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A visit to an African market

by Sean McLachlan on


One of Africa’s best attractions are its markets. Full of vibrant life and color, an African market always makes for a fascinating visit.

Harar has one big and several smaller markets. There used to be one at each of its five gates, but some have dwindled to barely half a dozen women selling tomatoes and potatoes. The only big gate markets now are at Assum Gate, where there’s a busy market for qat, Africa’s favorite narcotic leaf, and at Asmaddin Gate, which has a huge market–Harar’s biggest and some say the second biggest in Ethiopia, with only Addis Ababa’s famous Merkato being bigger. Merkato is unfair competition since it’s the biggest African market of all!

The markets are dominated by the Oromo, a different ethnic group than the Hararis. The Hararis live in town and the Oromo farm the surrounding countryside. Most sell fresh produce and you’ll see piles of fresh vegetables as well as sacks of grain. People also sell manufactured goods, mostly cheap Chinese imports such as shoes, blankets, radios, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

The Oromo have a strict segregation of the sexes at the market. Only women sell food, while men will often sell manufactured items. Men never sell qat. In his Eating the Flowers of Paradise, Kevin Rushby tells a story of an Oromo man whose wife had died. Needing money, he went to the market with a bundle of qat. He was laughed out of town and even years later he was known as “the man who tried to sell qat.” Nobody could explain to me why this division of labor exists; it’s just the way it is.

%Gallery-119721%The markets start at daybreak and Oromo from the more distant villages set off from home well before dawn, sometimes carrying their produce for miles. The women balance amazingly heavy loads on their heads, keeping their backs perfectly straight and walking in neat lines along Harar’s narrow alleyways.

Prices for food are pretty much set, although you can always haggle a little bit. For manufactured goods expect a long struggle as you and the vendor clash over the price. It’s not a frantic as Arab markets but it’s still an amusing battle of wits.

Inside the walls of the old city are a few major streets lined with shops and one open-air market called Gidir Magala. It used to be the largest in town but now it’s only a few dozen covered stalls selling produce. Next to it is a firewood market and a meat market. Oromo women lead donkeys loaded with wood from this market to deliver to private homes. Women who can’t afford a donkey carry giant bundles of wood on their head. There’s also a huge blue water tank where people fill twenty-liter yellow plastic jugs. With Harar’s water shortage, porters are busy carting piles of these jugs on wheelbarrows to people’s houses.

Women also sit by the sides of the major streets and squares selling food. One cooks up delicious samosas. Several more sit behind piles of peanuts, selling packets of them for one birr (six cents) each. Others sell bananas. You don’t have to go far to find a snack.

Besides the markets, there are wandering vendors selling everything from posters to perfume. It’s a hard life, walking around all day trying to sell things people generally don’t want. These folks don’t make many sales but they manage to contribute a little to the family income. One guy who is a common sight in the Old City carrying the same three bottles of perfume should get an award for persistence. Every day for the past couple of weeks I’ve asked him if he’s made a sale, and every day he shakes his head sadly. Yesterday, though, he strode up to me, looking a foot taller, and announced that he had sold a bottle.

One item that does sell well are lottery tickets. I guess I’m not eligible to win because the lottery guys are the only street vendors who don’t try to sell to me. Everyone else keeps trying, even the perfume seller After a month in town, the shoeshine boys in front of my favorite café are still trying to shine my Gore-Tex hiking boots.

I hate shopping at home, but shopping is never dull in Africa!

Don’t miss the rest of my Ethiopia travel series: Harar, Ethiopia: Two months in Africa’s City of Saints.

Coming up next: Harla: Ethiopia’s lost civilization!

Hunting scorpions in South Africa’s Kruger National Park

by Kraig Becker on

When travelers visit Kruger National Park in South Africa they expect to see plenty of wildlife. Most come hoping to spot the “Big Five” which includes lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo, and rhinos, but they’ll also see plenty of zebras, monkeys, and hippos too. What most don’t know is that South Africa also has more than 160 species of scorpions and countless spiders as well. While those critters aren’t quite as popular as the elephants and lions of Kruger, they can still be fun to spot while visiting the park.

