Arusha National Park

Robyn had previously been on an amazing one day safari (“safari” in Kiswahili means trip or travels) while she was in Mwanza, so I was all excited for my first opportunity to see stuff in the wild that I had only seen in zoos or on the Discovery Channel. After talking to the one of the owners of the lodge we were staying at, we decided that we would do a one-day safari into Arusha National Park. While the park is quite small (we saw most of it in one day), it offered an opportunity for a walking safari. Now, most people think of an African safari as a rough and rugged adventure. Typically, it is rough because the roads are so bad and rugged because of the bathroom facilities (poop in a hole). However, the safari companies just drive you around all day in the back of a jeep or truck and feed you like a pig, so you are often in worse shape coming out of a game-watching safari vacation than going in. That isn’t to say that they are bad, because they are almost always awesome experiences. But, if you have a chance for a safe walking safari, take it, it is worth the extra 20 bucks and effort to set foot to ground over here. So, we signed up for a 4 hour walk with an armed park ranger.

We were excited as we had a sneak preview of the park earlier in week. Luckily, our lodge (Mt. Meru Lodge) was only a 15 minute walk from the entrance of the park. There is no fence around the park but there’s an archway marking the boundary. On one side there are houses, a school, crops, children playing- a completely human-dominated landscape. On the other side of the arch, there were thick bushes, trees and about 20 giraffe. It was awesome! Some were no further than 10 yards away from us. They would just stare at us while they chewed their cud—often for minutes at a time. They are amazing, and huge, creatures. We decided to plop down on the side of the dirt road and watch them watch us. We spotted a small hill along the border of the park and we climbed up for a better view. Town on the left, herd of giraffe on the right. One really big one walked into path we had taken so I had to walk directly at him when it was time to go and hope he moved out of our way. Now, giraffe are essentially little more than a cow with long necks, long legs, and pretty spots. They seem to be relatively dumb and harmless. However, when you are walking towards one that is over double your height and is four to five times your weight, it is a bit daunting.

We spent the next few days at a scientific meeting (more about that later) and on Saturday it was safari time! Robyn and I ate breakfast and then climbed into our pimped-out safari van and headed off. On our drive to the point where we would start our walking trek we saw giraffe, water buffalo (mean looking animals), wart hogs (super funny when they run), baboons, and blue monkeys. Nothing like Robyn’s Serengeti experience, but not bad for an early Saturday morning drive. We finally arrived at the ranger station, grabbed our pack lunch and headed up into the forests at the base of Mt Meru. The first thing we saw dart in front of us was a dik dik, which look like tiny, elvish deer about the size of a house cat. I didn't even know anything like this existed. 

Well, we walked and walked and walked. I am not going to bore you with a step-by-step description, but I’ll list the highlights:

-Highlight #1--About 45 minutes in our hike, we heard a very loud snap in the forest off our right, like a small tree breaking in half. In the park, there are mountain elephants, and startling an elephant only means bad things. Our guide immediately side stepped, bolted his rifle, and told us wait. We waited in silence for a few, long minutes; my heart was pounding, ears straining for any noise, both hoping that an elephant would come rumbling out of the forest and hoping that no elephant was anywhere near us. We listened for a bit longer, then the culprit popped into view- colubus monkey. So we plunged into the thick forest to watch the colubus. We trekked a bit and then heard and saw these huge, beautiful, black and white, long-haired monkeys running and jumping through the tree canopy right over our heads. We were the only people around, so it was just us, the forest and the monkeys. It was incredible. They are apparently pretty shy as monkies go so this is why walking safaris are a must.

-Highlight#2--After about 2 hours, we came upon this really big, really interestingly shaped fig tree with a hole through the trunk so big that you could drive a truck through it. As we arrived, a troop of about 60 baboon showed up and all climbed up into the tree. Seeing 60 baboons hooting, hollering, and eating is overall pretty entertaining to watch. Figs rained down from the tree but luckily, Robyn and I avoided being pooped on.

