Most Africans have black skin. Mine is white. It’s a simple fact. I was taught that it was like how some have brown eyes and others blue or green, it doesn’t matter and you shouldn’t care. But here, they know better.

Muzungu! Muzungu! Bonjour Monsieur Munzungu! Kids run after us. They yell, they scream. White person! White person! Hello Mr. White Person! You hear it from cars, from passing trucks, young, old but especially the rural poor. Though they’re truly uneducated, maybe an eighth grade education, they know that the average white person has more money than the average black person. It’s a simple fact. You want to believe it doesn’t matter, but it does.

This once, I got a flat tire right outside a roadside village and everyone came out to watch, from little kids to the village drunks. These two, maybe 13 and 14, they wanted to help. And no doubt, they were better at patching inner tubes than me. Cool. He asked me where I was from. America. Ah! America, where everything is good. I didn’t know how to respond. We started inflating the patched tube but the valve blew out and the tire shriveled. Their faces dropped. They couldn’t help me and I wasn’t going to help them. One of the kids asked, in America, there are jobs? In America, you just go to school? And that, that just breaks your heart.
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In South Africa the average annual income is $5,786. In Rwanda it's but $509. It’s hard to overstate how wealthy America is and how awesomely cost inefficient our health care system is. (It also makes one most grateful for health insurance. Thank you health reform and Blue Anthem!) Fun fact: Rwanda has universal healthcare. (Though it's paid for by Western charity.)

In all fairness, my body has been inundated my medication. Here's a partial list:

• Polio booster
• Hepatitis B (got this as a kid but awkwardly my blood tests showed no immunity)
• Rabies
• Tetanus booster
• Yellow Fever
• Meningitis
• Ciprofloxacin
• Mefloquine / Larium (malaria prophylaxis)
• Doxycyline (generic antibiotic for the trip)
• Typhoid

Rabies was the most expensive. $1600 for three shots and it only lasts a year. If you get rabies, even with the vaccine, you must get additional treatment within a couple days or you die. The emergency treatment is out of the TV show House – they induce a coma and then sit back and wait, hoping that your body produces enough antibodies before your brain goes berserk. Amusingly, given our Wisconsin roots, the treatment is called the "Milwaukee Protocol". Only a couple people have ever survived an extended exposure to rabies.

Last NYC bike ride: Queensboro bridge – 42nd St – 1st Ave

music is We Used to Wait by Arcade Fire
(but you already knew that)
www.arcadefire.com/the-suburbs/

Hey hott stufff

Shakira the Squirrel

Shake that tail!

Hey sexy

a sexy she-squirrel on the prowl

He's bringing Sexy Back

Baby please don't hop away

a real nut buster

can't hide from me, babe

If Justin Timerberlake was a squirrel, he'd look like this.

This post was made to test how photos display on this web site.

But you know what, it’s true. Squirrels are the sexiest.