Sam Taber McNeil

Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx

We didn’t get far once we left Bamboo.The cruiser pulled into a gas station in Knysna moments later: the beast was thirsty, as it were, for diesel. We were also picking up Ben’s Oklahoman friend Lacy. She had a similar visa problem to Ben’s, and was following our lead of border hopping http://stmcneil.com/dispatches/the-south/78-02022010.html to get a visa extension. We crammed her and her three bags in the back amongst the books, gas cylinders, and running shoes and headed towards Cape Agulhas, as close to Antartica as you can get in Africa without going naval.

Grey rain clouds covered the sky as we pulled into Traveler’s Lodge four hours later. I hardly noticed the time and kilometers pass.... Read more...

Providence Before Embarking

Mikoh sweeps sawdust off the brick parking lot at Bamboo as I pick up lug nuts. Their core of treads are lined with dark blue plastic and they are easy to spot: silver and blue on red brick and gold wood shavings. Gordon wears a pencil behind his ear, a blue tank top and a concentrated pose. Brother Ben has hands on his basketball shorts and hips, waiting for orders. We all are.

Gordon delivers fast and clear: item or action. I screw the lug nuts and washers onto the two ends of U-bolts, tightening with a spanner. The bolt is firm now; the plywood won’t shake on top of our cruiser’s roof rack. Today’s goal is to secure two plywood foundations of comfortable sleep. A large board on top of the... Read more...

Desolation and Namibia

Our friend and mentor Gordon was worried. How were these two American yanks (read Ben and Sam McNeil, brothers from Seattle) going to survive their cross-southern Africa odyssey?

So he was to test us by fire. The plan was to leave the coastal comforts of Knysna, with its luxurious lagoon and our bamboo bungalow, for the desolation of the north. There, relentlessly baking under the sun lies the oldest desert in the world, the land’s moisture sucked dry by the insatiable Benguela Current from Antarctica.

We packed...

Ramadan On the Southern Mediterranean

I awake in the void of night. Everything is dead and quiet except my breath, my beating heart, and the blades of the fan. My roommate Didier grunts, and rolls over. I slide my feet onto the dirty linoleum and feel my way to the cool marble courtyard.

Suddenly, the call to prayer cuts through the darkness. Alone, it dominates the early morning. The time is now 3:00 am, and today begins the month of daylight fasting called Ramadan. My landlord said I must be done with my day’s consumption by 4:00 am: water, food, everything. I gorge on a bowl of peaches and milk, followed by a heavy tanjeen bidajaaj . Chicken omelette is my sahur.

Dawn breaks across the sky, gray then purple...

The Land of Mandela: Zulu Victory, British Honor, Soweto´s Legacy

Our plane taxied in Johannesburg International Airport, South Africa, as the midday sun pummelled the earth. My father, mother and I had left Tunis 24 hours earlier, flown through the futuristic, chaotic and enormous Dubai airport, and were now close to reuniting our little nuclear family. It had been the longest separation in our history: ten months. We were to end it the farthest any of us had ever been from home.

Seattle is nearly on the other side of the world from South Africa (exact opposite is near the F...

Ann and Gary in Tunis: Farewell My Beloved

Fresh from the desert of Ksar Ghilane, I returned to the final week before our final Arabic exams. The week was a blur of preparations: for me, this was my last chance to prove myself at the Bourguiba Institute. The finals were alarmingly difficult at first, but I tried my hardest and they went well. I was asked my dream question for the oral exam: What are the causes of illegal immigration? I passed with a mutawasiT or middle grade. Grammar still defies me. The same day as my first exam, my parents landed in Tu...

Moon Risings Over Ksar Ghilane

In the first cold weekend of December 2009, I hit the road with eight friends. We headed south in rented sedans, towards the desert. When our plans in Douz fell apart, I began telling the tale of the desert castle Ksar Ghilane. Soon, we were cutting south down the pipeline road towards it. Spare steel tubes for repairing the line lay on the sides of the blacktop. We passed an oil refinery, camels and innumerable security checkpoints. Pulling into the town midday, eager to hike, we asked for the directions...