-Highlight #3—After the baboons, the ranger got it in his mind to find us an elephant. We then spent the next hour tracking elephants. We were walking on paths through the forest and bush likely made by elephants, making sure to avoid stepping in the elephant dung. It is really intense to be walking in elephant footprints, it makes everything seem a bit more real. The guide was leading us quietly through the trail with his gun at the ready, periodically stopping to listen. Sadly we didn’t see any elephants, but it was a great time nonetheless.
After the walking part of the safari, we clambered back into our truck and saw the rest of the park. It was pretty, but saw nothing super interesting…

…Until we were heading out of the park. As dusk was settling in over the park, our driver saw it first. A leopard…about 30 yards ahead of us on the road. Our driver was excited as he has been doing safaris in the park for several years and this was only the second leopard he has seen. For the next 10 minutes, we slowly followed it; we would get to close, it would faint like it was heading for the bush, we would stop, then it would continue on. Awesome! The park was closing and we had to call it day soon. The leopard went up into the bush on the side of the dirt road. As we slowly drove past the spot where he/she had disappeared. We assumed she was gone, sick of being followed by our van. But there she was! Sitting just inside the weeds yards from our van. Holy shit! All I saw was its face and glowing yellow eyes staring at us. Robyn and I yelled at the driver to stop. We stopped about 8 yards beyond where it was hiding us. At first we said back up, but then realized that it could easily jump into the truck, so decided to stay put. After a few tense moments, it finally took off, and so did we. Overall, the safari was a great experience, we got to see things few people ever get to see. It is because of times like this that you fall in love with TZ.

Road Trip

Robyn and I decided that I would meet her up in Moshi following her week of work up in Mwanza. She was going to fly to Moshi, I was going to take the bus. I am detailing this trip to give you a sense of how travel via public transport works over here. To any Tanzanian, my journey would be totally unremarkable. However to me, it was an immense pain in the ass (literally).

The buses for Moshi/Arusha typically leave from Dar between 7 and 10 AM each day. So I started my trip with a two hour dalla ride from Bagamoyo to Dar. I paid 1500 tsh ($1.30) for the 60 km trip. I definitely got what I paid for--I was cramped into the back seat, packed into a space over the left rear tire well, with my large backpack on my lap (and partly on the lap of guy next to me). It was an typical trip, down in just under two hours. I got to Dar, decompressed out of the dalla, and started my mile hike through mud and water holes that engulfed major portions of the side “road” that would bring me to the front steps of Chris and Cathyrn’s place. All of this was done in the dark.

I rolled into the haven of peace that is C and C’s house, unwound, and went to bed early since my day would start at 6 AM (which is very early for me). I awoke the next morning excited to get up to Moshi and see a new part of Tanzania. I walked out the door at 7 AM the next morning, and retraced my steps through the water obstacle course I conquered the previous night. As always, I got plenty of stares from locals, amazed as that a mzungu was actually walking and not taking a taxi or driving an SUV. I arrived at the dala dala hub of Mwenge and jumped on a dala for a short 20 minute trip to Ubungo to get a bus to Moshi.

So the dala stops about 100 meters outside of the bus station. Before my feet hit the ground, I was absolutely swarmed by people determined to help me find a bus. I knew this was coming, but it is still a bit overwhelming. Not really dangerous, just crazy. I just ignored them and plowed my way towards the station. As I got close, a woman in a uniform grabbed my left wrist. I told her twice to let go of me, but she obviously was trained in the ways of the Force to thwart attempts of getting her to release her vise-like grip. So she literally dragged my into a ticket office all the while fended off other people who wanted my business. So she succeeded in capturing her prey. However, she gave me a reasonable price (for a mzungu) of 17,000 tsh to get to Moshi, wrote me out a receipt, then sent me off with a runner who walked me to the bus. The bus supposedly left around 9:00, it was 8:30, so everything seemed to be on track.

Now, the bus station at Ubungo is complete chaos; buses, taxi, vendors, and travelers everywhere. The buses sit idling for hours, spewing noxious exhaust, as the operators try coerce anybody who drifts by to fill the seats so their bus can take off towards their various destinations. Here, you actually see bus line operators chasing other operators away from potential customers. It is a big, smelly, noisy chicken fight.

After sitting on the bus for 90 minutes waiting for it to fill up (apparently the departure time was just a guess), our bus finally took off. In 7 to 8 hours, I would be in Moshi. This is assuming no blowouts, breakdowns and/or accidents which are almost as frequent as mosquito bites.

As you have read previously, Tanzanians don’t exactly follow any rules while driving. Well, except for the “bigger car/truck/bus always wins” rule. So buses are one of the big boys on the TZ highways, and the drivers drive like it. Driving as fast as they can, potholes and speed limits be damned. They pass slower moving cars at will, often just squeaking back into the proper lane before careening headfirst into oncoming traffic. I find it best to never, never stare out the front window of the bus, it is simply too terrifying for your own good.

