"'Tis ever common that men are merriest when they are from home." (Henry V)

.....Recently my son, Joel turned 60 so he and my daughter-in-law, Barbara, were given an expense paid gift of a safari in Africa.  He kept very good records of their experience both in a journal and hundreds of photos.  So that his record of the trip ought not to be lost to posterity, I decided it might not be a bad idea to use it in this blog so that all my readers can follow his adventures through this posting.

Tanzania (Jul/Aug 2012)

Flights

This was the toughest part of the trip. We had a total of four international flights, and each way (U.S.-Africa, Africa-U.S.) took about 17 hours of flying time. On the way there, we had a 3-hour stopover in Amsterdam, so we had something to eat and just hung out until re-boarding. On the way back, the stopover was more than 6 hours. However, I have a good friend who lives in Amsterdam, so he picked us up at the terminal, drove 

around the Holland countryside (rivers, canals, bridges, ferries, cows), and then we went to apartment in Amsterdam to have some lunch with him and his wife. Afterwards, he drove us back to the terminal, and we continued home. All flights were with KLM, and they were nice – good meals, and individual screens for watching movies/TV. I watched every movie I could that I wouldn’t normally watch in a theater or with a DVD. I can’t even remember which movies they were, but I do have a vague recollection of being reminded why I never really cared for the Three Stooges.

.....Within Tanzania, we had three short flights with small aircraft: Serengeti to Arusha; Arusha to Zanzibar; Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam. They didn’t crash, so there’s not much else to add. 

Hotels
.....We had a wide range of places to sleep, some of which you saw in the photos we sent. In many cases, there was a central building (with restaurant, bar, entertainment, gift shop, wifi, etc.) and then individual housing stretching away from it. We always seemed to have a room that was almost the furthest away from the central building. In two of the cases, they were actually “tents,” which means the walls were made of canvas, and the “door” was really a large zipper. However, the tent was on a raised wooden platform, and had a private bathroom/shower, and usually electricity. Hot water was also usually available, but sometimes it wasn’t there if the person in charge of the fire didn’t heat our water ahead of time. The final nights in Zanzibar 
and Dar Es Salaam were at two of the best hotels available, which really spoiled us, and was intended to make us forget the previous accommodations. Especially nice was the buffet with all the lobster tails, shrimp, and crab claws you could eat (after bringing them to the grill to be heated on the spot while you wait).

Food

......Did I mention the seafood buffet? Most of the other times, we either had a more traditional buffet (beef, chicken, pasta, etc.) or a sitdown meal with a set menu. When we were out on the plains on safari, they even set up “picnics” with a heated buffet. Each morning, there usually was a breakfast buffet as well. There was not too much in the way of “local” foods, whatever that might have been.

Tour Group

.....Unlike most of our previous trips, where we might be the only Americans, this group of about 20 was entirely American. It included two family groups (parents and two daughters in their 20’s; and a mother, daughter, aunt) and one single. The rest were couples from around the country. One couple was actually from Chevy Chase, walking distance from Hannah’s place. There also was an incredible woman there: A Jewish woman, originally from Austria, now living in New York, and in May she will be 100 years old! She came with a caretaker, but she did just about everything else that the rest of us did. We couldn’t believe it. It does tend to stifle any complaints we have about how rough or tough things were, since a 99-year-old lady was able to do it. Geez.

.....There is a lot more to come, especially about the natives and the animals--which may be of greater interest than what you have read today.  But I do not want to make this much longer than most of my posts on this blog.  

"You taught me language, and the profit on it is I learned to curse." (The Tempest)

.....On Saturday, August 25 there were two comments to the posting regarding the use of the word, "disinterested" and for those readers who do any writing such as letters or emails or creative writing for that matter, may find some interest in those comments which engage in language usage. So this post today will be vastly different from any I've written before. It's about English--the English language which none other in the world can match for it's use in writing--and speaking. Suppose a friend said to you, "I know you're disinterested, so I want to ask you a question presently." Then he didn't say anything. Would you be momentarily nonplussed?

.....Quite likely, yes. According to Ben Yagoda, in a Slate magazine article, the above paragraph contains four words whose primary definitions have changed or are currently changing. Disinterested traditionally meant "impartial," and now is generally used to mean "uninterested." Presently has gone from "shortly" to "currently"; momentarily from "for a moment" to "in a moment"; and nonplussed from perplexed to unimpressed.  Now, I cannot vouch for the meanings attached to these words in Great Britain, but our British walking thesaurus, Ruthie Griffin, would have the answers.  

.....The point of all this is that language over time and distance changes.  For example, the English of "Beowulf" would not be understandable to most 21st Century readers.  But in spite of all the crying of students about the difficulty of reading the English in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or in Shakespeare, patience is a virtue.  For example the prologue to the "Tales" begins "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, the droght of March has perced to the roote..."; with a little patience one can translate this to "When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the limit..." With a little patience and determination to enrich your life, one can read the whole prologue and tales whose English is a symphony. The same can be said of Shakespeare, the Einstein of poetry and drama. E=mc2 is at the same time poetry and mystery. While Einstein's work is mainly best understood as science, Shakespeare is the genius of the English language, and with a little patience one can surely understand the language in his plays and enjoy it.  If not, see me.

  

"Come to me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew. XI. 28)

.....One of the comments on yesterday's posting about suicide brought up the of the question about the motivation of those souls with suicidal thoughts, and whether or not they consider the effect their death will have on family and friends who love them.  Of course grieving will follow any death of a loved one, but in my own experience with suicidal thoughts, those of my own, and those of others I've known, there is no consideration of the effect on others; just the closure of one's pain--severe as it is--mentally or physically.

.....I must have read "Hamlet"  about 100 times, silently and aloud both to myself and to my English classes over the years, and I always wondered about his motivation for committing suicide.  There is no question that he is seriously committed to it--two soliloquies document that.  But I always thought it was a weak excuse.  Obviously, he was in mourning over his father's death, and the over-hasty, incestuous marriage of his mother to his father's brother, Claudius.  (Yes, marriage back then to a husband's brother was considered to be incest).  However much Hamlet thought of the incest, he did not appear to be concerned so much to it as he is to the other aforementioned motives for his suicidal thoughts. He says "...how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world."  By "unprofitable" I don't believe he meant  his losses in the stock market as much as he means his happiness.  And in another moment he says, "...whether in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles..."  Nowhere does Shakespeare mention the nature of Hamlets's "outrageous fortune", and nowhere does he list this "sea of troubles".  To me, at least, it seems more like a lake of troubles.  But  Hamlet never appears concerned about the effect his death would have on Ophelia, his love, or his mother, or on Denmark for that matter.

.....I believe JRs comment has a lot of merit, and I am not saying that there is no truth to what he claims.  Surely, there must be those who spare death to themselves because of concern about the effect it would have on others.  I'm simply saying that in my experience those who do actually kill themselves have done so without any thoughts regarding the grief they will cause.  Too much unrelenting, overwhelming pain.