After a few long-haul journeys and some internet problems (first time on the trip, mind you) we’re something like two or three weeks behind on the blog!

What that effectively means is that, while we’re currently at the end of our time in Malawi (in Blantyre and heading over to Mozambique), I have yet to start blogging about everything we saw in Tanzania. I’m not sure exactly how to handle this yet, so I’ll give a brief overview, hopefully with some more interesting stories to follow.

In all honesty we didn’t do Tanzania justice this time around, partly because we couldn’t really afford the big game parks in the north (Serengeti, Ngorogoro), and partly because these are ultimately better explored using your own transport.

We did manage to spend a whole week on Zanzibar, by far the longest stay of the trip, and definitely one of the highlights. And yes, I braided my hair and took photos of how ridiculous it looked

One thing we DID do in Tanzania is take the Tazara express train from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya – after doing a 16 hour bus drive to Dar, I can tell you 30 hours on a train is pure luxury! We even managed to spot giraffes, wildebeest and what we think were impala from the train on our way through the Selous game reserve…so we had a budget Tanzanian game drive after all.

A few bus and matola (new name for matatu around here) rides got us to Nkatha Bay in time to catch the MV Ilala ferry that runs on Lake Malawi. We chose to take it all the way down to Monkey Bay, sleeping out on the first class deck for a total of three nights.

Maybe it was because it was one of the things I knew I wanted to do all along, but the ferry trip will always stand out for me, and also deserves a separate entry with all t he details. Let me say for now that it was quite beautiful, very comfortable and kind of romantic (even though we didn’t shower for 4 days) to be out on the water so long – we even had a full moon to light the way.

In the end I’ll probably be blogging about the last two or three weeks of our trip from Cape Town, making myself sick with nostalgia while I’m looking for work…but who knows, maybe it will ease the transition into the ‘real world’ For now we just wanted to confirm that a) we are alive and b) we are still really, really enjoying the trip (and wanting to share that with you)…

Phew! Thanks to an internet malfunction, we spent a good two hours sorting out that last post, so we need a bit of a change of pace. So here’s a few examples of the food and drink(s) we’ve sampled as part of our travels thus far…

1. Matoke (green bananas) – To us, these taste a lot like sweet potato, which is all fine and well when it’s mashed up and served on the side…but when it’s grilled over open coals, looks like a banana and tastes like a sweet potato, it might make your brain squirm a little!

2. Tilapia (Nile perch) – Tasty fish from Lake Victoria, grilled, deep-fried or served with a sauce (and always with chips), these have been yummy every time we’ve tried it.

3. Goat’s meat – Both the stew and nyama choma (sosaties in Swahili) sold by the side of the road were very tasty, once you forget how cute the live ones are. These sosaties, along with the aforementioned grilled matoke and corn cobs, are the food stuffs most commonly sold by the side of the road. It took us a while to test the sosaties, just because the rest of the goat it comes from is usually hung near the barbecue.

In Benako, Tanzania, in fact, the (half a) goat still had it’s ‘socks’ on – a little bit of its pelt was still attached to the hooves dangling over our sosaties on the grill.

4. Miscellaneous fish (red snapper, blue marlin, shark, barracuda) – You can blame the Forodhani food market in Zanzibar for making us try shark meat. Your choice of meat is arranged on a sosatie and grilled in front of you at this evening market, situated near the harbour in Stone Town.

 Window shopping is almost impossible, since each stall has a bunch of touts that will take you by the hand to a stall that pays them commission (these touts are called papasi on the island, meaning ‘ticks’ in Swahili, since they are especially ferocious here).

5. Sugarcane juice with lime and ginger – Fan-friggin’-tastic drink, also sold at the Forodhani market in Zanzibar. The cane is mashed in front of you by running it through a kind of grinder, then it’s folded double and slices of lime and ginger are placed in the fold, it’s put through the grinder again and you get a sweet, frothy glass of awesomeness coming out the other side. We drank so much of it, we felt a bit naar (but in a good way)

6. Beer (pretty much every kind) – Part of The Big Plan for The Big Trip has always been that we’d sample local beers along the way. So far it’s only been commercial beers, not the lukewarm DIY brews like the one we tried in Lesotho (once was enough for me, I think).