So I settled into my window seat and plugged into my I-pod. Over the next eight hours, the Tanzanian man seated next to me and I proceeded to get to know each in a very physically intimate way (at least to me). This middle-aged man decided to press his left shoulder, mid-section, hip, leg, and foot into my right shoulder, mid-section, hip, leg, and foot. If I shifted to put some air between us and regain my dignity, he would immediately shift to occupy said space. I don’t even hug Robyn this hard. I got annoyed and pressed back, but he never seemed to get the hint (btw, Tanzanians have a completely different idea of personal space than Americans). After the trip ended, I wondered if it was Tanzanian custom for him to ask my hand in marriage.

Anyway, over the first four hours we only stopped quickly for patrons to board the bus. At these stops, hoards of venders swarm the bus selling water, cashews, oranges, grilled ears of corn (presented on the end of coat hangers stuck into the end of a stick), gum, candy, bread, wooden spoons, newspapers, etc, etc, etc. It is crazy. This is how you mainly feed yourself over the course of the trip. To feel like a true local, just toss your trash out the window when you are done—you get extra points if you hit a chicken or a goat. Also, you must realize that there are very few opportunities to use the choo. We only stopped twice for bathroom breaks: once at a road-side food-stand area and another time when the bus just pulled over and people got off and ran off into the bushes (if you were a woman) or just pissed on the side of the road (if you were a man). Ahhhh..the joys of public transportation.

That about sums up a typical bus trip in Tanzania. I got to Moshi in one piece and feeling only slightly violated. We need to get a car!!!

Carnivory

When I left for Tanzania, it had been over eleven years since I willing ate meat. The last few months in Santa Barbara I started practicing eating meat so that if I got into a culturally sensitive situation here I’d be able to do what needs to be done. By the time I left SB, I was choking down single bites of steak and sausage. The first couple of months here when we didn’t have a fridge it was pretty much all beans and rice at home. Then we went out to dinner at a Tanzanian restaurant with friends. The menu was beef, chicken, goat, ugali (a Tanzanian staple- flavorless corn mush), rice, and fried potatoes. I was officially off the wagon. I ordered the beef. I think Brandt may have written about this already, but meat isn’t really prepared the same here. At home, a cow would be butchered into different cuts of meat. In Tanzanian, they just take a big axe and dice up the carcass. It’s served well done in roughly cubed pieces that may contain bone, tendon, rubbery lard, whatever. In fact, the unofficial motto appears to me the tougher to chew, the better. So while I was very proud of myself for tackling the plate of meat on my own (see photo!), I ended up picking through to find the pieces that happened to be only meat and causally shoveled the rest onto Brandt’s plate.

My downward spiral hastened when we moved in with Chris and Cathryn. I think the average South African eats meat 7 times a day, which is impressive considering there are traditionally only 3 meals in a day. Let’s just say there was no need to ask “Where’s the beef?” when it came to dinner. But I did good. I even made a pretty good meatloaf for dinner when it was my turn to cook. Then I went to George’s and his housemate asked me to make sure the stew of chicken livers and other miscellaneous organs didn’t dry out or burn while they played racquetball. Ummm…ok. So I dutifully stirred and added water to the bloody, meaty stew. Fortunately, George realized that one would be over the line for me and didn’t even attempt to serve it to me. Not a problem since there were 3 other forms of meat on the menu. When I left Mwanza, I was running to get back on the old vegetarian wagon. My excursion to the dark side is officially over. Sorry Lynne. I tried. J

Serengeti...Wildlife...Finally!!

Mwanza is less than two hours from the western gate of the Serengeti. Since I had only seen African wildlife from the train and bus on the Ifakara trip and George hadn’t ever been to the Serengeti even though he’s lived in Tanzania for 5 years, Cathryn, George and I anted up $200 each (!!) for a day trip into the famous park. The best time for wildlife viewing is early morning and early evening so to make sure we got the most out of our $600, the driver picked us up at George’s at 5am. We saw a beautiful sunrise over the plain on our way and by 7am were through the park gate. The roof of the land cruiser pops up so we can stand up inside and look around in all directions. We saw wildlife almost immediately- a few wildebeest that didn’t bother migrating to Kenya with the bulk of the herd mingling with zebra and gazelle on the right and a pair of ostrich on the left. We were cruising along slowly taking it all in when a cheetah strolled across the road about 25 yards in front of the truck and into the tall grass on the other side. He sat watching us with just his head peaking out for awhile and then stood up looked back at us and continued on his way. Cheetahs are endangered and not all that easy to see so our day was off to a good start.

