My contribution to the exhibit at the Hotel d’ Ville’s exhibit in Paris, this one in water color, and sans any protest.
Author: Gary Kirkpatrick
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My contribution to the exhibit at the Hotel d’ Ville’s exhibit in Paris
My contribution to the exhibit at the Hotel d’ Ville’s exhibit in Paris, an delightful exhibit about which I posted last week. It is a protest against the astronomical prices in the restaurants. Try $6-7 for coffee, $15 for a hot dog. it’s become impossible for the average worker to afford to take the family out even once in a while unless they have a employer provided ‘ticket reataurant.’
Croak is a play on words- croque monsieur is a famous sandwich. If I can find someone to translate this for me I might do it up, just a 10 minute sketch now but I think it is kind of fun.
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Tanzania to Solwezi, Zambia- a slideshow set to Zambian music
These are photos from the moment we landed in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, across 1500 km of Tanzania to Solwezi, Zambia, where we met up with Travis, who is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a small village not far from Solwezi. Coming up, our days in his village.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKXpMILbwFU&list=UUl7YKIwsWVvA_jQrQVcxYRg
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Slideshow of the pieces I did in Tanzania and Zambia, completed to date
I will be adding quite a few more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu6fJxFWQg&list=UUl7YKIwsWVvA_jQrQVcxYRg
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Some watercolors from Zambia
Here are some of the drawings I have done here in Tanzania and Zambia. We started in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.
Tazara Train (from the journal I kept) The countryside in Tanzania:
Huts in Tanzania (from the journal I kept) 
The plains of Tanzania
(from the journal I kept) Sold -
Update from Lusaka
June 14th
Hello from Lusaka, the capitol of Zambia. 3 fantastic days in our nephew’s village (he is in Peace Corps), what lovely people and what a totally fabulous welcome we received! Rustic conditions, to put it mildly, even the bus rides were arduous and there was a 1 1/2 hour walk in the dark but under a full moon to end the 12 hour day. More to come when I have time on the net.
If you have a Facebook account you can read my hand written journals with illustrations. I have not uploaded to google+ yet. I can not post them here without more work than I can probably manage to do right now.
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From Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
Seven hours from Madrid and you are smack dab in the middle of the Islamic world. It hardly looks it from an air traveler’s point of vierw. Dubai is flooded with oil money and the large modern steel and glass buildings strut out from the coastal landscape as you descend. The world’s tallest building seems to zig zag its way into the clouds.
Three hours and a $15 quiche for one lunch later we were on our way. It’s about 5 hours to Dar Es Salaam. Fortunately we slept a bit along the way. In my case, I struggled with much pain in the coccyx. It seems I need a special pillow as not even the ibuprofen worked.
Once at the airport it took an hour to get the visa and $100 each. Quite expensive for a three day visit. Fortunately our ride was still waiting as we emerged and we got into a small van, only slightly beat up. It took another hour to get to the hotel we’d booked.
Along the way people offered a wide variety of goods for sale to the drivers stuck in the traffic. Women wearing brightly colored dresses carried a root vegetable on their heads, their skull cushioned by a round cloth. Men carried sporing goods, traffic warning triangles for when you break down, bright plastic watches, and large bags of cashews. Local buses lumbered in and out of the lanes. These buses have been around a while. It’s hot, about 92f/32c and the bus windows are all open.
Our downtown hotel sits on an unpaved street. We are warmly welcomed, ushered everywhere from the front door to our hotel room. A gorgeous huge bed is also very welcoming, as is the fully tiled bathroom. You have to wait for the hot water tank to warm up, but once that is done, it’s a great shower with room for a pony.
Our traveling companions are in the hotel next door. They have made the trip from Texas, arriving the day before. We had a very spicy curry, a decent pizza, some tomato soup. Nary a fried grasshopper in sight.
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Travels
Our time in Valencia is coming to an end, at least for now.
On June 1 we are joining two other RPCV (Returning Peace Corps Volunteers aka ex-PCV’s) who lived near us in Panama for a two day train trip across Tanzania. There might be some wildlife along the way but mostly small viallages, open expanses and hills. That journey ends in Zambia, where we meet up with our nephew who is a PCV there. We spend a week in his village (just six houses there) before traveling across the country to Livingstone. This is the location of the famous and fabulous Victoria Falls. Tons of wildlife in the river and nearby.
There are lots of critters in the area including elephants, giraffe, zebra, antelopes. Lions and leopards are rarely seen. There are also vervet monkeys and lots of baboons. The river above the falls has lots of hippos and crocodiles, the latter weighing up to a ton! There are otters and a wide variety of raptors and waterfowl. Riverine forest is found above the falls, Mopane woodland savanah dominates the area however. We are staying in a backpacker hotel just 8 km from the falls and so we can go often, with transport provided by the hotel.
We return to Madrid after an 8 hour visit to Dubai, where we hope to ascend the world’s tallest building. After an overnight in Madrid (we are leaving our big bags with a friend there), we fly to Paris. We are renting a friend’s flat in Courbevoie for the month while she is gone. Courbevoie is famous for the impressionist painting executed along the river.
After Paris we are in Trieste for a month. Trieste is almost due east from Venice on the Adriatic, on the border with Slovenia, and 90% of rural dwellers speak Slovenian, while Italian dominates in the city. Trieste was part of the Austria-Hungarian empire from the 14th century until it was ceded to Italy at the conclusion of WW1. It has a mild climate, with a high of 28C (low 80’s F) in the summer. We have never been there but it is a city well worth visiting. Since it borders Slovenia, it and Croatia are readily visited as well. We have rented a one bedroom flat near the old port.
From September – late December we have rented a flat in Rome from a couple visiting New York during this period. It is a small house near Tiburtina station and a tram line. Trains and trams are generally faster than buses, which must contend with tons of traffic. We are not near a metro. Where we go next year has yet to be determined. We do think Valencia is in our future, however.
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More about Valencia’s symphonic bands (with link to a video)
Peg writes:You may know my penchant for these Valencian symphonic bands. We can hear groups of this caliber almost every week at the beautiful Palau de la Musica here in Valencia.In any case, we heard this composition by Bert Appermont, a Belgian composer who was born in 1973, last Sunday. It tells the story of Lamoral, the Count of Egmont, a descendent of one of Spain’s wealthiest families, who was a general serving under King Philip II of Spain in the Low Countries (Belgium and Holland), in 1560 ruled by Spain. He was born and raised in Holland, however, and after years of military training in Spain and distinguished service in the army, began to protest strongly against Philip II’s cruel and tyrannical government. He was eventually imprisoned and beheaded. To make a long story short, his death sparked the 80 years war that resulted in the independence of the Low Countries from Spain. You can hear the entire story in this piece.This is a typical band from our area. There are more than 600 of them, most with music schools attached. These people all have day jobs, many of them having nothing to do with music. They do it out of love, often living in the town where they went to the local music school. Sometimes their kids play sitting next to them – I’ve seen a few who look like they’re about 12 years old. Until they are good enough, the kids play in the school band. This performance was taped during a band competition in the area.
