Adam Hooper (the blog)

I've uploaded pictures of my summer abroad.

Between my take-off from Montreal and my return four and a half months later, I took 4,675 pictures. Fear not, though: I've only published 50 in this album.

Freedom, not democracy, is the basis of our society.

Stunt biker (London)

Hundreds of years ago, political figures commissioned art. Now, they tolerate it. Artists spray-painted London's South Bank when doing so was illegal, and amateur skateboarders kick-flipped in before their parents could buy elbowpads. All the politicians had to do, when asked, was set up lights and tell the cleaners not to bother scrubbing.

Even that concession is a fight, of course, and the powers that be sometimes talk of closing the 30-year-old park to make way for shops. Skaters and bikers, a tiny minority of South Bankers, have fought to keep the park alive.

It makes sense to trust in minorities: graffiti artists and skateboarders are experts on graffiti and skateboarding. Their elected representatives probably don't know how to stamp or ollie, so nobody expects them to propose a skate park, out of the blue, at the next city council meeting.

Skateboarder (Amsterdam)

But eventually they will. Leaders aren't there to lead their people: they're there to follow them.

Chess player (Amsterdam)

I'm going home.

Flying away makes me examine my experiences. I reflect and reflect until I worry the mirrors inside me will shatter from over-thought.

To the countless greens of Rwanda, the dusty infinities of Tanzania, the blissful bananas of Uganda, the recently-peaceful politics of Kenya, the picture-perfect beaches of Zanzibar and the friends and strangers who unify and diversify the land with all with your culture, beauty and warmth: kwa heri.

Warning: this entry is graphic, but it's not illustrated and it's not happy. I suggest you skip it if you don't like morocity. Morose-ness. Whatever.

I've promised myself I'd keep pristine memories many times: my first kiss, my first visit to a refugee camp, my first near-death experience, and just last week, my closest view of a death.

But even this latest one is blurring already, just like all my other memories.

It was on an express bus from Kenya to Uganda, and I can't remember which country we were in. I was in the front row. The bus slowed as we approached a village, and we saw crowds up ahead. I remember colours: women wearing colourful vitenge and buildings wearing colourful cell-phone advertisements. I can't remember which colours or which cell-phone companies.

A small crowd was looking at a red motorcycle lying on the ground. (I think it was red.) Then, one bus-length later, the main crowd formed a silent and stationary half-circle around a body sprawled on the road, fresh blood around its head.

I winced involuntarily. The body was a full bus-length away from its vehicle, and its arms weren't at the angles they should have been.

And here's the part I want to remember: the two passengers across the aisle laughing at my reaction.

But I won't remember it properly. I never do.

---

This summer I visited Rwanda's genocide memorial again. I discovered I'd forgotten something I'd sworn not to.

The memorial is a hall of videos, pictures, and texts. Its layout and style are similar to Shakespeare's Globe in London, except for the bits in the core of the circular floor plan: skulls, bones, and t-shirts.

The t-shirts stand out: they're empty. At some point in the past each t-shirt represented a person; now, each t-shirt is a hole in the fabric of reality where that person ought to be.

Three years ago, one t-shirt burned a permanent place in my memory. It's centred in the display as you enter the room: a big, white t-shirt with a picture of Parliament and, in bold red, "Ottawa". What was that second-hand t-shirt's life like? When did it leave Canada? Why was it forced to experience such trauma? What did it see? In some sense it's easier for me to relate to a Canadian t-shirt than to a Rwandan genocide victim.

This summer I returned to the memorial. I watched the videos and read the narratives more critically than last time (because of my three years of reading about the topic), but I was terrified that the Ottawa t-shirt would get past my cynicism. A Canadian companion ahead of me entered the room of t-shirts; she backtracked and told me in a subdued voice: "come see this."

I knew it was the white t-shirt. I braced myself; and when I saw it, the shock wasn't what I expected.

The t-shirt wasn't white.

It didn't even have a picture of parliament on it.

Sure, it said "Ottawa". But my memory, which was so vivid, was wrong.

There are moments in life that, once experienced, I want to preserve intact. Some inspire smiles and laughs out of nowhere; others, pangs of regret; and some, like the Ottawa t-shirt ... well, I'm not quite sure. That's why I never wanted to forget.

But I did.

---

(As for my first kiss: I don't remember what colour the couch was.)

Stand in the middle of one downtown Mombasa street and look north at the rickshaw distributing black fumes. Close your left eye, and your right will treat you to neat piles of sharp-red tomatoes on the sidewalk, hawked by friendly vendors.

But the smell of fresh vegetables won't make it to your nose. Open your left eye to see why: mounds of garbage 800,000 people high leak dark juices that seep down the street, fly through the air and buffet into both nostrils.

Cross the petrol-scented bridge from the city core to Kenya's mainland, head east past the mosaic of market scents and walk along the golf-course road, lined with grassicured lawns. Stop and lift your nose: even this far, a ten-minute walk from the beach, you'll smell the salt and breeze of the Indian ocean.