On my recent visit to Kruger I had the unique opportunity to spend a day searching for a variety of scorpion and spider species with Jonathan Leeming, author of the book Scorpions of South Africa. Leeming has spent more than 25 years studying the creepy crawlies of Kruger and trekking through the bush with him is akin to tracking crocodiles with Australia’s late, great Steve Irwin. Much like Irwin, Leeming has the same enthusiasm for his work, and a big personality to match his energy. He is also extremely knowledgeable. Leeming has probably forgotten more about South Africa’s scorpion population than most people will ever know.

Leeming is well known in throughout South Africca and often teaches courses and gives lectures on scorpions and spiders. He works to help people to identify the various species native to the country so they know which ones are safe and which are best avoided. When I met him, Jonathan was preparing to give one of his courses to future safari guides. That course would help those guides to not only prevent clients from stumbling across potentially dangerous insects, but also to find some of the more interesting species to show off to travelers.Our day began with a brief lecture about the different scorpions and spiders that live in the northern Kruger region, with Leeming dispelling some of the myths about those archnids. For instance, not all the scorpions that live there are poisonous. In fact, some don’t even have a stinger at all. The trick is knowing which are dangerous and which are safe, and where they like to make their home. Jonathan showed off some of his favorite species, which were safely contained inside specimen jars, pointing out their distinguishing features and offering insights on their demeanor. Some are far more aggressive than others, which can make them potentially more dangerous as well.

With the lecture portion of the class behind us, we quickly set out on foot to go in search of scorpions. Jonathan led us to a rocky hill, where we began looking for signs of the creatures. He told us that they liked to live in tight cracks between the rocks, where they could easily slide in and out without attracting the attention of other animals passing by. He also told us that scorpions love to prey on millipedes and that a sure sign of a scorpion living in the rocks was the remains of millipede rings, left over from a scorpion’s feast, along the edge of a lair.

Sure enough, we found those tell-tale signs, and were soon pulling back rocks to uncover the arachnids. Most of the members of our group were a bit trepidatious about what we might find under those rocks, but Leeming was fearless. Over the course of his research and studies, he has been stung numerous times, and while a number of the scorpion species of Kruger are harmless, there are still a few that can, and will, leave you writhing in pain. That didn’t slow Jonathan down however, and with each discovery his enthusiasm grew. Armed with long metal tweazers, Leeming was soon pulling scorpions from beneath the rocks. Before long, we had a tidy little collection of menacing looking arachnids, some of which didn’t seem to mind being examined, and others that were down right pissed off at our intrusion into their homes.

Throughout the rest of the day, we drove around Kruger National Park spotting wild game. But on numerous occasions we stopped our vehicle to explore other rocky outcroppings. Turning over those rocks, we found yet more scorpions, and it became abundantly clear that the critters were very common, even if we took little notice of them before that day. It was beginning to seem that, almost literally, there was a scorpion under every rock, and yet the number of people who are stung on an annual basis is exceedingly small. While scorpions have a bad reputation, the reality is that they aren’t nearly as dangerous as we are sometimes led to believe. Something that Leeming continually reminded us throughout the day.

Our search for Kruger scorpions didn’t end when the sun went down either. That’s when Leeming pulled out his final tip for the would-be scorpion hunters that he has spent the day with. It turns out, scorpions glow when illuminated by ultraviolet light. So as the sun went down, Jonathan handed out pocket sized flashlights armed with ultraviolet bulbs. We then began combing the area around our camp, where we discovered several more scorpions lurking not far from where we slept and ate. The little critters glowed eerily in the pale UV lighting, sticking out like sore thumbs. There was even one nestled in the knot of a tree just a few feet from our dinner table. The evening exercise served only to remind us that these arachnids are everywhere, but remain unnoticed most of the time.

At the beginning of our day, Leeming started off with a group of journalists who were leery of anything that had to do with insects in general and scorpions in particular. But before our lesson was over, each of us held a scorpion in the palm of our hand. We learned that they were not as dangerous as we had been led to believe, and that they were all around us, even if we hadn’t seen them. We also learned how to handle them safely, which could prove to be an invaluable skill should we encounter them in the future. While none of us will probably ever have an enthusiasm for arachnids to match Leeming’s, we certainly had a new found respect and understanding about the creatures.

It is doubtful that many travelers go on safari in Africa looking for scorpions, or other insects for that matter. But should you find yourself there on your future travels, don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for Africa’s smaller critters. They’re probably there, right under your nose, just waiting to be discovered.

This trip was sponsored by South African Tourism and South African Airways, but the ideas and opinions expressed here are my own.

