h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Willem, hi. I just heard about things. See what you miss when you move from the first to the third world and spend a couple of days trying to re-learn how to live in a city which is affectionately known as "Nairobbery"? A quarter-century of life in America sure didn't prepare me for this.

I'm awfully glad you're still around. I still want to visit you sometime. I'd also like to talk to you about what it's like here. I know you've not been to Nairobi, but you probably have a closer idea of this life than do most Americans and Europeans.

When I have some reasonably stable contact info, I'll get it to you. I got your address and phone number through the grapevine, but I don't suppose you're at home right now. (And I have NO IDEA how to make a phone call or send a letter!) Between our misadventures on this strange continent, we're really making poor Dastardly earn her wings, aren't we?

My misadventures have been interesting. There are a lot of con-men on the streets of Nairobi. They really know how to get money from Americans. Frankly, it kind of sickens me. Yesterday, someone approached me as I was on my way to church (!) and proceeded to deliver a line in which he basically took advantage of my feelings about the New York attack. Fortunately, it was my *second* day here, so I recognized his con as a commonly used script, and I walked away, wishing him the best of luck.

I can't be very angry, because I know that people are desperate. How can you fault a hungry man for trying to get food?

There certainly are a lot of problems in the world. I don't know what the solutions are, but I feel that it is good that I moved from my sheltered life in the states to this place, which seems more *real* to me. I don't know what the solutions are, but my *faith* is that violence is never one.

My father killed himself. He used a .357 magnum. I understand that he felt that his life was unbearable, but nothing can ever fill the void he left in my life, and my sister's, and my mother's, and the lives of his friends, and of the people whom he helped, and of all the people whom he would have met over the last 8 years and whose lives he would have touched.

We touch each other's lives. I think that's the way in which we really matter in this world. That's how we fight against hate. Just one person at a time, one kind word at a time, one smile at a time. () Those little bits of love, like little sips of water, keep us alive and keep us believing, and eventually they build up and become a flood, and miracles happen. They really do.



Well, Willem, I know that I don't really *know* you, and you don't really *know* me. We've exchanged a few typed words here and there. Nonetheless, I have repeatedly been touched by your honesty and by the depth of feeling that you manage to communicate through this awkward medium. Reading things that you've typed has warmed my heart, while I was sitting in a room somewhere, half a world away, in the middle of the night, staring at a glowing screen. That's a miracle.

[about to start ing right here in this cyber-cafe]

I know you might not be able to reply particularly soon. That's okay. Let's do keep in touch, though. There are things I'd like to ask you about African history and politics, and yes, wildlife, too! Let's talk about ways in which little people like us can work to improve big, tangled situations, such as occur where you are, and where I am, and all over this poor, confused world.

For now, know that you are in my thoughts and prayers. Please let your family know that they are as well. I hope we can all meet soon.

love,

Tony

Hi Tony,

Because Willem's father has said that he's having a hard time reading messages at h2g2, I'm taking the liberty of doing a cut and paste to email your message.

Hope you don't mind.

NBY

Thanks, NBY

Hey Tony, David, thanks a bunch, and if you look closely, you'll see I am back and writing this with my own fingers on my own computer's own keyboard!

Yay!

Welcome back, Willem!

It must be good to be home, eh? Now you've got plenty of backlog reading to keep you busy I imagine. I don't know whether you've been kept up to date on the happenings around here. The big news items are probably that the Editors finally posted their comments on the Modest Proposal, the Magna Carta, and the Arbiter Scheme. Sometime during all this, Hoovooloo got fed up and left, to the chagrin of many. Now the Modest Proposal has basically been made into official policy, the Magna Carta -I'm not too sure what's up with it, and the Arbiter scheme is basically on ice, pending its being tested in an actual case. I wonder if that means they're looking for arbiters...

As far as I go, I haven't been on FoLKZ much lately, as I've been getting settled in my new home, and my browsing is limited to h2g2 and Hotmail. Here, I've mostly been lurking around a few places where I can discuss interesting things.

In RL, I'm getting used to Nairobi. It's fun. I'm learning Swahili (slowly), and also which parts of town to avoid. Classes at the University start on 22 October, after a week of orientation and such. I'm very eager to get started.

Yesterday I went to the National Museum. It's very good. There are sections about geology, the origins of man, African wildlife, local tribal culture, and folk art, and there were special exhibits about the history of Asian Africans in Kenya, and about rainwater use. It was all very interesting.

