T. I. A.

T.I.A. This Is Africa.

It is a phrase that we pan-African travelers use just about every day, on those occasions when you've nothing else to do but throw your hands in the air, sigh, and accept the fact that nothing in this continent works like you think it should.

Like when you've just finished writing an email to a lovely Brazilian girl living in London, and the internet goes down before you can send it. And then the internet stays down - for 7 days.

Like when you take a minibus taxi to a town 200km away, and the voyage takes 12 hours.

Like when you order grilled chicken at a restaurant and it shows up 60 minutes later - cooked to medium-rare.

Like when every mosquito that bites you is potentially malarial, and the medication you take to prevent malaria causes you to break out in spots like a leopard, and also gives you the odd night terror.

Like when the local currency is so unstable that the rate of inflation is given on an hourly scale, and the beer that you cost you 650,000 Zim$ at the beginning of the evening was selling for 800,000 Zim$ by night's end.

Like when you go to buy a bus ticket, and the person working behind the counter is 8 years old.

Like when a police officer threatens to imprison you for failing to carry your passport with you at all times, and you have to bribe him. For $2.

Like when you're walking down a dirt road and a hoard of young children begins to follow you, laughing and jeering and chanting racial slurs in perfect unison.

Like when the 12-seater van you're in is carrying 41 people, and you can't move your arms or legs, and the only defense you have against falling over due to the inertial forces is the friction between your head and the corrugated metal roof, and at one of the stops some lady hands you her child so that you can take it outside and hold its hand while it goes pee.

Like when you sit down for dinner at a cafe and they hand you a menu with hundreds of delicious offerings on it, then return some time later to tell you that they only have two things: plain rice and guava juice.

Like when you hire a sailboat to take you out to some pretty islands, and two guys work on the sailboat: one to sail, and another to continually bail water out of the leaky hull.

Like when you're doing conservation work on a farm and you wake up in the morning and walk into the kitchen to make coffee, only to find that a horse is in there nosing through the garbage.

Yep, T.I.A.

You gotta LOVE this place!!!

If and when I return home, you can all bet your bottom Zim$ that I will be the most laid-back, patient cat you ever did meet. Until then, I'll continue to be crazy.