loiyangalani - the cultural festival

its 11am when we arrive at loiyangalani. but the programme doens't start until 3pm after the planes have arrived and the arrivals have had their lunch.

we set up our tents and lounge by the pool and watch the planes land and the arrivals saunter in with their heavy american or german accents.

and then we walk to the end of the "high street" where the festival is supposed to happen.

the rendille, samburu, turkana, gabbra and el molo are arranged in a semi-circle facing the crowd. they are decked in "traditional" wear and ready to sing and dance.

the MC introduces each song and dance. most of them as love songs however so i begin to wonder how much of that is true.

the rendille begin. followed by the gabbra, samburu, el molo and then turkana. a lot of it is jumping and so i wonder how related they are in customs.

one german afterwards at the pool says he prefers this melange of old and new, socks and spears, beads and skins. says it's more authentic than enforcing on them something seemingly more "traditional" because it has nothing "western" about it. he has a point and i wish i knew more about their history.

we retire to the camp and fill the pool with talk of politics and bodies that are more interested in staying out of the pool after dipping for the refreshing feel of evaporation than in it for actual swimming.

it's 37C.

come 7pm dinner is served and i reheat my goat from lunch.

day 2 of the festival begins with a trip to the rock art sites. and i am keen to hear if there are any differences between rock art in east africa and rock art in south africa since i had read up about san rock art and continued to read up about it when i realised it was all shamanistic. but the guide from the national museum alternates between them being 2,000 and 20,000 years old. he also says that no studies have been done to which his colleague encouragingly suggests that now they can be done with advancements in DNA analysis.

DNA analysis?? on rocks?? very disappointing.

we return to the hotel for lunch and are out again at 12pm for the boat racing and museum tour. the boat race is short and one traveller comments on it being culturally insensitive. so you tell them to race for the mzungus?

there is prize money i try to compensate. there is always prize money, he says. indeed it was 15,000/-

the swimming competition was more interesting :p since the water was so shallow and perhaps because they couldn't swim as well, the swimming contestants ended up throwing themselves into the water and then just running to shore! lol.

by the end of sunday i'm glad that i drove. the trip was worth a thousand times more because of the journey and i think i would have felt short-changed if i had flown in only to see two rock art sites and the boat and swimming race (on top of the festival) .

it feels both long and short this trip. long because i have travelled 320kms away and short because it will only be 6 days. 2 of which are spent driving there and 2 driving back.

it'll probably be my last safari in kenya. and i'm glad i went so far in tribute of a place i might not see again for a long time.

on saturday i exchange photos with erhard on the occasion of a leaving dinner for him too as he heads to cape town.

loiyangalani

it's 7am and we have left for rumuruti. 5 hours on hi-way as we pass through naivasha and somewhat through nakuru...

we take the road coloured red on erhard's map. he says this is the best way and so we follow it. it is however also 1/2 hour longer but i find this out only when we take the yellow road on the way back. we pass tea plantations and trucks. i wish i had taken pictures but i was driving.

we stop at rumuruti where the convoy is to begin. we wait for the 8th car which arrives an hour late only to be sent back for being too small. a maruti.

and so the journey to loiyangalani really begins. and the road to maralal begins where the tarmac ends.

we pass forest and bush and wadis. we drive on rocks and sand and pools of water. and 6 hours later we are in maralal where we stay for the night.

10C outside.

at 6am we prepare to leave. i make eggs and toast on a pan and by 7am we are on the road again.

there are a lot more mountains in these landscapes. and though i sleep on this leg, the terrain is as dangerous as the scenery is exquisite.

the surrounding turns into badlands and i think to myself that i am in love with a desert. that i understand what MK said about crying for joy. because i feel like it now. and it's a stange feeling to be in love with something so unforgiving. something so remote and uninhabitable.

i am overjoyed by the first glimpse of the lake. one year, it has taken me, to finally see the jade sea.

The end of Puerto

I get back into White Beach and buy some kind of acid (don't remember which) for Potential Diving Mate's water-clogged ears. He is happy to receive it and regales to me about how his travel buddy was checking out the trannies-he-didn't-know-were-trannies last night.

Oh well! lol. We played pool, the three of us. The first time I've ever played a game of pool with three people.

We have a late lunch. I order squid spaghetti which was overrated. Ordinary spaghetti - just black.

And then we waited for tomorrow.

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Tomorrow came and I was supposed to leave. I ordered a Filipino breakfast and queued to take a larger bangka than the one on the way in.