Tusker, White Cap, Bell Lager, Club, Nile Special, Primus, Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Safari…the list is getting pretty impressive, as are our bellies. Is it sad to admit that we’ve kept at least one label of each brand? Mmm…

One of the fun things about the kind of travelling we’re doing is meeting other travellers and sharing stories and tips. In our case, the tips come mostly from Dillon’s side, but I still like hearing about other people’s plans or past experiences. Mostly it’s fun to meet people who are living the life they want, with money being a means to an end rather than a measure of one’s success.

You don’t have to share the same goals to find these meetings interesting – I quite vividly remember spending time with my dad at the Knysna yacht club, and meeting an American guy who quit his job as a computer programmer to sail around the world on his own (!). He was selling map software to other sailors to earn what he called “beer money”. Enough said

Anyway,  I was getting so carried away talking about the rainforest that I forgot to mention Jock and Kim, an American couple working in Musanze who invited us over for supper after a chance encounter at our hotel. The invitation came literally 2 minutes into the conversation, which is the kind of spontaneous hospitality that I love, and which I hope to dish out to others in the future.

I don’t want to talk too much about the evening itself, since it would be unfair to expose them like that…but I thought it was worth a mention. I’m starting to think one of the best things about travelling via public transport (as opposed to an organised tour/safari) is the fact that a) you get to meet so many people, tourists and travellers alike, and that b) you often have to trust/rely on the help and hospitality of strangers. And you should know that we haven’t been disappointed yet!

So, back to business…

After Musanze, we moved on to Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu in the west of Rwanda. We stayed in town rather than on the shore, since this would save a substantial amount of money. We did, however pay to use the swimming pool at the Lake Kivu Serena Hotel (very fancy shmancy), but swimming in the lake itself turned out to be even better.

We used the town as a base to visit Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, just across the border. As you can imagine, tourism isn’t exactly booming (yet) in the DRC, but the Nyiragongo volcano in Goma (also towering above Gisenyi) has become an attraction in itself. The last time it erupted in 2002, it left a large  river of volcanic rock running through the heart of the town, most of which has now been broken up (although it’s still clearly visible, often being ground up to make bricks by the side of the road).

Now tourists can hike up the volcano and sleep by the lava lake at the top for a night – eerie but thoroughly amazing, according to the one Chinese traveller we met who had done it.

I found it a little jarring to be a tourist in what is quite obviously a (barely) post-conflict country. UN peacekeepers, planes and trucks are all clearly visible throughout the town, as are pretty much any global NGO you can think of. The streets are covered in an ash-like dust, and deeply rutted. And then, when we popped into a hotel for a drink, we were plunged into a colonial oasis, with a cruise ship moored at the lakeside and someone singing karaoke at the bar. Weird and obscene at the same time.

Needless to say, we didn’t spend a whole lot of time in Goma.

To end of a surreal day in a surreal way, we got caught in a rainstorm on the way back through the border and huddled in a stranger’sdoorway with a group of locals for about 10 minutes or so, watching steam rising from the hot tar road. Once again the 4×4′s drove past without stopping…

While I couldn’t not blog about the genocide memorial, I’d like to point out that there is much, much more to this country than its painful history.

We happened to be here during Memorial Week, a week of remembrance during the first week of April (the time at which the violence first broke out in 1994). We’ve seen communities gather and share stories of their experiences in community halls, churches and other similar spaces – proof that the healing process is far from over.

But, at the same time, the tourism industry is flourishing, the people are friendly and welcoming towards visitors and this relatively small African country boasts some truly amazing natural beauty. While Rwandans will clearly never forget, and rightly so, you get the impression that they don’t want the past to define their future.

Kigali itself is cosmopolitan and clean, with tree-lined suburban street and some high-rise buildings under construction in the city centre. It has a definite ‘upwardly mobile’-feel to it. As a result, however, it can be quite expensive (by east African standards) – we splurged a little on a delicious dinner at a Tandoori restaurant, but didn’t spend that much time in the city.

From Kigali we headed north-east, to the town of Musanze (formerly known as Ruhengeri), a popular tourist destination mostly because of its proximity to the Volcanoes National Park. We were headed to the park too, of course, although we couldn’t afford the steep (500$) fee to track Dian Fossey’s famous ‘gorillas in the mist’.

