I’m nursing two stop sign sized blisters on my heels so we headed to town yesterday to buy a pair of flip-flops. We found a very eager salesman in the souk who quickly launched into a spiel, his extra-large silver crucifix prominently displayed on his chest. He cheerily quoted me 12,000 Tzs for a pair of red (probably Chinese made) flip-flops. 12,000 shillings is roughly $8, an amount not far from a local monthly earning. We saw these same slippers on plenty of feet around town, so 12,000 could hardly have been the price. Not even in the U.S. I should have worked harder but in the end I paid 6,500 Tzs, or $4. We left with the slippers but I knew we’d paid the “mzungu price.” Not far from the market we ran into Julius, the cook who took care of us while we were volunteering. He was chatting with an acqaintance and getting his shoe fixed by a sidewalk cobbler. Telling him about our morning, I pointed to the new purchase on my feet and asked, How much should these cost? He replied, Oh, 2000, maybe 1800. Doh! We told him how much we’d paid, at which point he turned to retell our market adventure to the other two. When all three burst into fits of laughter shaking their heads, I knew he’d reached the punchline. Glad to have provided the day’s entertainment. Ah, well. What’s done is done, but we did pass the sandal vendor today while shopping for fabric. He smiled broadly and inquired how we were doing. I responded by asking if he was Catholic. Puzzled by the unexpected question to his question, he said that in fact he was. I pointed to my red flip-flops and suggested he go to confession this weekend.

The mzungus head for Kilimanjaro tomorrow. Up, up and away!

Back at the kindergarten – All of us were sprawled about the floor for activity time. Some of us coloring, others writing letters and numbers. Hoards of four and five-year-olds thrust their notebooks under my nose shouting, “Mzungu! Mzungu! Me, me!”

Now what was the word for teacher? I couldn’t remember. M-something? Muhzilu, mwazimu? I couldn’t figure out what the children were saying. My Swahili vocabulary comprises maybe ten words.

And then I remembered. Mzungu. Of all the indignities. They were calling me “whitey.”

I suppose I’m not in bad company, though. We asked our two Meru guides and they assured us Oprah Winfrey is mzungu. So is Mike Tyson. There was some argument over Michael Jordan, one saying mzungu, the other saying black.

In Tanzania, Mzungu = not African, as in European, Asian, Indian or Arab. Mostly though, as our guides explained, mzungu is used for white folk, particularly Europeans and Americans. Even the black ones.

It’s all very complex. In South Africa, the Apartheid regime devised an extremely intricate system of racial categorization, which I won’t attempt here to unravel. However, in terms of mzungus and Africans, to qualify as Black in South Africa, one had to be purely indigenous African. And to count as White (mzungu), one had to be purely of European descent. None of this mixing and matching blood. There was also the category of Asian, but the largest category of all was Colored, an even more complicated section that had numerous subsets of categories. For Oprah, the Michaels and myself – we’d all have been classified as Colored, not Black and certainly never White.

Well. I suppose the simplicity of the American “one drop” rule had its advantages.

The word for teacher, by the way, is mwalimu.

This is our idea of fun? Up at 1:30 in the morning to scrape, claw and gasp our way up 3000 feet in the dark on less than 4 hours sleep? Honestly.

But it was fun under the high full moon. The silver lit forest, the silhouette of Kilimanjaro across the western horizon, the narrow rock bridge with steep drops on either side. Even the scrambling up and down rock faces was all high adventure good fun.

It’s a very good thing we sufferred the ascent in the dark because had we seen the terrain laid before us, each step would become that much heavier with discouragement. The not-fun part began once we hit the sandy slopes that marked the last 1000 feet. From here the trail got steeper and the rockier sections more frequent. Steps and breath got shorter and shorter and the urge to stop stronger and stronger. Pole, pole, as they say in Swahili. Slowly, slowly. This is the iron-man of walking meditation.

At 14,980 feet, Mt. Meru is 570 feet higher than Mt. Rainier but much more accessible since it is not a technical climb. Still, altitude does funny things to the mind and body (none of them fun). Ofer felt heavy nausea and in my speech the words came thick on the tongue. Others in our group got racing hearts and headaches. But our feet and hands were warm and the weather more than cooperative so we had only to stop for those extra breaths. Step by oxygen-deprived step we picked off the inches to the top.

