River Cruise

Now that Brandt has bored you with the science part of our trip, I thought I’d fill in some of the non-science details. After a day of touring research facilities, Tanya gathered up a crew of people and a case of Kilimanjaro beer and we headed down to the river for a canoe ride. The road out of town runs directly into the river. There’s a barely buoyant ferry that takes cars, people, bikes, chickens, cows, whatever across the river to the road on the other side. This is the only connection to the villages on the other side of the river. There are no bridges. To the side of the ferry there a small collection fisherman with their dugout canoes. We paid them a few thousand shillings and they took us for a sunset cruise. One fishman stood in the front and the other in the back and we sat four to a canoe in between. They used long wooden poles to drag the boat upstream through the tall grassy vegetation where the current is weaker. We were surrounded by the lush green river floodplain and looked out on blue mountains in the background. It was so peaceful. In the grass there were weaved birdnests hanging on the blades. Brandt was in the front of our canoe and the fisherman, trying to be a helpful ecotour guide, pick one of the blades of grass with a nest on it. Then he laughs and says mtoto, the Swahili word for child, and hands Brandt the blade with the nest. This is a word we know and sure enough when he peaks inside he finds a little baby bird which he promptly hands to me. Unsure what to do or say about it, I pass the bird back to Tanya. She’s horrified and starts and tells the guy that the baby has lost it’s mother. And the response is yeah, he’s lost his mother. Tanya try to stick the blade back in the water, not that it’s going to do any good. This bird is a definite gonner but the fisherman says no and takes the blade and nest back and sets it in the front of the boat. Tanya says they know that we’re interested in animals and nature and they think they’re helping. Apparently, a group of bird watchers came and they had these guys take them downriver to camp. They knew that the mzungu wanted to see birds so during the night they caught one and tied its legs to a stick stuck in the middle of the camp. They are honestly trying to be helpful but there’s a bit of a culture gap I guess you could say. One of the resident scientists happened to get up first and was able to liberate the bird before the guests woke up. We continued on to a sandbar where we pulled up for a rest before turning back downstream. The sky was starting to turn pink with the sunset and it was just getting more beautiful. The fisherman, accustomed to mzungu with cameras, wanted their photos taken. I was the only one with a camera so each in turn they struck a pose and I took their portraits, one of which is included below. They were really friendly and wanted to talk with us. They were very patient with our broken Swahili and tried to teach us words as they showed off what English words they knew. I would say this was one of our best interactions with Tanzanians since we got here. After the fisherman had time to finish a bear, we headed back to the ferry crossing. We were floating out in the middle of the river channel, enjoying the setting sun. Then we heard this big splash sound, I look to the left where the noise came from just in time to this huge wake in the water immediately next to the canoe. Tanya asks the fisherman what that was. Mamba he replies…Crocodile! I had just stopped swirling my fingers in the water on that side of the boat just prior to the splash. I don’t know if that drew his attention or if we just happened to come up upon him and he had submerge to swim under the boat. Either way, it was quickly getting dark and we were all of a sudden ready to not be in these rickety homemade canoes any longer. By the imprint of his body in the water, that croc wouldn’t have had any trouble getting himself some tasty dinner by tipping our boat over. Fortunately, that was our last wildlife interaction for the day and we made it back to shore just as it became fully dark.