Although you could register to climb to the peak of some of the volcanoes, we opted for a straightforward forest hike instead. As it turns out, this was a wise decision. Our guide, Denise, explained that people often underestimate how strenuous these hikes, and the gorilla tracking itself, can be. “After 20 minutes they are exhausted,” she said. “And then the gorillas are four hours away!”

Our hike climbed about 400 to 500 meters around the edges of one of the volcanoes, called Bisoke, and ended up at a crater lake on its flank. At 3 100 meters above sea level, we could really feel the altitude, but the hike was worth it – the forest was so many different kinds of green it was a little disorientating.

We did get stung by nettles once or twice, and I slipped quite spectacularly in the rich mud (it is the rainy season, after all), but that didn’t even matter. From towering bamboo to tall, dense trees and stinging nettles up to shoulder height, it really was a beautiful walk.

Our next stop was the town of Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu – I’ll try to blog again tonight, but if I don’t, it’ll have to wait a few days. The next leg of our journey takes us all the way across Tanzania, so it might take a while before we settle somewhere and find an internet connection…

I know it’s a bit of a blogging cliché to apologise for not having posted so long, but I imagine our silence might need a little explanation. I blame our visit to the Kigali (genocide) Memorial Centre last Monday, because I left knowing that I would have to write something about it, and dreading it at the same time.

I tend to be weary of such museums or centres – in South Africa I suppose the same goes for places like the Apartheid Museum and Robben Island, although the latter has less of a curated feel. It’s difficult not to imagine the curators chuckling over clever symbolism, reducing history to select images, captions and cardboard cut-outs.

But, like its South African counterparts, the Kigali Memorial Centre manages to overcome its obvious brick-and-mortar limitations to represent the flesh-and-blood historical reality.

I don’t think anyone can visit the centre and remain unaffected by the scale of the tragedy (travesty!) Rwanda suffered in 1994. Almost a million people were murdered in the 100 days of complete mayhem that swept the country from April that year (the death toll rises considerably when you take into account the run-up to the event itself, and its aftermath).

The sheer scale of the massacre is difficult to comprehend – over 250 000 victims are buried at the site of the centre itself (the title of the post was copied from a sign outside the main buildings). Keep in mind that the country’s total population at the time must have been between 7 and 8 million.

Images of the dead are powerful enough – bodies strewn across roads, in churches and schools, left for days but with machete cuts still visible in the decaying flesh. No-one was spared, and those who weren’t targeted were burdened with resisting and risking their own lives, or the guilt of having done nothing to prevent the needless deaths.

At the same time, you have to consider the warning signs prior to the actual genocide, the international community’s refusal to heed these warnings, and their subsequent hesitation to act once all hell broke loose. Some of these deaths, at the very least, were preventable.

There is a lot of material in the museum to bring the madness of this sequence of events home. To some, it’s the so-called “Children’s room” that makes the genocide real – pictures of children who died in the genocide are displayed alongside descriptions of their favourite foods, what made them laugh, what their last words were and how they died.

To me, it was the story of one of the interviewed survivors. Video footage of their testimony is included throughout the memorial, talking about their experiences, about forgiveness, and about moving on with their lives.

The man, a little boy at the time of the genocide, told the story of his last few days with his mother. Food was scarce as the scale of the genocide escalated, so some families managed to bribe the Interahamwe (“Those who kill together”, the Hutu militia responsible for most of the killing) with food.

As a result, his mom only had beans in the house, and (since she knew he didn’t like beans) she scrounged around to find a small piece of passion fruit to soften the blow. That was the last meal he had with his mother, he said, giving in to his tears. To this day, he can’t bring himself to eat passion fruit.

It was such a simple story, but one that communicated the ridiculousness of the whole situation – families torn apart, trying to maintain some sense of normalcy in the face of what was just complete madness and horror. To think that his mother would still worry about her son’s eating habits just before her murder made it seem all the more unexpected and incomprehensible.

Maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense writing it here, and I am sorry if it gets a bit too personal, but I think it’s worth talking about and describing, if only to make the genocide more real to more people. After all, the centre was built with the belief that remembering and spreading the word is probably the only way to prevent something like this from happening again.