The waters were still rough from the rains which I find out later were really a typhoon! lol. And so it isn't long after we set off that I am puking my breakfast and begging to be left lying on the boat floor to be as "stable" as possible.

3 hours of hell; my head dizzying, the Koreans screaming and the water thrashing and throwing us every which way before we're back on dry, non-moving land. I'm so dizzy however that I opt to lie on the waiting chairs for a few hours. And a few hours later, though I'm only a little improved, I head off to the bus stop. I take the same bus back and I call in sick for work that evening.

Puerto Part 2

That wasn't the end of the night, I remember! I think it was the guy working for Dive Instructor who invites Potential Diving Mate and I to see the nightlife in Sabang.

I don't remember his name. Only that I had called him up after I had seen a poster about diving. And then when I had met him he said he didn't really do any diving work and was just paid to do marketing, which I suppose means pasting posters around.

Potential Diving Mate says that him and his roommate had transferred from Sabang (he pronounces it sabaang) to White Beach after one night because of the overload in sex tourism. There's nothing that puts me more off, he says.

But I want to have a night out and so he agrees to take me along with Guy working for Dive Instructor.

Sabang is instantly recognisable with its bright lights and neon signs. The resto-bars creep into the sea and the streets are narrow and busy. Posters of travel and tours, bars here and shops there.

We enter what they call a girlie bar and sit ourselves at the bar near the stage. The girls are in bikini tops and mini skirts and sway ever so slightly to the music as they walk up and down and around the stage. I don't know, maybe too many MTV music videos, make me expect more (movement) and I am disappointed not to be seeing more action. Employer of Dive Instructor explains that they're all from Manila. That the locals don't really 'work' and that you can take them upstairs for something like 1,000 pesos. Or was it 500?

[note, the writer returns to this blog entry after about 3 weeks. Googling pictures of Sabang led to the discovery of a live show room... lol. But no, it didn't go further than that because you have to pay to see some real action]

Anyway, I am both sad and curious for the girls. Prostitution is an option I think every woman has thought of at one point (or maybe that's just the loose cannon thinking that is me).

I wonder if they feel ashamed having me there watching them from the front row... I wonder how long they will be in this... and how they got into it in the first place...

Girlie bars have many kinds of girls, I will discover later. Girls who you buy drinks for, girls you watch dance and then girls who work (who might also do either or both of the former duties). Single women (ie. not accompanied by a man) are not allowed to enter girlie bars. They would be competition, I'm guessing.

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When I get back to my adorable bamboo hut of a hotel room, I am greeted with a bill. I pay it and then realise I am out of cash. But I reassure myself that I can just pop into town again tomorrow and get some out of the ATM.

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The next morning however is pouring with rain. And Former Belgian Investment Banker texts me to tell me that the hiking trip is cancelled due to the rain. I figure I should go to town anyway to get cash but when I get there the ATM is offline and I am advised to go to the next town to try the ATMs there.

I ask a trike driver for his price and he says something exhorbitant. I say no thanks and try a jeepney. The driver says, P700 and we leave now. With just 1000 pesos on me, I say no thanks, I'll wait till the jeepney fills.

After about an hour it eventually fills and I only pay something like 50 pesos. The ride takes about an hour and my seat mate is nice enough to lend me his bag to lean on for napping.

I thank him when we get there and get into a trike and ask him to take me to the nearest ATM. We get there and it's offline. He takes me to another. Offline. A third and fourth. Offline, offline, offline!! By this point I'm pouring tears [melodramatic me is trying to express the potential gravity of being broke and stranded] and the poor trike driver doesn't know what to do with me. I also tell him that I need to pee and so he takes me to his house (maybe he needed to pick something up). I meet his wife and family, pee and we're off looking for ATMs again.

This time he takes me to Philippine National Bank and tells me that if any ATM will come back online, it's this one and why don't we wait in the guard house since it's still pouring and I shouldn't get any more wet than I already am.

I agree and the guard makes sardines with rice for all of three of us in that little guard house. We down it with Nescafe instant coffee as he talks to the guard about how sorry he feels for me. I had told him that I had travelled alone and that I wasn't Filipino.

Eventually it stops raining and the PNB ATM goes on and I withdraw my cash. YAY!! Finally.

Trike Driver advises me to buy dry clothes at the nearest shopping mall and that he'll even take me there. I'm not too fussed about being wet as I'd planned to head straight back to White Beach but I'm so touched and charmed by his efforts to take care of me that I agree for him to take me to the mall and so we go shopping, my trike driver and I :)

I choose a grey puff skirt, which I still own and love to this day and a simple black t-shirt. It costs something like P400 in total. And then he says he'll take me to this hotel to rest until the next jeepney back to White Beach. Again I agree to his suggestion and stay at the hotel he takes me to. I pay him P200 for all the driving around and he promises to be back in the evening to take me to the bus stop. But as neither of us have cell phones we rely on his word.

