For three weeks now, I've been sleeping in other people's houses. Family in Beiarn in Northern Norway, five days walking with friends in the Jotunheimen mountains, brief visits to Lærdal and Askøy and a week checking up on new and old friends in Bergen. I've been blissfully, utterly offline. I've gone swimming in the fjords, I've woken up to 15 centimeters of snow, seen the midnight sun, crossed a glacier, heard a woodwind quintet give a concert at 2.000 meters altitude and played at least six different guitars. I have been thoroughly trashed in a variety of card games and I read some books without getting paid for it. Now I'm back in Oslo, and going to sleep in my own house. Here are some houses I've visited:
Ragnfrid and I are going to Africa this afternoon. We will be gone until December 10th. This is sort of our summer vacation. Neither of us got a proper vacation this year, so we're taking it out now. I feel rather like the annoying sibling or friend who saved his candy for days just so he could eat his when you were out.
On our trip, we will be going to countries where life expectancy at birth is lower than the sea-level temperature (in Celcius). We will be visiting the last absolute monarchy on Earth and we will be visiting the place with the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS on the planet. And all that's just Swaziland! We're also going to Mozambique and South Africa.
Here's the latest news from the Times of Swaziland, the paper of record in Mbanbane. In case you were wondering, it is a government newspaper:
Political parties are terrorists - PM
MBABANE- Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini has listed four banned political movements as terrorist formations.
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Cops reveal five-year plan
MBABANE - Lawbreakers in the country are warned! Royal Swaziland Police Service is now eliminating crime with military precision. The statement was made by the acting Police Commissioner Isaac Magagula during the end of year for senior officers and senior civilian staff conference held at the police headquarters yesterday
Swaziland's state motto is "we are hidden away". But I'm sure our plane will find Mazani airport.
As always, when I'm about to ship out to the colonies, I think of Rimbaud:
Let cities light their lamps in the evening; my daytime is done, I am leaving Europe. The air of the sea will burn my lungs; lost climates will turn my skin to leather. To swim, to pulverize grass, to hunt, above all to smoke; to drink strong drinks, as strong as molten ore, as did those dear ancestors around their fires.
I will come back with limbs of iron, with dark skin, and angry eyes; in this mask, they will think I belong to a strong race. I will have gold; I will be brutal and indolent. Women nurse these ferocious invalids come back from the tropics. I will become involved in politics. Saved.
Now I am accursed, I detest my native land. The best thing is a drunken sleep, stretched out on some strip of shore.
Anyway, all irony aside, communication infrastructure is spotty in some places we're going. I don't know how much I'll be online, but I'll try to post every now and again. But don't hold your breath. You'll get all cyanotic. See you all in December, at least.
Well, we finally got the hyperdrive on our ship, the trusty Millännium Falk, fixed, and are now safely back in Oslo. I made a photo set of our excursions to the Hoth surface. I never got around to photographing our trusty taun-tauns, though. Every time I turned the camera on they got antsy and spat at me.