A little ways up we say a huge giraffe that was almost completely black- a sign that he was old and looking for a mate. The day went on with barely a dull moment- warthogs trotting off with their tails pointing straight in the air, baboons with babies on their backs, monkeys, mongoose families, a jackal, and more types of herbivorous than I could ever remember. Cathryn was an incredible spotter- there’s this, look at that…she was on fire! Shortly before lunch, we pulled up to the Grumeti River to find hippos floating in a pool on the upstream side of a bend and huge crocs on the other side. After lunch besides the river, we found tree eating twigas (Swahili for giraffe), a lone elephant drinking and spraying water from his trunk out on the plain, and more zebras, antelope, wildebeest, Cape buffalo, storkes, etc. The wildlife was plentiful and because we entered through the less used western gate and it was the middle of the rainy season, the people were not. We passed a few other cars on the road but all our we had all our wildlife viewing experiences to ourselves. From what I’ve heard, this is not the norm in the Serengeti and other popular parks on the Tanzania safari circuit. However, there was one safari gem that was eluding us. We hadn’t seen any lions. I had been on the As the day went on, the only thing that was eluding us was lion. I had been on the lookout for lions all day but all I was managing to spot was dead logs and rocks. The driver headed towards some circling vultures and we found a heard of zebra with a hyena in front with a zebra leg hanging out of his mouth. The vultures, who were just as tall as the hyena when sitting up, were inching their way for a piece of the action.

As we were watching, the driver says, I think there are lions in that tree and he points to this bushy tree a ways off. I looked with my camera lens, George did the same with his even bigger lens and we both saw nothing but a bushy tree. He said he was pretty sure there’s a lioness with 6 cubs in the tree. Cathryn took the binoculars and also saw nothing. We thought he’s out of his mind. To prove his point, he turned the truck and drove towards the bush. Sure enough, out popped a lioness and two subadults (teenagers) and four cubs. We couldn’t believe it. The subadults led the cubs to a nearby bush with the mother kept an eye on us, grunting her dissatisfaction with our arrival. It was awesome to see (even though we probably shouldn’t have been disturbing them). After her family was relocated to another bush, she just sat looking out over the Serengeti in an idyllic safari scene.

On our way out of the park, Cathryn and George assured me that game viewing really doesn’t get much better than the day we had. But it wasn’t over yet, we came across a pack of bull elephants (George could tell they weren’t females somehow). Usually packs are all female and males are solitary but occasionally they form batchelor herds…yet another unique sight. They were tramping along right besides the road. Although we had seen a couple of elephants throughout the day, they had all been loners and at a distance. This pack was basically in a line marching down the side of the road. They were so big and surprisingly graceful for their size. It was a beautiful sight. The perfect end to a great day! It makes it all worth it.

Swahili bootcamp

We're going to Swahili bootcamp in Iringa for a two weeks! I'm not sure if we'll have any internet access while we're there so there may not be new posts for awhile. We hope everyone is well and enjoying summer!

Good Times in Mwanza

I was joined by friends from Dar for a getaway weekend in Mwanza. Here's Cathryn and I at the Hotel Tilipia, Mwanza's poshiest (and I think only) lakeside hotel/restaurant/bar.


Here's George and I on top of the boulders on Mwanza's Capri Point. George used to live with Chris and Cathryn in Dar but he recently moved to Mwanza to work for Goodyear selling gigantic tires for earthmovers to the mining companies near Mwanza. He now lives in an amazing house overlooking the lake. The sunset picture in the last post was taken from his deck.


And here's the group of us having Habachi dinner at the Tiliapia.
I love Mwanza!!