I had to cancel my Safari a week ago, for lack of funds, and seeing the museum's stuffed animals made me even more eager to get out there and see them alive and in the wild. I think I was most intrigued by the funny little deer-like things called "duikas". What a whimsical creature! I've never seen anything like it! Now that I've thought of it, actually, I'm going to U Arizona's "Tree of Life" page to see whether duikas are located where I expect in the taxonomy....

Oh darn. They haven't fully developed that part of the tree yet. Well, I'm sure they're in the same group with deer and antelope and such.

Wow! I just did a Google search and there's nothing on the net about duikas! How strange! It's not in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, or at that online encyclopedia! They must have another name...

Ok, now I'm just babbling at you, so I should stop. I hope it's ok for me to write to you here. Keep in touch, eh?

I'll see you around!

Tony

You utterly useless git!!!! The antelope you're looking for is a DUIKER!!! Two genera: Sylvicapra, and Cephalophus. There are lots of them! The name is Afrikaans and means 'diver'. In this sense it means 'diving' or weaving rapidly through dense foliage!

I meant that in the nicest possible way, of course!

Thanks for the welcome, and it's good to see you, too! Please tell me everything about Kenya because I actually know very, very little about the place and the people!

It sure *is* called a duiker. Gosh. Now that I see that word, it comes right back to me. The funny thing is that I actually got a few hits when I did a web search on "duika," just nothing useful. "Diver," that's cool. I really want to see one "diving" now. Have you seen that "Tree of life" website that I mentioned? You might like it. I've spent many a happy hour there. Any reasonable search engine will get you there.

Kenya... ah... I like it here, though I can't exactly say why. I haven't been outside Nairobi yet, and I hear the country is much nicer. Nairobi, y'know is affectionately nicknamed Nairobbery, or even Nightrobbery. I've been victimized four times in the three weeks I've been here, though I got away twice. I still am fond of the place. How much sense does that make?

I have made friends with a few locals, one of whom sells curios and things. He is going to get me a couple of little items - Maasai bracelet and good luck charm - that he says will make people know that I live here and that I'm not just another Mzungu (white) tourist.

He and I have discussed going into business together. We could build and rent houses in the slum where he lives. Apparently it only takes around $300 to build a cluster of six one-room units, which you can rent out for like, $15/month each, so the investment would be paid off pretty quickly. I really like the idea of investing in Kenya. As a... how shall I say it... a person with a rather acute conscience about being American, I really like the idea. I feel like it would be a way that I could make money and be doing something *right*. Does that make sense?

Maybe that's part of why I like it here. Because I finally get to ease my conscience by getting out of America. Out of "The West" entirely, actually, because Europe wouldn't do.

It's hard to tell that to people, of course, when they ask me why on EARTH I came to KENYA to study PHYSICS! "The little voice says 'jump,' and I say 'how high?'" just provokes more questions. Maybe I should just create a distraction and run... or make up something about a witness protection plan.

There are cyber-cafes everywhere in Nairobi. Do you have many in South Africa? There's only one in all of Dallas, I guess because they figure everybody has a computer in their house, which is true, if you don't count the poor people, and who counts the poor people?

There's an awful lot of really glaring poverty here. The street-boys are everywhere. If you're white, you can't get down a block in the city centre without a couple of kids (or mothers with babies) asking you for money. That's fairly depressing. What's worse is that most of the street-boys walk around with plastic bottles hanging out of their mouths with rubber cement inside. They just breathe the fumes all day.

Hmmm... whenever I tell someone about this place, I end up talking about the most depressing stuff, and I don't think I'm very effectively communicating that I *love* being here. I don't mean that sadistically, either. The best image I have found is a description of the odours. This is the equator, right, so plants are in flower all the time, I guess. They sure are now, anyway. So, walking around in the right places, it's possible to get a mingling of the abundant fragrances from really cool tropical trees, with the standard third-world smell of sewage and trash. I find that mix totally mesmerizing, and I don't know why. It could be some ridiculous Baudelairean decadence, I guess. Maybe it's just novelty that I like. Eventually, I'll get used to this, and then I'll have to move to Samarkand for something different.

I think there's something more to it than novelty or aesthetic thrill. I'm in the *right* place, though I can't say why.

Ok, this post is getting long. I'm going to be on the list of researchers witht the longest postings again at the info page. C'est la vie.