Stay tuned for photos of the extra fun descent with phenomenal views. In the meantime, plenty of images of Mt. Meru and its ash cone on the web.

Oh, poo. We didn’t schedule enough time for Johannesburg. Not that we intended the 24-hour layover to suffice, but word to the wise – don’t skimp on Jo’burg. I already regret not having the time for a deeper visit.

We wanted to visit the Apartheid Museum and take a bike tour through Soweto, but the driving distance between the two was too long and the museum closed early. Since we had booked our room in Soweto, the bike tour won.

Soweto is the mecca of South African freedom history. Mandela lived here. Desmond Tutu was his neighbor, and it was here that thousands of high school students organized a demonstration to protest a government edict forcing Afrikaans as the language of instruction for all core coursework. (For comparison, it’s worth noting that the USA had similar forced language policies toward Native Americans, and that the goals of such programs were intended to subjugate native peoples by stripping them of their language and providing inferior education in English.) The students, some as young as 8, staged their protest on June 16, 1976. I was only 8 years old in June 1976 when so many Soweto school children were killed, but I remember being confused by the tv news. I was flipping channels looking for game shows. Did they just say the police killed all those kids?

We stayed at Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, a hostel in the heart of Orlando West, one of Soweto’s more politically infamous “starter” townships. We scheduled one of their rides through town (which is some 3 million strong), and like Nathie in Langa, our tour guide was a sharp young man in his early 20s. He explained the origins of the township, its developing history, and treated us to some traditional beer made from sorghum. We had our drink at a shebeen (lots more to say about these but I’m too lazy), where all the Zulu elders hang out from the early morning sipping and chatting. The elders dressed us up in traditional hats and jewelry and walked us through the ritual of passing the kalabash. Like many other aspects of black life, the Apartheid government forbade black people to drink alcohol, so blacks hid their home brew in milk cartons. Today the industrial version is sold in white and red quart-sized milk cartons as “Joburg Beer.” Clever!

Onward we peddled down a narrow dirt lane puddled with runoff from the outdoor communal water taps and washwater. The otherwise tidy little homes had no plumbing of any kind so all of the dishwashing, laundry and toileting took place at the communal facilities outside. Along the way children shouted hello and held out their hands for a high-five, and if we stopped long enough (which was often because of zig-zag riding to avoid ruts and splashing gunk), the youngest children would rush our bikes to climb aboard. Tsepo said we’d likely get hijacked.

Of course, just like Langa, Soweto has its Beverly Hills and neighborhoods all along the spectrum. For all the trash and ramshhackle housing we passed, we saw equal amounts, if not more, new housing with clean streets and updated city services, such as street lamps, electricity and water.

Alas, the bike tour was the absolute bare minimum we could manage with the time we had. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was plenty to remember we won’t shortchange Johannesburg on a future trip.

Today is Saturday the 12th, marking nearly two weeks in South Africa and the end of five days in Capetown. Sorry folks, no pictures as we are low tech on this portion of the trip. Nevertheless, pictures aren’t necessary to say that Capetown should be on everyone’s travel bucket list. The city offers something for everyone – rigorous butt-kicking hikes, super yummy tasty cuisine, well-designed museums that chronicle the city’s turbulent history, plenty of gorgeous beaches, impressive shopping, did I mention the great food?

I’ll get to the highlights shortly but let me say here that we had a very easy time in Capetown. For all the fear-mongering in the travel guides, we never felt unsafe or uneasy. It’s obvious from the gates, guards and fences that violent crime is an issue, but nobody tried to hijack us in broad daylight and walking around the main drags of the city during the day felt like any city without the reputation. That being said, locals we met did advise against walking around certain areas at night and stressed the importance of driving or taking a taxi. Given the neighborhood we live in back home, and considering unchecked gun violence throughout the American suburb, who’s to say South African streets are any less safe?

Overall, Capetown will appeal strongly to outdoor adventurers, winos and history buffs who follow slave trade routes and civil rights struggles. In our four short days, we climbed Table Mountain, learned all about the Indian Ocean slave trade (as opposed to the Trans-Atlantic), visited the District Six Museum, drank some Cape blend red, caught a musical and visited Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were kept). We also arranged a township tour to Langa, Capetown’s oldest township.

Details coming up. I’ve about had it with this tablet keyboard : (