But I'm not able to sleep at all. And so after about 2 hours of trying to, I leave a note at the reception and some money for My Trike Driver and head to the bus stop.

It so happens that there is a jeepney waiting to go. And so I board it and as soon as it fills up, we're on our way back home.

Recollecting Puerto (June 2006)

I used to do order entry (soulless, soulless job) for an American company, in their newly-opened European account. My team leader had so far not given me neither American nor European holidays. So I rioted and they eventually gave me European public holidays. The first one that came along would have been my first long weekend since starting.

[Note: On hiring, when I asked how many days of leave a year I would get, they said, ten and I actually laughed in their faces!... and they still hired me! lol]

So anyway, I ask my cousin to come and she says yes with a hint of foreboding disappointment. I do some research online and decide on Puerto Galera, Batangas. A two-hour bus ride and one hour boat ride away.

Come Friday morning (the buses leave from 6am) and I'm still thinking of whether to go... alone now since the cousin called to decline (i knew it!) because she's already been "sick" twice this week and our grandmother "died" for the last, last-minute leave she took.

... 3am... 4am.. I'd hardly slept. But then I begin to pack. I think, why the hell not, I've been working like a robot. Let me use every free time I get.

It is always that moment before you decide to do anything that's the hardest. The moment before you get up to leave the warm bed to jog or to go to work. The moment you sit down and commit to writing a story or an application or a letter....

But now I've passed it and I'm sneaking out of the box of an apartment I share with my housemate. He called me cold. Said I didn't let him in on my life. But the truth is that I felt more lonely with him than with myself. I'd actually prefer to watch movies alone than with him. Eat out alone, go to work alone (we worked at the same soulless, soulless place).

And so I steal away and catch the bus and the day breaks as I head to Puerto.

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The bus arrives at the port and there are boats ahead that go to the different beach spots of Puerto Galera. I take the boat to White Beach. Internet reviews say that it's the quieter of the beaches and not one for overcrowded places, I decide on White Beach.

I take a bangka of about 12 people. I'm the only person travelling alone but I'm not bothered by it. I feel free. There is pure ocean ahead and I feel free.

An hour later, the boat lands on the shores of White Beach, I hadn't booked a hotel as it seemed, you could find one on arrival. I walk into a compound of bamboo huts and take one of them. For something like 800 pesos you get a quaint little bamboo walled room with a double bed, aircon and shower. If I remember correctly, it was on stilts even because I remember having a little balcony from which I took photos the day I was leaving.

There are women offering braiding on the beach. There are henna painters of 'tatoos'. I get a free tat of the sun in tribal design because I'm the first customer there. Henna-man gets his henna from Dubai. His sister works as an airhostess or something.

I walk the length of the beach and then catch a trike into town. I heard there was a festival there so I want to catch it.

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But there is no festival and no one seems to know anything about it! lol (trust the internet). And so I amble into the nearest resto bar and order a drink. There is a mixed group of men that invite me to join them. Two hungarian sailors who regale about touching whales, one Belgian former investment banker who gave up his businesses to really live life, watch his children grow, one local who seems suspiciously keen to offer me a bike ride around Puerto and the boss of the place whose wife keeps visiting the table with more San Miguel beer.

But after several beers, I take suspicious-acting man's offer to ride his bike and off we go around Puerto.

I would be punished by my boyfriend, if I had one at the time for doing such a thing. But my unsatiable curiosity cum naïveté blinkers all warning signs. And I throw myself head on into potentially compromising situations.

But suspicious-acting man turns out to be less than suspicious. Because after an hour of riding up, down and around the peninsula he takes me back to the resto-bar and that was the end of that.

The group is still there and so I arrange with the former investment banker man to join his hiking group the next morning. I also meet a dive instructor on the way back to my 'hotel' and arrange to go for a class the next day. He invites me and another potential diver to dinner at an Italian resto and after two huge pizzas we retire to the beach front for San Miguel (or is it Red Horse?) beers with a trannie who joins us.

She is very proud of her hormone-induced breasts and invites me to prod them. I poke them and say wow that's nice (because it IS quite an achievement) but they feel rather hard and scare me quite a bit. Two years, she tells me, I take these pills. Ok, I see, that's nice.

Eventually (one slow beer drink for me afterwards) we part ways leaving Trannie to look for new 'friends'.