Frank in Africa ‘08

so after writing my last post Beer and I spend most of the day at the internet cafe trying to upload things to the virusfreegeneration hiphop tour site, we uploaded a 5mb video which took 10 minutes, and after that wasted about an hour on trying to upload 20kb (2 small thumbnails).

I decided it was a good day to wear my official tour t-shirt today, but its really thich fabric and the print on it doesnt let any air go through, so I have a wet spot between my boobs, sexy I know, more sexy stuff I forgot to mention, last night I got rid of a lot of my hair, it was just too hot for long hair, the usual routine, using 2 hair elastics and cutting in between them removing the pony tail completely in one go.

not much else happened today, im tired after 2 sleepless nights, but I can’t really seem to relax. I talked to an african person from music mayday today after the electricity went down, and the first thing she said was “don’t worry about it just relax, and after a while they’ll find a way to fix it” so that’s what I’ve been doing, no website updates without laptops, and those run on electricity, since my battery has 3 more minutes on it, it’s time to start living the african way, walk slowly, relax, have a drink, and don’t worry man…

Tags: Tanzania, Uncategorized by Frank
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Mamba (that’s what all the people say here),

Day 1 started with a walk around the neighbourhood, after which we cooled down for a while in a luxery shopping centre, with marble floors known as “the Millenium Towers”.

It’s strange to see a big marble block with futuristic reflective windows in a place like this, there are a lot of small dirt roads with a lot of small shops, they sell food pretty much everywhere, there are a lot of strong smells while walking around, 1 moment you’re enjoying the smell of meat being grilled and the next its the typical smell of hot trash.

There are lots of chickens walking around and dogs sleeping in the shade, it’s really a different world, and even though it’s a pretty “rich” part of town it’s still really poor by my western standards.

All the people are really friendly, but for the most obvious reason, white people have money, as soon as you stop and talk to them it’ll result in them trying to sell you artsy stuff, or trying to get you in their taxi.

After all that walking we decided to go back, eat and drink something and after that try if we could get some money at the ATM, which we couldn’t, just the receipt, no money, but that’s pretty normal here, nothing to worry about, after finding an internet cafe (see previous post) and buying some SIM cards for our phones we took a taxi to the kilimanjaro hotel, where Beer, Jeroen and I met the rest of the crew.

We walked to the ferry to paradise, which was an experience on it’s own, we’re were told to watch our bags/wallets because it was gonna be crowded, so crowded that it wasn’t possible to move at all, we took a taxi to a nice resort at the beach where we sat on the beach and drank a beer, it was heaven, and hard to believe that it was all real, the contrast between the poor city life and the beautiful beach was a surreal experience.

I walked down the beach and through the water for a bit (setting foot in the indian ocean for the first time), chased some crabs and within 5 minutes found found more cool sea shells and pieces of coral than I’ve collected in the previous 23 years of my life, too bad it’s illegal to take things with you, guess the small sea shell that’s in my bag now officially makes me a smuggler.

We had dinner, I had chicken curry, and after that went back to the guesthouse, where I edited pictures for a while and got my first mosquito bite (on my foot), all together a great first day.

the power just died, so I better save my battery and end this post.

some (small) pictures:

the wing

the plane

the view from the mil. towers

the ferry

the treasures

the beach

Tags: Tanzania by Frank
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we’ve arrived and right now I’m sitting at a table with some african people using a crappy internet connection for 1 euro an hour, Tanzania is great, seeing a lot of amazing things and huge cultural differences, It’s hot, and humid, but as long as you keep moving you’re ok. Sleeping tonight was terrible, everytime I’d move my arm I’d get tangled up in my klamboe (mosquito net). I haven’t seen a single mosquito yet which is good. Not much else to report right now, lots to see and do, and little time to spend blogging…

I’ll try to upload some pictures in a few days, together with the first webisode…

Tags: Tanzania by Frank
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soooo,

