I stayed an extra day in Brazzaville, partially out of laziness, and partially out of fear of the road ahead - I had one easy day on the only tar road in the country (which goes about 400k north from Brazzaville to the president’s hometown of Oyo - total coincidence, of course), but after that […]

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Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, is Kinshasa’s less psychotic younger brother.
Both cities are dirty and run down, and fit my usual description when describing ex-colonial African cities to foreigners:
“Imagine a mid-size European city, with wide boulevards, planters in the medians, etc. Now imagine most of the streets never get paved and […]

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Arriving on the outskirts of Kinshasa as the sun was starting to fade didn’t cause too much alarm at first.
In the hills outside the city there were a surprising amount of very nice houses in private compounds (obviously belonging to either government officials or the business elite - ok so they are the same thing), […]

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So after a fitful night of half-consciousness (and one episode of flagging down the only truck that passed by the whole night for water), I woke up to find 5 bushmen poking around the outside of my tent.
Besides the whole crashing constantly thing of the previous day, I also, in my infinite wisdom after my […]

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After the Great Valve Cover Bolt Airlift of 2008 was completed, and the victory parades had stopped, the ticker tape was swept from the streets, and the NY Times journalists had (mostly) stopped calling, it was time to hit the road.

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Angola held its first elections in 16 years on Friday.  During the time I was there there were constant rallies (mostly supporting the main party and forgone concluded victor, the MPLA) and general chaos, with everything from random scooter parades of teenagers in party t-shirts waving flags to a quad-bike rally on the beach on […]

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After a tough week of travel from Namibia to Luanda, I was graciously allowed to camp out back at the local Yacht Club.  Free camping is great, but with a not-so-great "shower" and "bathroom facilities," after several days of playing the Great African Visa Waiting Game, negotiating the never-ending traffic, getting lost repeatedly (thanks to […]

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A constant refrain I have heard throughout my African trip from almost every african I have encountered  is "wow that’s dangerous!  I mean, here in (SA/Namibia/Angola/DRC/etc.) it’s plenty safe, but over THERE, those people are DIFFERENT.
In my experience, you need the world’s largest grain of salt when talking to any African who has rarely left […]

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Namibia is beautiful; stark and desolate in the desert and desert highlands, and slow, laid-back, and lumbering along in it’s cities, which (sorry Namibians) feel like South Africa in the 80s - completely with older buildings, a lot more dust, and some interesting taste in hairstyles and clothes of the both the white and black […]

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For a city founded only in the late 1800’s Johannesburg has as an incredible amount of noble (and not-so-noble) history.
It’s the beacon of modern industry, capitalism, and modernism on the African continent, the birthplace of apartheid and ground zero for repression of a nation, the home of the relatively peaceful birth of a democracy, a […]

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