Ask me anything about Kenya, or about whatever, and I'll answer as best I can! For now, cheers!

Hi Tony

Hope you don't mind me lurking. I find your experiences totally amazing, so please keep talking and I'll keep eavesdropping! I came here to visit the Pillowcase (Hi Willie!) but I wanted you to know I honour your reasons for moving east!

x x Fenny (hoping you find Zero Intolerance)

Goodness! Just now, at least, you're on both lists! Most postings AND longest postings! I've never seen anyone do that before! Congratulations. No wonder you're tired...

Oh! Simulpost!

Hi, Fenny. I don't mind if you lurk, and thanks for the moral support. It's nice to hear someone say something besides that I'm crazy...

What you're telling me is great, Tony! I am sad about the street kids and the glue-breathing, though. We have street kids here in Pietersburg, too, but not that many of them ... the town is the most prosperous place in the province, and there are good jobs available for most. There are some beggars ... but over here many of them are white.

I'm checking out the Tree of Life right now! It looks ultra-cool!

It's OK to invest in Kenya, so long as you don't rip people off!

Here in South Africa we have some cyber cafés - I know of at least one here in Pietersburg, there must be many in Pretoria.

Right, a question ... what kinds of Duikers did you see in the museum? Like I said, there are many species.

Tony, if you manage to reach 'Artiodactyla' on the Tree of Life, go to the link provided there to Brent Huffman's Ultimate Artiodactyla site. Then find the Cephalophinae on his list. There you will find descriptions of many duiker species, and pictures of the Bay, Jentink's, Maxwell's, Blue, Black, Red-flanked, Yellow-backed and Banded Duikers.

Fenny, you can check it out too!

I forgot the gray duiker! Sorry! There's a picture of it, too! That's the one that occurs most commonly over here ... there are some of them in a patch of 'veld' quite close to where I live!

I forgot the gray duiker! Sorry! There's a picture of it, too! That's the one that occurs most commonly over here ... there are some of them in a patch of 'veld' quite close to where I live!

Tony, where can I see that statistics list? I used to know where it was, but I lost it! I can remember having been on the list for the most postings as well as the longest postings once before, when I posted Vivienne's message to LeKZ, which was, in total, 25 000 words spread over forty separate postings.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/info

Your stats when I checked yesterday were something like 55 postings, average length 786. (786 what? I forget. Bytes?)

In the museum, they had Blue, Yellow-Backed, and another kind of Duiker that I can't remember. I'll definitely be going back there and spending more time studying the displays. I was with someone who seemed to want to keep moving. I prefer to go to museums alone, because I tend to read EVERY word of copy that they provide, and that tends to infuriate any less dedicated companion.

My favorite is the Blue, because it's so small and whimsical. I found a few pictures of them by just doing a Google search, but I didn't even think to follow the references at the Tree of Life. Duh. Has it been remarked that I'm an utterly useless git?

The museum has a really thorough display case of Rodentia, with about 20 or 25 specimens, all joined by little lines labelled with their phylogenic (sp? word choice?) relationships. There's a Giant Rat that frightens me. Madagascar? It's from somewhere like that.

So, in other news, today is the beginning of registration for first year students here. I should be standing in a rather long queue right now, but I can't bear long queues, so I bailed out and came to the cyber-cafe. I'll try back later; I've got all week.

I'm taking a BSc in Physics, did you know that? It's a four year program, and it'll be my second Bachelor's Degree. This year I'll just take Intro to Mechanics, Electricity/Magnetism, and Waves/Optics. I expect I already know most of what's in the Mechanics class, but not the others. I'm not sure I can take any Math classes this year, because I've already done all the first year stuff, and I'm not sure whether the red tape involved in taking second year classes before second year is actually penetrable.

My flatmate here is a Nigerian Math Lecturer. Last night we had quite a pleasant hour-long discussion about differential equations. God, I love being a nerd.

"It's OK to invest in Kenya, so long as you don't rip people off!"

They're not the ones who need to worry about being ripped off!

I've got a business plan in mind that only confirms my suspicion that I'm quite mad. Basically, I only want to have some little income while I'm here, but be able to get out of it when I want to and transfer ownership to my manager, who's from here. Basically, I invest all the capital, and after a couple of years of managing my money, *he* ends up owning everything. As long as it doesn't bother me, it's ok, right? I just don't want to rip myself off in my enthusiasm. That would be silly.