Southern ocean police report

by Jon Bowermaster on

As Sea Shepherd predicted, when two of its boats made port in Hobart, Tasmania, over the weekend – on the heels of a just-completed and successful campaign against Japanese whalers – Australian police greeted them.

Armed with search warrants both the “Bob Barker” and “Steve Irwin” were scoured by the police with Sea Shepherd boss Paul Watson observing. No charges were made, nothing confiscated. Yet the search went on, spurred by complaints by the Japanese government that the Shepherd’s activities in the Southern Ocean were “obstructing commerce and industry.”

Japan Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara had asked New Zealand and the Netherlands, as well as Australia, to condemn the anti-whalers, since the Shepherd’s ships are registered in those countries. It claims the Shepherd’s put the lives of Japanese crewmen at risk.

Australia’s Green party leader, Sen. Bob Brown, was at the docks to welcome the Sea Shepherd activists and told the press: “The good police (of Australia) are doing the work of Tokyo…I have written to the Minister for Foreign Affairs this morning calling for an end to this charade.”

Watson said this was the third year in a row his ships have been searched when they’ve first made port. “All I can say to the Japanese who every year say ‘you guys are eco-terrorists, you’re criminals’ is ‘look, arrest me or shut up.’ It’s just getting really irritating constantly being called an eco-terrorist without actually being arrested.”

While the Japanese did quit the whaling season early, it’s no guarantee they are giving up, despite that the Shepherds’ formally announced that this past season’s “Operation No Compromise” is finished.They will most likely return to the Southern Ocean next year and in the meantime – since they took fewer than 100 whales this season, hardly the 900 they anticipated – it is possible they may turn to hunting whales closer to home, in the northwest of the Pacific Ocean.

For its part, Sea Shepherd says it will be back down south next season if necessary. “We will be prepared and we will be ready,” Watson said in a statement posted on his website. “Our objective is to defend the integrity of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. We have done so since 2002, and we will continue to do so if there are any future threats to the sanctuary and the whales.”

In more Antarctic-related police news, Norwegian skipper Jarle Andhoy, whose ship the “Berserk” sank off the coast on February 20 with three crewmembers onboard while he and another man attempted a misguided and secretive effort to reach the South Pole by ATV, has been charged back home with negligence.

The charges, recommended by Norway’s Polar Institute, cite his lack of a proper permit and for failing to have a search and rescue plan filed in advance in case of the very kind of emergency that sank his 42-foot sailboat.

Since the seventh continent is governed by international treaty – a unique agreement, thus there are no police or military there – citizens are subject to the rule of law in their home country.

Andhoy argues that Antarctica should be “free and open” to everyone, though he realizes he faces jail time for ignoring the rules. He may also have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to compensate the rescue efforts staged by the government of New Zealand and two private ships (including the Sea Shepherd’s “Steve Irwin,” whose helicopter logged 21 hours in the air searching for signs of the sunken boat).

IAATO, the organization that oversees all visits to Antarctica by private vessels, has condemned Andhoy and his unannounced effort to “sneak” to the South Pole without proper permit, thus endangering the crew left behind on the “Berserk” and rescuers.

Apparently Andhoy contacted several IAATO member ships prior to last season asking for support of his vague plan to reach the South Pole, which they all refused due to the fact he had neither asked for nor received permission.

No one who knows Antarctica is surprised the “Berserk” got in trouble. I’ve organized private expeditions to Antarctica and gone through the permitting process, which in the U.S. meant I had to file lengthy applications with the EPA, State Department and National Science Foundation.

I’ve sailed to the continent with veteran round-the-world sailor Skip Novak aboard his “Pelagic Australis,” and will do so again next January. He knows the conditions in the Ross Sea, where the ship was last heard from on February 20, as well as anyone and says he would never take a sailboat there, no matter the condition or season.

In an interview with Explorer’s Web, Skip said he’d been contacted by Andhoy last year and asked about making landings on the continent. “I get many of these ‘dreamers,’ who are largely ill informed of the basics of the geography and climate … I never heard from the guy again.”
Caught in a vicious though typical Antarctic storm – 80-knot winds, -10 degrees Celsius air temperatures, 25-30 foot seas — while the “Berserk” did manage to send out a distress signal, in all likelihood it sank very quickly, weighted down by ice and capsized.

This is the first time in modern history a private yacht has sunk off the coast of Antarctica.
“Every ship, aircraft, expedition and in some country’s cases, even individuals must apply for permission to enter Antarctic Treaty territory, defined by any movement south of 60 degrees,” says Skip.