Let me just point out that I don’t equate what happened in Rwanda to apartheid in South Africa, nor do I think curators are evil – the descriptions and comparisons I include here are meant to illustrate my own discomfort with the idea of representing human tragedy in a museum. I have great respect for the curators who do so successfully!

I realise that I’m starting to sound like Jeannie D (although hopefully less annoying), since every post contains the word ‘amazing’, and every experience is described to be more ‘incredible’ than the next one. My apologies for the exuberance

Perhaps it’s only because the reality we’re enjoying is in stark contrast to some information or comments we received before leaving. One memorable visit to a doctor we were consulting for our travel medicine needs included a warning that we stood an “87% chance of being attacked” in Uganda.

Now, you don’t have to have studied under Prof George Claassen to figure out that this sounds like a dodgy statistic. “Attacked” by who? An armed gunman? A mugger? A pickpocket? A street vendor trying to sell you a goat sosatie?

Anyway, in the doctor’s defence, it’s probably better to avoid the northern part of Uganda, the long standing base for the infamous Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. But, for that matter, it’s better to avoid the northern part of Kenya, too – although the situation seems to be improving, the region bordering with Ethiopia is said to suffer under roaming bandits (or shiftas). He didn’t warn us about that.

Since a UK newspaper just reported that a “machete race war” threatens to derail preparations for the World Cup, however, it’s probably a good idea to take such warnings with a pinch of salt. Either way, it’s best to get up-to-date information about these regions in the country itself.

Back to our itinerary, then…

We headed to the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains, also known as the Mountains of the Moon, next. Passing through the towns of Kasese and Kilembe, an old copper mining town, we settled at a great backpackers’ on the hill, run by a crazy Australian (or does that qualify as tautology?).

We did a little walking and hill-climbing while we were there, but the trails seemed pretty intimidating (hence the ‘crazy’ classification – the backpackers’ is responsible for the trails in the area). Despite the fact that he described them as “easy for young whippersnappers like (us)”, they climb from about 1500 km above sea level, going up as high and higher than Table Mountain from there, but with precious little zig-zagging in comparison to the good old Plattekloof gorge route.

Even more idyllic than this place (yes, I did it again), however, was our final Ugandan destination – Lake Bunyoni, near the town of Kabale in the south of the country.  Steep, terraced hills line this beautiful, Bilharzia-free lake. And, since we could hire a row boat at the campsite for only 4 000 shillings (about R16), we spent a big chunk of time checking out the lake’s islands.

As luck would have it, we were there on a Friday (market day) – quite a sight, not just for the fresh produce and other goods on sale, but because many vendors and clients arrive via canoe. If you think that doesn’t sound special, you’ve obviously never seen a relatively tiny sliver of a canoe piled high with matooke bananas.

It was definitely a high note on which to end a great two weeks spent in Uganda, even if the final boda-boda ride to town was one of the fastest and most terrifying of the trip so far. But that was probably a good thing – I was just starting to get addicted to motorcycle rides!

In other news, I found a fancy internet café (but still cheap, since Telkom is but a distant memory to us at this stage), complete with qwerty keyboard…

After the energy and excitement of Kampala, we were headed for western Uganda – Fort Portal and the nearby (crater) Lake Nkuruba. Since we arrived on a Sunday, the town was relatively quiet and it was a bit tricky finding a lift to the lakeside campsite (20km away) we had mind.  As a result, we had to try a new form of public transport – the saloon car taxi.

I should point out that getting where we wanted to be has never been a problem on this trip. At worst it has required a bit of waiting, since most matatu drivers prefer to leave only when full, or to stop regularly along the way to fill up with passengers.

Finding the right bus or matatu has also never been a problem, even in the most confusing of taxi parks, since touts tend to surround you as soon as you arrive on the scene. These guys get a commission from the drivers for getting them paying passengers, so they have good reason to be helpful. And, since there’s plenty of competition, a little bit of friendly haggling with them usually gets you down from tourist prices to local rates.

In Fort Portal, we were surprised to be quoted as much as 30 000 Ugandan shillings (R120) for the 20 km journey, but soon found someone willing to take 3 000 shillings (R12) per person. Apparently we just didn’t do the math – the first guy was offering us a car to ourselves, while the second one was giving us a ride as two of ten passengers he would pick up along the way.