Tunisian Thanksgiving: Eid A´Dha

The empty streets stank. The sweet scent of shit wafted down alleys, across boulevards, up staircases and through windows. Tunis had changed, it’s ascetic shifted. My walk to school, over light rail tracks, past butchers and bakeries, thoroughly modern optometrists and hazy, thriving cafes now had a new element. The sheep were here.

Like Cairo, Rabat, Damascus, Amman, Jedda, Tripoli, and Algiers, Tunis was now in prepration for Eid aDha. Coincidentally coinciding with America’s Thanksgiving, Eid celebrates the ...

Into Algeria: Desert, Ruins and Casbah

My brother and I boarded the flight at sunset. The terminal faded orange to gold as our tickets were checked and we walked the jetway towards the plane taking us into Algeria.

Our seats were comfortable and the meal of thawing chicken, butter and bread kilometers beyond continental US fare. They were all hard earned: Ben and I had been sweating the last month to ride this flying aluminum tube. In a frustrating circle of retribution and diplomatic slights, visas are not easily granted between Algerian and American citizens. At the Algerian Embassy in Tunis in a Turkish, Senegalese and Libyan audience, I had been used as an example of jurisprudence: even this American can’t get a visa.

Brother B...

The Dunes of Merzouga and the Sand Castle of Essaouira

The dunes were black, the horizon estimable by shades of grey. Thunder boomed, lightning sparked. Our seven camels were trailing two blue-robed Mergouza guides between two lightning storms. The western storm raged over Algeria. Their sporadic flashes revealed grey, desolate land. Soft rain dampened the sand and our clothes. The meaty, almost prehistoric, paws of the beasts padded towards a wavering blue light . The wind rose as we approached the camp, and sand blurred our vision in the stormy twilight. Squinting... Read more...

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Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx

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Ann and Gary in Tunis: Farewell My Beloved

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Where is Tunisia?

That’s what I read in many people’s eyes before I came here. I would have the same look about most of Canada, the Baltic, Russia, the Horn of Africa, and many other places. But there ... Read more...

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Research

Bosphorus Catastophe

There is no place in the world like the Bosphorus Strait. It divides two continents. Dolphins and 33 other marine species migrate down its biological corridor. Three millennia of battles and civiliza... Read more...

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BMac Abroad

Funemployed
It has been far too long since my last post but not having a computer makes updating this blog rather difficult. Fortunately, as of last week, I have purchased a new computer and once again have the internet at my fingertips. Actually, calling my new laptop a computer is a bit of stretch seeing as that it is no bigger than most hard back books and weighs less than Bernie Madoff’s wallet. Called a netbook, the new laptop is a significant downgrade from my beloved but now stolen Macbook but it is capable of the basic computer functions I need...
Speed Bump, Not a Road Block
With everything going as well as it has been on my African adventure so far, I figured sooner or later I'd cross paths with some bad luck. Unfortunately the bad luck I was anticipating turned out to be really bad luck and now I am left without my laptop and the back pack I have had strapped to my shoulders since my junior year of high school. The story goes as follows:

On Sunday, I had just got back from an Internet cafe and brushing up on the latest worldly current events. Since I no longer...
Mitchell's Plain
After looking over my blog posts from the past two months I realize that I haven't talked at all about my internship in Cape Town at the South Africa Human Rights Commission. In fact, it struck me that anybody reading my posts would probably assume that all I have been doing so far is traveling around Southern Africa and having as much fun as humanly possible. Not that that is entirely inaccurate, but I have been spending a large part of my time in Cape Town with my internship and I would be remiss not to write about...

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Email: stmcneil@gmail.com

STMcNeil

Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx

Providence Before Embarking

Desolation and Namibia

Ramadan On the Southern Mediterranean

The Land of Mandela: Zulu Victory, British Honor, Soweto´s Legacy

Ann and Gary in Tunis: Farewell My Beloved

Moon Risings Over Ksar Ghilane

Tunisian Thanksgiving: Eid A´Dha

Into Algeria: Desert, Ruins and Casbah

The Dunes of Merzouga and the Sand Castle of Essaouira

Deadvlei, Von Wolf's Castle and Oryx

Ann and Gary in Tunis: Farewell My Beloved

The Barbary Wars and Khasserine Pass

Bosphorus Catastophe

Southern Africa

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Eurasia Insight

Breaking CitiesGoGreen

Brother Ben's Blog