My first post from Africa, I haven’t actually landed yet, but I’m staring into the desert, somewhere between Egypt and Tanzania. currently I’m looking at a bunch of fields (from my window seat (A) in row 34, behind the wing), while chewing on some luxery nuts (insert bad joke here), every once in a while you see a few houses passing by, must be a hard life down there. theres a lot of dust in the air so the pictures won’t be that spectacular.

lets rewind a little bit…

Schiphol Airport 8AM, I arrived (my train was a little late) and handed in my bag (which was 20,4kg because of those boots), after that I got me a coffee and a sandwich and I even found a power outlet to charge my laptop battery, after 20 minutes I walked to the meeting point where some of the crew members were already waiting. But Marloes was still waiting for her passport, the person who had it was stuck in traffic but made it just in time. After saying our goodbyes we proceeded to the passport check and walked to the gate (E6) on my way there I purchased some snacks. nothing exciting happened, everything went as planned.

The food on the plane has been pretty good, it’s almost like they’re trying to fatten us up for the long stay in Africa, but I’m not complaining. So far Beer and I killed time by watching part of a movie and a tv-episode, some reading and a good game of chess (Beer won). we also played “guess the movie” which beer also won (the correct answer was rush hour 3), but only because he cheated and looked in the magazine.

I spend some time talking to a Danish woman (who’s sitting in seat C, her husband is from Tanzania and she had some inside information, she told me there will be a lot of Mosquitoes, so I’m feeling much better about my purchases. She also warned me about the amount of dust in dar es sallaam and what it could do to your electronics.

We just entered what looks like some sort of storm, a blue cloud, and the turbulance is picking up a little. Beer is playing with the camera college provided us with, he just flashed himself in his eyes, and this is the person I chose to spend 10 weeks with… guess I’ll eat some more nuts and dream about walking through the rain with my boots on.

Tags: Packing, Tanzania by Frank
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After running around for 2 days getting all the final things done, I am now officially ready to go to Africa. my bag is 19,5kg, which isn’t a problem on the first fligh, but might be on some of the other ones where the limit is 20kg, I packed some heavy boots (since its the rainy season and there are floodings in Malawi), which I could leave at home… what to do what to do… I guess thats a descission for tomorrow morning.

Since I won’t be eating any uncooked veggies for a while I figured it would be a good idea to have a nice salad with my dinner tonight, and my first malaria pill. I managed to keep everything inside just fine, so that’s good. no throwing up, no sickness, no nothing, just more scare tactics.

I’m not looking forward to getting up at 5am tomorrow morning, but I’ll be so tired by the time I get to the airport that I’ll be sleeping most of the flight, which is great. I’ve decided I wont be wearing a coat tomorrow morning because I don’t want to get stuck with it in africa, the last few hours in this country will be cold ones.

The next post will be from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa. I don’t know how many days it’ll take before I’ll find a good internet connection, but when I do there will be some great pictures and some good stories I’m sure.

just keep checking the VFG hiphop tour site (sign the petition) and this blog, I promise I’ll post something great soon.

Signing off… now…

Tags: Packing by Frank
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The Website went live today, its where the official blog posts / photos / videos and music will be posted. There isn’t much to see yet (just a countdown timer), starting monday it’ll be updated (by yours truly from Africa) with a new webisode every 3 days, so make sure you bookmark it!

Only 2 days, 1hour, 6 minutes and 28 seconds to go…

Tags: Website Updates by Frank
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I just got home from my last day at Grrr. Looking back I has been 5 good but busy months, but the time has come for something else. After a nice lunch and some paperwork, I said my goodbyes and the guys at the office even got me some cool going away presents:

• Travel coffee filters: I wonder how fresh the coffee is over there, since most coffee is from Africa.
• Magnetic Game Set: great for killing time on the plane.
• Passport/Money Belt: for hiding your passport and money under your clothes.
• Universal power adaptor: mine had a broken pin so its great to have another.
• Waterproof laptop skin: really cool present, since I wasn’t sure about taking my laptop bag.

Tomorrow will be the last day I’ll be able to buy things for my trip, it’ll be another busy day so I better get organized…

Tags: Packing by Frank
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