I guess we didn’t think ten people could fit in a Toyota Corolla! Now we know better…as it turns out, the space around the gear lever in an automatic car is generally underutilised, and people’s willingness to pile on strangers’ laps (albeit with some giggling) generally also grossly underestimated

Since then we’ve used these cars a number of times – once you’ve seen it can be done without too much discomfort, there’s really no reason not to!

Lake Nkuruba was amazingly beautiful. The campsite was quite basic (no hot water and only bucket-’showers’), but the food was really incredible and the portions so generous that I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up weight from all the eating we did there. My new favourite dish is guacamole salad with chapatti, which basically means half a plate stacked with fresh avocado, red onions and chopped tomatoes, with the other half covered by a thicker version of what I know from SA as roti (aka chapatti).

The lake itself was idyllic, and quite obviously a crater lake, with its steep sides covered in thick forest. We used the two days and nights staying there to catch up on some sleep and laundry, and also spent an alarming amount of time watching the vervet and colobus monkeys of the forest at play. It sounds a little mindless, I know, but their antics are actually very entertaining!

(Yes, it seems we’ve fallen a full week behind on the blog! Still deciding whether we’ll skip ahead or catch up in Kigali, which is very quiet thanks  to the Easter weekend. Unfortunately, the keyboards seem to be inspired by the French, so without the regular qwerty keypad my typing has slowed down dramatically! On the up-side, I can finally type é by hitting only one button…)

After a few days of slow internet, I’m way behind on the story-telling, but nevertheless we need to start where we left off – in Kampala (even though we have now travelled all the way to Rwenzori mountains in the west of the country).

We liked the city so much, we ended up staying four nights, which is quite a lot if you consider the distance we plan to cover. The hotel we stayed at is partly to blame, since it was cheap and clean – probably the most luxurious place we’ve stayed at so far, and still within our price range!

Also, when we first arrived we were starving after a long, bumpy matatu ride from Jinja. When the lady at the lunch buffet heaped a big heap of steaming mashed matooke bananas on our plates, along with some beef stew and all kinds of other veggies, we were pretty much sold.

As a city, Kampala seemed to have a kind of energy about it that we’ve never really encountered before. Traffic was insane, as was the number of people on the sidewalks. But, even though I was momentarily convinced it was the most populous city in Africa, it turns out it’s home to only about 1,5 million people (half the size of Nairobi, and only a little bigger than my home town of Port Elizabeth).

Anyway, the city was crowded, but safe at the same time. People were friendly, even if most greetings were prefaced with “hey, mzungu!” (as in, hey white person). I also have genuine respect for the gazillion boda-bodas or motorbike taxis operating in the city – it’s a dangerous job, but they’re everywhere, super-convenient and cheap, too.

We walked, mostly, but when I picked up a paper one day at lunch and saw President Jacob Zuma was speaking at Uganda’s parliament that afternoon, we took a bike to try and get in. While we were stuck in traffic, the driver of the matatu next to us (called Moses) even asked us our names/where we’re from/what we were up to, and wished us well.

Notwithstanding a friendly chat with a Ugandan policeman at the gate, however, we were not allowed in. Usually you’d be required to give a day’s notice to visit parliament, and with another president around, security was even tighter than usual.

There’s was plenty of exploring to do, though, with the highlight of the visit probably being the St Balikuddembe market. You can pretty much buy anything here, and I don’t just mean that in an over-enthusiastic-traveller kind of way.

Jeans, t-shirts, baseball caps, belts, dresses, suits, rolls of material, calabashes, spices, flour, beans, fruit, vegetables, fish…you name it, they had it (in spades). I even saw a few wedding dresses  hanging in one stall, and they weren’t half-arsed either – really big, fluffy, beaded gedoentes.

We were a little hesitant to take photos at first, but when we started to, people really warmed to it, and even insisted we take pictures of them! Since few had easy-to-reach postal or e-mail addresses,  we decided to come back the next day to give them the prints, which were very enthusiastically received.

One guy who managed a clothing stall bought us cooldrinks on the first day (taking pictures with me on his cellphone as a trade), and was so chuffed with the pictures we brought him that he gave me a pair of white hotpants as a gift. I’m keeping them, even if I never wear them…and, as weird as it might seem, I’m actually pretty impressed that he correctly sized up my bum

(Despite the wide variety of restaurants in Kampala, some of which we tried, I have to confess that I had a serious craving and bought Debonair’s pizza the one night. There seems to be plenty of SA brands in Uganda, including Steers and Nando’s in Kampala, and MTN pretty much all over the country. Some exports, however, are not that great – for instance, if you experience a powercut/rolling blackout during your stay, thank Eskom Uganda!)

