert plain, ‘the Matterhorn of Africa’ is an impressive sight. Climbing the smaller outcroppings wasn’t too difficult, and provides a stunning view of the surrounding area. Also, I got to sleep in a cave that featured ancient Bushmen art on its walls. Or vandalism from the 1970s made up to look like Bushmen art. And bats, which at first was disturbing, but it soon became apparent that they were not the kind of bats that eat your face, so it didn’t bother me after a while. We made a fire in the cave (the ceiling was partially open) and felt like ancients. Only they probably quoted The Simpsons less. The night sky here was the clearest of anywhere we slept in Africa, owning to its total isolation in the Namibian desert.

2. The Okavango Delta. The world’s largest inland delta, the waters from the Angola highlands do not drain into a large lake system or the sea, but rather create a 15,000 km2 swampland. We were paddled in on mokoros, traditional canoes now made of fibreglass and were able to hike through the islands on foot, instead of in trucks. This was also the most dangerous area we visited, not because lions and elephants roam the islands, but because hippos tend to flip over mokoros that come too close when navigating through the delta. Hippos are very territorial, and kind of dickish about it. Most of the islands started as termite mounds, supporting huge herds of animals, including an elephant population of around 6-8,000.

1. Victoria Falls. While we were only able to see it from the Zimbabwean side and during the dry season, there was nothing more spectacular to see in the entire trip. It was actually advantageous to come during the dry season, because during the wet season, viewing the falls is all but impossible from the Zimbabwean side because of the sheer amount of water and mist produced. Again, the countries must be commended for maintaining the natural heritage of the site. Nobody tried to sell me cheap souvenir crap until I was well away from the viewing area.

Top Five Total Shitholes

5. Livingstone, Zambia. Actually, I didn’t spend any time in the city, but the campsite we stayed in was completely overcrowded. Our tents were ass to elbow, but luckily we only stayed one night.

4. Swakopmund, Namibia. While there were some fun activities (quad biking, sandboarding), the city was completely dead on Sunday and mostly felt like an overpriced tourist trap. There wasn’t even much interesting architecture because the city had not been allowed to evolve naturally as a result of Namibia’s apartheid system. The result makes Swakopmund look like it was built by Disney.

3. Arusha, Tanzania. Again, I didn’t spend a significant amount of time here, but the city functions as a staging ground for trips up Kilimanjaro. As a result, it too often felt like a tourist trap.

2. Nairobi. Home to Africa’s second largest slum, Nairobi only exists because the British needed a railway stop between the Congo and Dar es Salaam. It was also so unsafe that you could not go anywhere at night as a white person. Perhaps the locals were exaggerating when they told me this, but I did not feel like testing their assumption.

1. Nairobi. Yes, it sucks that bad.

Top Five Piss-Offs

5. Spaniards. Between complaining about everything, being late for everything, and doing almost no work, the three on the truck did their best to make life awkward, uncomfortable, and miserable for the rest of us. Based on the behaviour of these three people, I feel justified in painting their entire nation in broad, whiny strokes.

4. The cat campsite in Malawi, with the cat that spilled my beer and almost gave me pinkeye. Seriously, fuck you, cat.

3. Losing my sleeping bag. It didn’t even get off the plane from Toronto, so I made do with one bought from the local Nairobi supermarket. It was a nice unit from MEC too.

2. Unnecessary hangovers. There were times when it wasn’t required that we drink at the campsite bar, but did so anyway out of sheer boredom and convenience. This made the morning drives more unpleasant than they had to be. In this case, I’m mostly pissed at myself.

1. Having to apply sunscreen and bug spray at the same time. Nothing like the combination of oil and deet to make you feel attractive. I eventually gave up on both and was rewarded with peeling, flakey skin for the last two weeks. It was worth it, though, as my mouth started to taste like bug spray even when I wasn’t using it.

Top Five Places I Didn’t Go

5. The Gorillas / The Congo / Burundi / Rwanda. Before joining the trip in Nairobi, a number of people on the truck had gone to see a gorilla reserve in the DRC beforehand. They returned with stories of jungle hiking and drinking at police bars. While it would have added two weeks to the trip that I barely paid for anyway, it was probably stupid of me not to do it. Saves something for next time I suppose.

4. Kilimanjaro. Again, I should have spaced out six days to climb it.

3. The ‘Lucy’ site at Ngorogoro. Nobody else raised their hand when they offered to take us to visit the fossil site. My inner nerd cried itself to sleep that night.

2. Mozambique. Despite the fact that the civil war just ended, I heard nothing but interesting things from people that had been to the area. It was definitely off the beaten path in terms of African tourism, which would have been an interesting contrast to the long-standing circuit I was on.

1. Everywhere else. Africa is so bloody huge and diverse and, it would take a lifetime to explore every nook and cranny of the continent and still miss more than half of the cool stuff going on.

Approximately 150 people live in Robben Island, as employees of the site and their families. It is also home to approximately 3500 penguins and a massive infestation of rabbits. The guide was a former inmate, housed in F Block from 1983 to 1987. He was imprisoned because of his “terrorist” activities against the apartheid government. In an insurgency, work is done by teams of three or four. It was our guide’s job to show people where various weapon caches were. At some point, he was ratted out and caught by the police. They beat him up at the police station, but he didn’t talk. They brought him down by a river, had lunch, a couple beers, hung out and talked about their wives and girlfriends, then dunked him in the river. But he still didn’t talk. Then they brought him to another police station where they hooked him up to an electric chair. Then he talked. His job on Robben Island was to work in the kitchen. This was an extremely important position, because the cooks were the only other prisoners that had interaction with the ANC and other resistance leadership in the prison, held in D Block. In 1987 he was moved back to the mainland, and finally released in 1990 with other political prisoners.

On the tour, they brought us to a lime rock quarry where the men were made to do hard labour, five days a week, eight hours a day, without a break. Off to the side of the quarry was a cave, where the men were allowed to piss and shit during the day. This was also where they would be allowed to eat lunch by the guards. This was also the place where the literate prisoners taught the illiterate ones to read and write. The guide retold the story of Nelson Mandela’s return to the island in 1995, with other prisoners. After the photo op in the quarry was completed, Mr. Mandela picked up a stone and brought it to a certain spot in the quarry, placed it down, and stood back. The other ANC and resistance leaders followed suite, picking up a rock, placing it down, and stood back. After a decent sized pile had been erected, Mr. Mandela told the press that where he had laid the rock was the spot where South African democracy had begun.