I didn't expect that smell. In Dar es Salaam, ocean breeze mutates to stagnant smog before even hitting land. But here in Mombasa, it's as though the wind has been showering since it left India and it'll be damned if it's going to let a few hundred metres' worth of kite surfers and holiday resorts mess up its hair.

The freshnest doesn't penetrate far inland, of course. Piles of melted plastic bags and black ashes send veins of burnt-plastic scent into the air which are, along with car fumes, pumped through the heart of the city. And though these tourist resort streets have few passersby, the odd cigarette plays its polluting part—there aren't many cigarettes, but there are more here than in Dar es Salaam.

My favourite scent came in my first matatu (Kenyan minibus) ride. I rode to the downtown market and spotted a vendor who may have been responsible. I don't know how many times I've wished for this godsend, but I had always assumed there's no nostril god to pray to with this particular issue, however unbelievable one's need may be in the heat of a sweaty, traffic-prolonged crisis.

Clearly a nostril god exists: the conductor was wearing cologne.

I thought I'd need to haggle to get 67,000 Tanzanian shillings with my $50 USD bill when I arrived in Dar es Salaam, but the clerk gave me 74,000.

The Tanzanian shilling is suffering. When I flew in to Dar es Salaam this April a dollar was worth about 1,350 shillings; now, it's 1,490. In other words, the shilling has dropped 10 per cent in three months.

Why? Politics, according to analysts.

Every July, Tanzania's government begins a new budget. This year's budget costs 11.6 trillion shillings, up from last year's 9.5.

What's different about this year to justify 22 per cent more spending? Well, there were bumper crops and the mining sector is booming. But analysts say politicians are exaggerating these gains in advance of this October's election. They argue donor countries aren't giving more and tax collectors are collecting less than planned. According to Twaweza (a new non-governmental organization from the founder of government-watchdog HakiElimu), Tanzania's inflation, already the highest in East Africa, is higher than authorities are reporting.

The flagging shilling makes it clear: the international market thinks Tanzania will print lots of money.

Local prices haven't changed much, but they will soon. First, fuel prices will rise. And as one friend explained to me, "once the price of fuel rises, every other price rises too."

As a traveller I'm visiting at the perfect time: until local prices rise, my dollars are worth more than they should be. Oranges now cost 7 cents. And this is my first time in East Africa when I've been able to buy a pint of milk and a big box of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut for under $10.

I can now afford cereal here. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to enjoy the sweet and creamy taste of not being a Tanzanian during an election year.

Kahama is a lost trade town: dustier and smaller than its lake-endowed northern neighbour Mwanza, its only assets are buried gold, a few hundred thousand residents and a dirt road that guides trucks from the rest of Tanzania to Rwanda. Google Maps shows it as a low-resolution swerve in the road. On the ground, it seems like every second building is a guest house.

Maybe I should have seen where this conversation was going, as I filled in my midrange hotel's registry:

"Company?" asked the landlady.

"No, I'm a student, I don't have a company," I replied.

"Company?" she asked again, watching my pen.

"Where do I write my company?" I queried, intending to jot down my school name.

Her patience was leaving. "You want company?"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh. No, thank you."

I was arrested for being white while strolling around Goma during Congo's 50th anniversary of independence on June 30th.

I was told I made a mistake in leaving my passport at my guest house. I did that because I figured taking my passport to the pickpocket-stuffed streets would be an even bigger mistake. (It was the right decision: I even caught one pickpocket in the act.)

Of course, the reason was euphemism. The whole crowd, laughing at me, knew I was arrested purely because of my skin colour. Or maybe I was arrested because the policeman on that block was angry at me after his superior chastized him for trying to extract a bribe from me the day before.

They had intended to arrest me for taking pictures. But I was cautious enough to distrust the encouragement of four policemen and army captains; when the authorities realized they couldn't arrest me for taking pictures, they went down their checklist of excuses.

"Wait," you say, "why would authorities be so intent on arresting a white guy who's allegedly done nothing wrong?" I'll get to that.

First, I'll back up and say this is the second time I've been arrested in Congo. The guy interrogating me this time had no stripes or medals on his uniform: I was not intimidated.

"Wait," you say, "If you think this guy is so harmless, why don't you name and shame him on your blog?" I'll get to that, too.

After helping hammer out a statement, I was allowed to fetch my passport as corroboration. My interrogator was disappointed to find absolutely nothing wrong with my documentation; I even had a receipt for my visa.

But he did pay particular attention to my $200 permit to climb Nyiragongo, an active volcano.

I had previously only seen Mount Nyiragongo at a distance, from the Rwandan city of Gisenyi.

He had me pegged. Or so he thought.

"I think you'll need to pay $200 to rectify this situation," he said.

I laughed. "I don't have $200. I have $10," I said.

"Then you'll have to pay half of the price on that permit," he said, pointing at the "$200" on the piece of paper. "One hundred."

"I don't have $100. I have $10."