“For the skipper of Berserk to be unaware of this is not believable. What has proved to be a maverick’s misadventure causing loss of life is symptomatic of a few ‘adventurists’ who still consider Antarctica an unregulated ‘wilderness’ area.

“The reality is that Antarctica via the Antarctic Treaty system collaborating with IAATO is a highly regulated territory, and it is unacceptable for anyone to claim they had no prior knowledge of the requirements proving due diligence.”

[flickr image via ]

37 skiers were stranded in Yosemite backcountry

by Kraig Becker on

Earlier this week a late season blizzard hit Yosemite National Park, burying the region in snow and leaving 37 skiers stranded in the backcountry. Fortunately they all escaped unharmed, but were given a healthy reminder of the dangers of traveling in the wilderness during the winter.

A group of 21 cross country skiers made their way to the Glacier Point region of the park along a trail that stretches 10.5 miles in length. That trail ends with a spectacular view of Half Dome, the most prominent attraction in the park, and Yosemite Valley some 3000 feet below. A winter hut stands nearby, and most skiers end up spending the night there before making their way back out the following day. A blizzard struck the area on Sunday, dumping six feet of snow on the park. The snow was accompanied by high winds, which made visibility and travel nearly impossible.

When the weather cleared a few days later, the group donned their skis and headed for the Badger Pass Ski Area for help. That journey took a number of hours to complete, with each of the group members taking turns breaking trail at the front of the pack.

Meanwhile, another 16 people were stranded throughout other areas of the park, but eventually made it out as well. The Park Service used snowmobiles to create tracks that allowed some skiers to make it out on their own, while others had to be rescued by Snowcat or snowmobile.

Late in the week, most of the roads into Yosemite were still closed due to the heavy snows. As of this writing, snow chains are still required while traveling along the few roads that are open and conditions are still in a state of flux. Travelers planning to visit the area are encouraged to call 209-372-0200 (then dial 1, 1) for the most recent road conditions before they set out.

Six feet of snow in one blast? Didn’t someone send Yosemite the memo that it’s spring now?

Top ten ways to deal with a slow Internet connection while travelling

by Sean McLachlan on


Adventure travel has its downsides. One of them is that out-of-the-way places tend to have slow Internet connections. Usually this isn’t a problem. You aren’t going to the ends of the Earth to tweet about it, are you? Sometimes, though, we need to keep in touch. While writing my Harar travel series, I’ve been having serious problems trying to do this broadband blogging job on a dialup connection. Not only is it always slow, but it died completely for a week. Today the Internet came back as mysteriously as it disappeared. Assuming you can get a connection, here are some time-saving tips I’ve come up with, along with others that fellow Gadlingers suggested to keep me from pulling my hair out at the local Internet café.

1: Compose on Word or Notepad while your email is loading.

2: Don’t try to open more than one tab at a time, but while you’re reading one you can open another.

3: Turn off “automatically load images.” In Firefox you do this by clicking Tools-Options-Content-then unchecking “Load images automatically”. In Internet Explorer click on Tools-Internet Options-Advanced-scroll down to Multimedia and uncheck “Show pictures”.

4: Some email accounts like Gmail have a Basic HTML option that will make your email load more quickly.

5: If you have your own computer, NoScript is a useful program from cutting out a lot of the high-bandwidth crap that clutters up the Internet.
6: Scott Carmichael says, “Find mobile versions of sites. Always make sure background apps like Dropbox are disabled.”

7: Meg Nesterov says, “Can never be said enough: save early and often. Load text-heavy or videos that buffer first while you’re active on other pages, then read/watch them last. Some sites will load faster in Mobile view.”

8: Stephen Greenwood says, “When I was in Arusha, Tanzania, I would go to the fanciest hotel in town (they had the fastest WiFi) and pretend I was staying there so I could upload photos / blog posts from the lobby.”

9: Once you’ve logged out, wait a moment and then close the tab. The command has already been sent and you will be logged out. Yes, I’ve checked this and it really works.

10: You’ll probably have to do without high-bandwidth sites like Twitter.

. . .if all else fails, send a postcard!

Do you have any time-saving tips you use when struggling with a bad connection? Tell me about them in the comments section. I need all the help I can get over here!

[Photo courtesy user cfarivar via Gadling’s flickr pool]