Johannesburg should have prepared me for crazy big city, but there’s crazy and crazy. And Sao Paulo is definitely on the top of the scale. Well, my very first contact, at the tourist information in the airport, was actually very nice. Then buying the ticket for the airport shuttle bus into the city brought the immediate realization that even in tourist-heavy places English is no option. And high tolerance for weird bureaucratic procedures, reminding me of Italy, is essential. The first bus on my line was half empty, but I had been sold a ticket for the next one, and wouldn’t be let onto the first one to leave… By the way, I think Sao Paulo has the largest Italian population of any place outside Italy.

Well, the more difficult the official way of things is, the more nice people you always encounter to smooth your way. The entry to the apartment complex of my first host already familiarized me with the security procedures which seem intense even after Johannesburg. I was waiting to be picked up in between two electric fences, a moat-like structure, where the two gates would never be opened at the same time. So this is my first picture:

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This are pictures and stray memories from one amazing week in Johannesburg (South Africa). I got reminded again of how amazing Couchsurfing is, staying with friends in a strange city. And the history of racial and colonial struggles was certainly a suitable end to my time in Africa.

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Before the memories fade too much, and with already a great deal of nostalgia despite the great reception my Johannesburg and Sao Paulo Couchsurfing–hosts and now the „Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza“ have offered me, here my last pictures and impressions from East Africa (Tanzania, mostly). It was interesting to see my perception change from somebody who lived and worked there and took everything as basically what it was back to more a tourist-visitor’s view. The process of saying good-bye, letting go, and becoming somebody new yet once more.

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Via Chris Bertram on Crooked Timber I read an article by David Graeber, a social anthropologist, called „On the Invention of Money – Notes on Sex, Adventure, Monomaniacal Sociopathy and the True Function of Economics“. It is sufficiently long to really cover all these topics, and I agree with Bertram that it is „one of the most informative and entertaining pieces I’ve read in a long while“. Do read the whole thing!

The core argument is about how money came to be — which in most economic textbooks is explained as a logical development from a barter trade system, where you have to find somebody with a complementary need and offer in the marketplace. But this assumption about our economic past is soundly refuted by actual anthropological and historical research. It is very fascinating to follow the research as to what are actual probable pathways to money usage. And how economic activities were organized before that tells us a lot about how the economic system shapes even deep-rooted human qualities. The bottom line there is that behavior in accordance with „Homo Oeconomicus“ models probably only really came about after markets were invented. And it is because economists cannot (or don’t want to) imagine a human being with different ways of decision-making that they persist on the „money developed from barter trade“ myth despite solid evidence to the contrary. This is, again, in the service of not acknowledging the own status as a „reflexive“ social science which not only describes but also strongly influences human behavior and social processes.

So, first of all, how did people go about their business before money was around?

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For the WWOOFing I just got back from, I’m forced to share pictures of other volunteers there due to the theft of my camera. And it’s so hard to buy a decent replacement even in Nairobi! The good thing is, there are some things which even I wasn’t lucky enough to see. Like the local youths playing football on a field near the farm and nursery school that are part of the project.

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Back in Nairobi after the WWOOFing in Odienya near Rongo near Kisii near Kisumu in Kenya (more on that later) I am wrapping up „my Africa“, in a way. And now that I’m happily back to a reliable electricity connection, I start by posting some pictures from Zanzibar. Those are still taking with my own camera, oh how I miss it! Beware of Nairobi matatus (the infamous minibuses)…

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I just finished an application for a scholarship to do my Ph.D. in Freiburg starting next year. So yes, after some eight months out there in the world I clearly felt I like the thought of going back to science a lot. I’m actually really excited about it, because the project tackles some philosophical and practical questions at the same time, and is set up in a very multiple methods kind of way, ranging from physiological measurements to open („qualitative“) interviews, all of which suits me perfectly. The title still sounds quite technical though, in English it would be something like this: „Importance of Cognitive and Psychophysiological Processes for the Effectiveness of Exposure Therapy in Agoraphobia and Panic Disorder“.

But this just for background, what want I want to write about here is the experience I had writing the application, because I feel it illustrates and supports constructivist concepts of a „narrative self“ which I like a lot.

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Time to look back to Berny an my climbing of Mt. Kilimanjaro, too. As I hoped and expected, the pain is mostly forgotten, the excitement and memories of the amazing views is still vividly there. I almost feel I could do it again, while I remember strongly feeling the opposite immediately after coming down…

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Before things get too far behind, here some commented pictures from my first „back to Kenya“ trip — most of these have also been on facebook, but of course without the little stories in between…

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In a way, this was the beginning of traveling again: still based in Kagondo, exploring the immediate surroundings. I was invited by a very lovely young priest to visit him in his parish — the big island „Bumbire“ and some 80 small surrounding islands in Lake Victoria.

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