Science in the Bush: Lake Victoria

With my research permit finally in hand, I booked a flight to Mwanza on the southern shore of Lake Victoria to join up with a graduate student I met at the University of Dar es Salaam that’s doing research complimentary to what I’m hoping to do. All the delays meant that I was able to make it out to the lake just in time for her last two days of data collection. Not what she and I had planned but at least enough for me to scope out the site and make a plan for next time. Mwanza is Tanzania’s 2nd largest city and the setting of a documentary film called Darwin’s Nightmare about the social impacts of the overseas exportation of Lake Victoria’s massive and nonnative Nile Perch and how it provides a cover for the illegal smuggling of weapons into Africa. My expectations for Mwanza were based on this film (which I highly recommend to all you Netflixers out there) and to put it plainly, I was a bit scarred to be venturing there on my own. In Darwin’s Nightmare, Mwanza was a helacious place filled with poverty, prostitutes and homeless street children. My fears weren’t assuaged when I asked Baraka, the student I was meeting, if she could book me a room where she was staying. Her response was “I don’t think it would be good for you to stay where I’m staying. It would be safer for you to stay in town.” Ummm…ok. So I booked myself a room at the Christmas Tree Hotel and hoped for the best. I headed to the airport the next day for my first AirTanzania flight. I’m told they usually run about 5 hours late which would have put me into Mwanza at midnight. Not good. Luckily we boarded on time and the only weird thing was that you had to stop and pickout your bags from the pile of checked bags strewn on the runway and put them on a cart to be loaded on the plane yourself. Apparently the baggage tags that clearly say MWZ for Mwanza are just decorations. Baggage retrieval on the other end was even more sketchy. The plane was a full (and surprisingly nice) 737 which must seat about 200 people. Baggage claim in Mwanza was a tiny room with 3 one meter square openings in the concrete wall which dudes shoved everyone’s bags through. It was pretty much mass chaos. After a few minutes in the baggage mosh pit, I decided a better strategy was to wait by the door and make sure no one was taking off with my bag. When the dust settled (literally), I got my bag and braced myself for Mwanza. Before we reached the city I got my first glimpse of Lake Victoria. I could immediately see why the British named it for their queen. Sparkling blue water as far as the eye can see with a lakeshore of rolling green hills covered by huge, round granite boulders stacked awkwardly on top of each other (kind of like Joshua Tree for those that have been). Then we crossed the bridge and entered the town. My first thought was am I still in Tanzania? Mwanza was perfect. Nicely paved roads with curbs and sidewalks! Brightly painted buildings, traffic circles and everyone calm driving following basic traffic laws, and no litter! This place is a well kept secret.

The next morning I headed down to the research station to go out on the lake. We loaded up gear into a long wooden boat with an outboard engine and cruised down Mwanza Gulf to Baraka’s field site near the mouth of the Isanga River. It was breathtaking- miles of virtually untouched hilly shoreline covered in these awesome rock formations. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera because I couldn’t risk getting it wet (which I would have for sure). Baraka is studying how nearshore plants filter and alter the quality of the water entering the lake from the river and the watershed. One of these plants is water hyacinth, which is native to South America and invasive in Lake Victoria. In the late 1990s, this plant, which grows in these huge floating mats, was choking almost all the bays and nearshore areas of the lake causing major problems with on-lake transportation, fishing, water in-takes, etc. It declined through the early 2000s and is now rebounding. My interest is in the affect of these plants on water flow into the lake. We got to the bay into which the river flows to find that a huge, island-sized mat of water hyacinth, papyrus and reeds growing 2 meters tall had floated across and completely blocked the entrance sometime in the last 2 days since Baraka was last there. We cruised to a tiny lakeside village where people probably subsist mostly by fishing and only access to the rest of the world via the lake and hired 3 dudes with machetes. We took them back to the site and they climbed up onto the mat and started hacking away at the plants to make a passage for our boat. Imagine cutting down shrubs with a machete while standing on air mattress that you float on in a swimming pool that’s covered with broken tree branches. When they got a chunk loose, they tied it up and we dragged it away with the boat. It took hours just to cut it down enough so that we could push and pull the boat across the top of the vegetation for 20 feet to the channel of open water on the other side of the mat. It was arduous work and these guys all cut up and soaking wet. We collected the samples, saw a baby crocodile and headed back out through the path to find another island of vegetation was closing up the bay further out. There was only a boat width left for us to pass through and just after we crossed out to the open water we watched this “island” move across and seal off the bay. If we had taken 2 minutes longer, they would have had to hack a path through this island too. Insane. We dropped the guys off at their village and stopped along the way back to research station to buy fresh Nile tilapia from local fisherman who were in some cases out fishing on nothing more than a few tree branches tied together with vines just big enough to sit on and only partially floating in this lake where there are massive Nile crocs. We arrived back at the research station just as the sun was starting to set. It was a great great day!!