Our first overland border crossing went off without a hitch, despite Dillon getting exceedingly nervous about all of it (I was blissfully unaware of any possible complications, having never really done this before).

We even successfully changed money with one of the incutras, or international currency traders, who confronted us. These guys are notorious for short-changing foreigners struggling with currency conversions, and rather intimidating as they really swarm around you while you sign out of one country and try to make it to the next one.

Anyway, once in Uganda, we quickly noticed a few things:

• While we were aware of a substantial Indian community in Kenya, the Indian community in Uganda seemed even more prominently represented. The TV channels showing Bollywood movies, and the great curries on offer in most restaurants are what gave them away. (I ate the hottest curry of my life in Jinja…the menu said it would be ‘unforgettable’, but I really had no idea)
• The rainy season in east Africa is really…er…rainy We didn’t notice it so much in Kenya (the rains came mostly in the form of afternoon thunderstorms), but since Jinja it’s been happening pretty much any time of the day or night. 
• As a result of this, Uganda is even greener than western Kenya – truly and impressively tropical.
•  Boda-bodas, or motorcycle taxi’s, are everywhere! There’s almost no way of getting around without them – in Jinja, the matatus didn’t go where we wanted to go on the outskirts of town, and in Kampala, the traffic is just too intense. Motorbikes can squeeze in and around traffic more easily…

In Jinja, we explored the town and found a spot overlooking the Nile river where it originates from Lake Victoria and briefly made friends with a quirky Canadian couple who were having a Nile Special (beer) at our hotel. 

But, since we weren’t going to do any whitewater-rafting (one of the touristy-highlights of the region, but priced in dollars as a result), we didn’t end up staying very long. 

Will post more on Kampala soon, hopefully with photos

Ok, so I have been postponing blogging, partly because we were a little low on energy, getting used to traveling and adjusting to a new country (we’ve already passed through Jinja in Uganda, and are now based in the country’s capital, Kampala).

The story of Mama Sarah is not really a very long or interesting one, but it seems like it needs a little clarification. Firstly – we’re not making this up, nor were we scammed by some local old lady claiming to be related to the US president

Secondly, it might help to explain Obama’s relationship with Kenya. His father, Barack Obama snr., was a Luo from the village of Kogelo in the western province of Kenya. He met Obama’s (American) mother while studying in Hawaii, and the two separated while their son was still very young. 

Barack jnr. grew up mostly in the US, but visited his grandmother and the rest of the family in Kogelo at the time of his father’s funeral, later while he was in college, and also in 2006 after he was elected as a US senator (there might even have been other visits, but these are the ones I’ve read about, at least).

Hence my comment about not being scammed – his relationship with the family is reasonably well documented, so we’ve seen pictures of his gran before. Also, let me point out that I’m not trying to reduce either Obama’s or Kenya’s significance to this relationship – I’m merely mentioning these details as background to our visit!

Mama Sarah herself is an extremely gracious lady, sitting calmly in the shade of a large tree in front of her house and receiving guests from all over the world without much complaining. Honestly, she is obviously a very patient person, not even batting an eyelid at the gushing foreigners flooding her lawn.

Dillon and I, much like most of the other visitors we saw, were more than a little awestruck at the ease of such a visit, and her nonchalance about all of it.

For instance, when we asked her how her visit to the US was (for his inauguration), she just said it was a little cold there. (I thought that was hilarious…)

And then, when I asked if she’d like to visit there more often, or whether she prefers him to visit her, she just shrugged. His responsibilities are there, towards the American people, she said. She doesn’t mind if he doesn’t visit her that much, because he has work to do. In the meantime, life goes on in Kogelo.

Ultimately, I suppose that’s the best kind of perspective to have on any politician. As much as you might admire someone for who they are and whatever circumtances they’ve overcome to get where they are, the final measure of any individual in office is really the work that gets done, and the way it benefits ordinary people.

If his grandmother can remain that objective, I guess we should really try to do the same