TRAVEL TALES

Young Chang

Ed Shoemaker opened up the paper Tuesday morning and felt closer to a

piece of international news.

“Dormitory Fire Kills 58 Teens in Kenya” the L.A. Times headline read.

Another story quoted anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey. Shoemaker and his

wife Margaret had heard Leakey’s son Mike speak during their three week

trip to South Africa and other northern countries in Africa earlier this

month.

Their vacation, which included a four-day safari and a cruise aboard

the Pacific Princess, has helped the Corona del Mar couple better

visualize and understand the news they hear about far-away places on the

African continent.

“That’s very sad, when you see these little children just standing

around and it’s very hard to see the poverty and to know they have no

chance of education or bettering themselves or having a better place to

live in,” said Ed Shoemaker. “It’s hard, but it exists and you have to

see it.”

It was their first visit to Africa -- Margaret, 69, is a housewife;

Ed, 73, has retired from a company that makes sprinklers. The couple

visited Kenya, where they saw animals of all sorts of exotic natures, the

South African cities of East London, Nairobi, Durban, the island of Nosy

Be and the Comoros Islands.

At Nosy Komba, near Nosy Be, the Shoemakers saw plenty of furry

lemurs, a species of monkeys.

One of Maragaret Shoemaker’s favorite stops was the French

protectorate of Mayotte. The cruise group took a tour around the tropical

island, which was rife with coral reefs and lush greens.

And in Durban, the couple visited a Zulu village built during the

filming of the movie “Shaka Zulu.” They saw how the natives lived, how

they made their pots and dwelled in thatched huts while hunting animals

for food.

For clothes, the Durban natives wore leopard skins. Unmarried women

went topless and married ones covered up.

“That’s how you could tell,” Margaret Shoemaker said.

Cape Town was surprisingly modern.

“[Parts of] South Africa didn’t look too different from Santa Ana or

Costa Mesa,” Ed Shoemaker said. “But Africa is just a country of great

contrast. There is great beauty, and abject poverty right beside it.”

Of the poorer areas in the continent, he added that people live in mud

huts and walk around, “just doing nothing.”

“Kenya is not very prosperous,” he said. “And Mayotte -- people look

like they’re just kind of living their existence.”

The travelers didn’t get to know any natives, aside from their tour

guide. They mingled within their own tour group with other Americans,

Canadians and a couple from Ireland, but when it came to culinary

matters, they were more interactive.

In Nairobi, the Shoemakers sampled Zebra meat, which was tasty.

Antelope meat was almost undiscernable from regular beef, Margaret

Shoemaker said, and the food was enjoyable, though not at all gourmet.

When asked if they would return to Africa, the couple says there are

still other parts of the world they also need to see.

“But for anybody that hasn’t done it, I certainly recommend it,” Ed

Shoemaker said. “Africa’s just a very interesting continent, and [South

Africa’s] just a nice country.”

* Have you, or someone you know, gone on an interesting vacation

recently? Tell us your adventures. Drop us a line to Travel Tales, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627; e-mail young.chang@latimes.com; or fax to

(949) 646-4170.