"Christ, _what_ an imagination I've got."

OK, who can guess where I am based on subject line alone?


This will be a long rambly incoherent entry.


There's some kind of a first-lines-of-works-in-progress meme going around. I don't actually have any works in progress. Book Three is done and dusted, Book Four has not yet begun, I don't write short stories, and everything else is in deathlike stasis. But what the heck, the first line of Book Three, Invisible Armies:

The bridge is out.

There, wasn't that exciting? OK, fine, the whole first paragraph:

The bridge is out. No: it has never been in. Danielle nudges the gearshift into neutral, splays her legs out on either side to support the motorcycle, and stares disbelievingly. The road before her continues smoothly for some sixty feet, then unravels into a leprous mass of concrete, from which a tangle of rusted girders reaches across the Tungabadhra River towards a similar span on the other side. It fails to arrive by forty feet.

What the heck, I'll throw in the marginally more exciting first line from my verging-on-forgotten Big Serious Book:

One day a Chinaman came from Toronto.

oh, and from even-more-forgotten Engines and Machines:

I think it's crazy the way you have to hide yourself.



Today I wonder about the economics of tourism. I'm spending a lot more money than I had anticipated on this trip, something like a hundred US a day when you prorate airfares, gorilla trek, and so forth. I'd expected maybe half that. I can afford it, thanks to the unexpected Japanese/Dutch translation-rights deals, but I can't really figure out *why* East Africa is more expensive than, say, Bolivia, Ghana, or India/Nepal, where one can travel ver comfortably for $20 a day.

Part of it is deliberate government fiat; there's an "all tourists have lots of money to spend" assumption, so it costs $50 just to enter a country around here, by and large, and national parks and such, and some hotels, are far more expensive for nonresidents than for residents. I wonder if this is actually a winning strategy. It's entirely possible - 100 luxury tourists bring in as much money as 500 backpackers. On the other hand, backpacker money is spent on public transit, small local hotels and restaurants, etc., instead of all of it going to flashy (and often foreign-owned) hotels and tour companies. Also, twentysomethings are far less likely to be suddenly scared away by bad press, whereas a single incident can devastate a tourist industry aimed at fiftysomethings.

(And then there are thirtysomethings like me, in between the two groups - "flashpackers" was the latest label I heard. Almost nobody used to cater for this group, 'cause it only just came into existence, but the market is growing.)

Part of it, I assume, also has something to do with whether you have other earners of foreign currency. Bolivia, Ghana and Nepal are in part so cheap because hard currency is scarcer there: Papua New Guinea is expensive because it has mining money. But India, I dunno. It's not like I actually know anything about economics. If anyone does, enlighten me. Why do countries with comparable development/poverty levels vary so much in cost of travel?


It's a lazy day. You probably figured that already. Must find a gym. My body fat is melting away - I've dropped back to circa 180 lbs, and shadowy hints of upper abdominal muscles are once again visible - and I'd like to minimize my strength loss on this trip. Also, I have new books to read: after finishing a bout of light reading (Maupin's Tales of the City and Hoban's The Mouse and His Child) I picked up Lords of Poverty and In The Footsteps Of Mr. Kurtz. Also, I finished L'Étranger, the second half of which was really pretty spellbinding for a book written in a language I only mostly understand. Must read more French books when I return to Montreal - one a month sounds a reasonable target. jul3z gave me one to start with when I get back.


There's a guy out there named Kevin Sites who's been sponsored by Yahoo to go to insecure areas and blog about it on The Hot Zone; his path and mine have almost overlapped, of late. His articles are OK (though no more; honestly, if I had a car-and-driver-and-translator-and-satlink budget, plus access to a major media organization's Rolodex, I'd do a miles better job. I appreciate that there may be some sour grapes there, but still.) He's kind of pissing me off, though.

Especially today's article, which is basically despite all the awful suffering and misery everywhere here, people still laugh. Ironically, it includes a long digression of stuff like "I also worry that my reporting will become this deluge of tragedy for people who, like myself, unable or uncertain of what to do, let it wash over them." You know, believe it or not, Africa is not an endless deluge of tragedy. There is plenty of misery, yes, but contrary to most media coverage of the continent - of which Sites is a classic example - most people here are not trapped in relentless disaster and perpetually on the verge of death. They're just poor. Very poor, desperately poor, and unlikely to ever find any opportunity to get any wealthier, sure - but most Africans do not live in profound interminable suffering. They build houses, raise families, grow food, hang out with their friends, visit the big city, play music, dance, drink, gossip, have sex with people they shouldn't, laugh at tourists, get into trouble, get married, argue with their parents about moving out, and basically live normal, recognizable lives. Yes, a minority of the continent's population does live in edge-of-death straits, but jeez, you'd never know it was a minority from looking at the Western news.