"Oh, this is going to be a serious problem," he foreshadowed.

He confiscated my camera and sent me to the waiting room as he worked on a statement of another white person who had been arrested in the meanwhile. The other white person, at least, had used his camera.

I watched the celebrations on a tiny television.

In this sort of situation, one must tap one's social network. I hadn't even been in Goma for 24 hours, but my social network was surprisingly well-connected. I sent out a couple of texts, and within minutes I heard one side of a phone conversation with my interrogator's superior, who was getting chastized by his boss.

"He didn't ask for $100!"

He listened to the voice on the other end of the phone.

"Tell him he's a liar!" he yelled, then he hung up. His phone rang again but he didn't answer it.

"If this is the sort of thing they can say about me, maybe I should pack up my briefcase and walk out the door forever!" he said to one of his friends in the room.

I bit my tongue and buried my face in the book I was reading. I thought I had scored a major victory.

But as the hours drew on, I realized this kind of drama is like a bad soap opera: it happens every week and it's always the same way.

Finally, the other white tourist and I were brought, together, into the interrogation room. This time, the entire office came along as witnesses: clearly, there would be no talk of bribery here.

"My boss has decided to let you go without consequences," he said with a magnanymous smile. "But you should know that taking photographs is a serious offence. What if you were to take a picture of a government building?"

To verify that that wasn't the case, we both had to show our inventory of photographs to the group. The other tourist was first: he was asked to delete every picture he had taken that morning.

These are the pictures I showed them, which they admitted are legal:

The engineer who finished this statue of a Congolese bycicle had asked me to take these pictures the day before, as I had to explain.

I took one shot which I would later crop to highlight motorcycle taxis in the roundabout rather than the Congolese bicycle; but this photograph escaped attention.

I had also gotten permission from the appropriate authority to photograph a shoe market.

"Yes," I had to explain, "all these subjects gave me permission to take and share their pictures."

The man then explained that while he would do what his boss ordered and let us go without charges, he had to confiscate our cameras so we couldn't accidentally break the law in the future.

"I thought I was arrested for not carrying my passport," I reminded him. "I haven't taken any pictures without permission."

"Yes, but it's a good thing we stopped you when we did, otherwise you could have broken more laws in the future," he sympathized.

"You aren't even the police; you don't enforce the law!" I felt like saying; but instead I checked my chuckles and explained with all the humility I could muster that no, that $200 paid exactly for my right to take pictures of the volcano and that I would not leave without my camera. (What was he going to do: put me in prison against his boss's will?)

There were too many people around for him to press the issue, so he returned our cameras. We walked out, free at last.

But that's not the end, because the real story doesn't revolve around us. The real story is in those social networks: the mafia-esque government employees were using us to shake down our Congolese friends, who implicitly promised to make amends in the future.

I quietly made sure those friends got some extra money from me for their support. That's not really a bribe, see? I was thanking people for helping me out. Those people, in turn, thanked the government employees for their assistance in letting us go.

It's the white man's paradox: we're practically invincible. We can go home any time we want; the locals, on the other hand, have to live with the consequences of our actions. I didn't name names because while I don't hold respect for everybody in this story, I respect the fact that they can make my friends' lives less pleasant if I shame them.

Anyway. I kept to myself the rest of the day then climbed the volcano on Thursday with six other white people I met the same morning:

The climb up Nyiragongo is rather steep.

The path is made of volcanic rock, left behind from an eruption in 2002. The pebble-sized stones would roll out from under our shoes like marbles; I was amazed at our porters.

After five or so hours of hiking, the view at the summit took our breath away: a kilometres-wide crater with boiling lava in the middle.

The lava constantly shifts and bubbles.

The glow of the volcano can be seen from Goma, several kilometres away. We could feel some heat, but we were too far from the lava to warm ourselves by it.

Really, at that altitude nothing could warm us enough. Only after descending several hundred tricky metres did we finally escape the fog, shed some layers and breathe properly.

My adventures and frustration at slow Internet made me leave my blog by the wayside for the past few weeks.

I am now back in Canada, and I have uploaded a photo album online. It is massive, only because it squishes eight action-packed months of my life into a mere 70 megabytes.

Here it is: My photos of Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Switzerland.

• Cargo ship captain: stays out of the way after charging the boarding fee.
• Cargo ship crew: become more and more friendly, even calling Adam by his name towards the end of the five-day journey.
• Ex-refugees: populate the village of Moba for roughly a year before Adam's arrival. Tell interesting stories. Are very poor.
• Burundian passengers: take Adam under their collective wing on Adam's trip to Bujumbura (Burundi).
• Congolese workers: load the boat at Moba, chanting to gather strength and resolve.
• Congolese passengers: board in massive numbers at Moba and sleep absolutely everywhere.
• Congolese port officials: collectively extract over $30 through cons and bribes.
• Congolese Important Official, Uvira: swears to get Congolese port officials fired and phones ahead at the Burundian border to allow Adam passage and special treatment.
• Adam: experiences all of this rather passively.