For now, I'll post this message, and follow those Duiker links you mentioned. Take care!

That would be *phylogenetic* relationships. Actually, 25 specimens of rodents aren't that many - just in South Africa alone we have over 75 species! We also have a kind of giant rat ... it reaches two kilograms (four and a half pounds) in bodyweight! But there is also one in Madagascar, so what you said could be right. I'm trying to check, using Google, but the connection is extremely slow at the moment. ... Okay, I got some links now! I'll check them out.

Bummer - no picture! I'll look some more later.

So, are you good with maths? I used to know a bit of it, but I've forgotten just about everything!

I'm falling asleep now ... I'll speak more tomorrow! If you like, please check out my site ... I have a link to it now on my space here on h2g2!

Longest Posts - those would be words, I think, not bytes. When you consider that a byte equates to a letter, 765 letters is around 100 words. I don't think the Case writes such short posts!

Just my nerdy response when I'm out of my biological depth (I'm a computer nerd, and proud of it!)

x x Fenny (seeking Zero Intolerance among bytes and nibbles)

Hi Willem! Hi Fenny!

Ok, today's posting takes us out of Africa and back to Tony's previous life in beautiful Northern New Mexico (1995-2001). I have no idea why I feel compelled to tell this story.

Episode 1:

After graduating from St. John's, I was fortunate enough to land an internship/job/fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute in the mountains just outside of town. I was just a low-level programmer for someone who's trying to work out the dynamics of financial markets , but it was a very exciting place to be. I even met Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Physics Laureate!

Ok, so on my first day there, my boss was showing me around and introducing me to people. It was the time in the afternoon when they call all the researchers into the kitchen area for tea and snacks. (They figure it's a good idea to peel everyone away from their computer screens for a few minutes each day.) So, over , they chat about various things. On that particular day, people were talking about something someone had read.

Apparently, there are a lot of organisms living in the Earth's crust, like 100 ft down or more. They're not animals or plants or fungi or bacteria; they're not anything that we would ordinarily recognize as "life". They live in the rocks and metabolize minerals into other minerals. I guess someone had read an estimate that the *vast* majority of the Earth's biomass was down there in the crust, and that we surface-dwellers are a recent and somewhat dubious innovation.

Episode 2:

In Cerrillos, New Mexico, 20 minutes from Santa Fe, there is very little to speak of. It's a fascinating town, but there's just not much there. There is a place called Mary's Bar, which I'm sorry I never visited, and there is a curiosity shop/petting zoo. The owner of the curiosity shop is something of a geologist, and among the other strange things threre are collections of many strange and beautiful types of minerals, crystals, rocks, whatever. I was in the rockshop (as we call it), a few weeks after Episode 1, and I was staring at some colourful crystal growths. I may have been a little stoned.

I was struck rather powerfully by the idea that rocks are alive. DNA is an aperiodic crystal. Maybe the first orgainisms that we would call "alive" learned how to grow by copying (evolving from) living rocks. I like the idea that rocks are family relations of ours. We could proabably learn something from them.



Well, there's that story. Dunno where it came from, but it's true.

Nothing much is happening here. Last night I proposed a contest that I can't help but win. My flat-mate is Nigerian, and we have a regular visitor who's Kenyan (duh, we're in Kenya). We were talking about food, and there seems to be a bit of a rivalry springing up between these two about whether they make better food in East or West Africa. I suggested a cook-off and offered to be the judge. Whenever there's a cooking contest, it's the judge who wins! Mmmmm....

Maybe next they'll argue about who can do a better job washing my clothes, and cleaning my room! Then I'll be left alone with my Maths, which you asked about, Willem.

When I'm feeling down, you see, I can do some Calculus, and I feel better. (Linear Algebra is even more soothing, but I don't know much of it, and I don't have a book to work out of right now! Note to self: get one.) I used to go to secondhand bookstores and look for old Math textbooks, which would cost maybe a dollar. Then I would take them home and do every problem in the book, filling a few notebooks and many happy evenings. That's how I learned Set Theory, Vector Calculus, and what little Linear Algebra I know.

Yep, I'm a big nerd. No way around that. That's why I'm so glad that I'm finally going back to school to study Maths and Physics full-time! I can't wait to get started, so last night I learned how to solve certain types of Differential Equations. It was very fun!

Ok, I should go now; I'll check out your website, definitely!

See ya around!