A Dazzle Of Zebras

When I left you last, Hillary and I were sitting in our hotel room in Dar es Salaam, waiting for our parents and older sister to arrive so that the fam-jam to end all fam-jams could begin.  It is now three weeks later and, again, we find ourselves sitting in this same hotel, alone once again. The past three weeks have been great, full of excitement and variety.  In my last post, I mentioned that this hotel was a little bit run-down and unpleasant, and I wasn’t lying.  However, that was before I had a chance to properly interact with Abdul, the manager.  While it’s true that the New Bondeni is not the nicest place I’ve ever seen, I am very glad that we ended up here.  Before we headed off towards Arusha for our safari, we spent a few days in Dar es Salaam with the family, and they would not have gone smoothly at all if not for Abdul’s help.  Whether we were planning a dinner, or wanting to visit different areas of the city, Abdul made it all possible.  He insured that we always had a reliable driver at our service, or a suitable restaurant picked out.  He even acted as our travel agent when we needed to book a flight from Arusha to the island of Zanzibar at the end of our safari.  Like I said, the hotel is sketchy and kind of gross, but it’s worth staying here for Abdul’s excellent service.  Unfortunately for the hotel, he will be leaving to pursue further business education in London in under a month.  I don’t know who will be taking over, but I’m guessing that it will be a huge downgrade.  Dar es Salaam is not exactly a welcoming city for white tourists, but Abdul erased most of the problems we would have otherwise faced.

But anyway, on to the fam-jam.  My parents and Maggie arrived as expected late at night.  After briefly getting re-acquainted and swapping stories, we headed off to bed.  My family and I have been on many vacations together; it’s just something we love to do.  Until this point though, they had all been to the obvious, even cliché places that North Americans usually choose to flock to.  We’ve been to Mexico twice, Hawaii once, Disneyland on three separate occasions, and also New York City and San Francisco.  Choosing to all congregate in Tanzania was a bold decision, but one I am glad we made.  While most of the trip was well planned and organized, there is still a sense of teetering near the edge in a place such as this.  Hillary and I are of course used to the various (how shall I put this?) inconveniences that come with travelling in Africa as I’ve been here for seven months now and she’s been with me for the past three.  But being a big family of mzungus in Tanzania is something that no amount of time solo travelling in Africa can really prepare you for.  We were, understandably, on high alert during much of the trip, but it all went surprisingly well.  On our first few days, after using one entire day to let the newcomers sleep off the jetlag (which I was more than happy to help them with), we did some exploring of the city.  We visited the national museum, which had some interesting exhibits and information within its walls, and also experienced a couple of different eateries.  We tested the famous seafood of the Swahili coast and also enjoyed the menu of a surprisingly vegetarian friendly establishment in the heart of downtown Dar, but also experienced a great Ethiopian restaurant one night.  This was my third time having proper Ethiopian food and it was positively sublime.  The staple of Ethiopian cuisine is the spongy, vinegary bread-like substance called injera. We ordered an assortment of mainly lentil and chickpea centered dishes which came served on one gigantic plate of njera. We enjoyed the feast over some South-African wine and Kilimanjaro lagers.

After our brief stint in Dar es Salaam, we headed off towards Arusha, which is the launching pad of the northern Tanzania safari circuit.  Our family had booked a 12-day safari which was to include visits to the Tarangire National park, Ngorongoro conservation area, Oldupai Gorge, and the Serengeti National park. Considering what was involved in the trip, it was actually surprisingly cheap.  When I first heard that we would be doing a 12-day safari, I thought that it was a bit much.  However, it was organized in a way that ensured that nothing ever got boring or redundant.  Our home in Arusha was called Olasiti Lodge, and it was a diamond in the rough.  Tanzania in general, and Arusha in particular, does not exactly scream affluence, and our drive to the lodge through the heart of the city was full of the sort of dirtiness and semi-poverty that one can expect from driving through a typical African city.  Our lodge, hotel, whatever you want to call it, felt like a resort in Hawaii though.  It was home to big rooms with comfortable beds and excellent showers (a decent shower is all I really need in life), an awesome swimming pool, and amazing food (which was to be a consistent theme throughout the trip).  On our first night, we met the other people that we would be travelling with.  There were thirteen of us in total and over the two weeks, we got to know each other quite well. The people that I got to know the best were Tim, a hair stylist from the Castro area of San Francisco, and Mary, born in Zimbabwe, but currently living in New York City. 

We had two nights in Arusha before we departed for the Tarangire area.  On our full day, we visited a place called Shangaa River house which had several purposes.  It was a coffee plantation, and we got an interesting tour of the crops as well as plenty of information about the process of coffee growing/harvesting/trading etc. (it was actually pretty dull to be honest).  However, the reason that we were there was because its main function was as a plant which recycled used glass into a number of different products.  The main reason we were there though was because the company that we were travelling with makes a real effort to contribute to the communities that it is a part of around the world in a positive way. Shangaa has a policy of employing people with disabilities, which is not exactly common in Tanzania.  Most deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound people in Africa are cast aside as useless, and as a result they end up leading even sadder existences than people do in Canada. This place makes a positive effort to give these people a source of employment and sense of worth, and it was nice to be able to see that.  We learned some sign-language and got a tour of the plant and its various projects.  After that, we returned to Olasiti lodge and began to prepare for our excursion into the national parks of Tanzania. 

Our first stop was the Tarangire National Park.  As it was our first animal-viewing of the trip, we were all very excited.  We spent two nights near the park entrance, and so had one afternoon and one full day to enjoy the park.  On our first afternoon in the park, the five of us got split up into two different cars.  We thought this would be ok and we didn’t want to seem picky or anti-social.  Hillary and my dad were in one car with a few other people, while Maggie, my mum, and I were in another vehicle.  The park is well known for its high concentration of elephants, and not so much cats such as lions or leopards, and it did not disappoint.  I didn’t think that it was possible to get sick of seeing such a magnificent animal, but by the end we didn’t even look twice when a group of twenty crossed the dirt road right in front of us. We saw them in basically any setting you could possibly imagine.  We saw them drinking from a stream, we saw two young males play-fighting, we saw scores of them tearing up and eating tonnes of grass, and we were even treated to front-row seats of some rather immense elephant defecation.  While the vast majority of our time in Tarangire was spent viewing animals, we did see some other animals such as impala (more like pimpala, those guys get mad bitches), rock hyraxes, and a zebra or two.  After our first afternoon drive, Hillary and dad seemed a little annoyed, and I wasn’t really sure why seeing as we had just spent the past few hours watching elephants.  Well, the reason they were so pissed off is that they had landed in the car of birders, ie: people who get off on staring at every bird they can find and at the end of the trip, brag to their friends about how many species they’d seen.  Now, I’ve got nothing against birding (it’s not for me, but nothing against them), but when you’d rather stare at the thirtieth spotted thick-knee of the day than chase down a group of elephants (which at that point, we hadn’t seen yet) then, I’m sorry, you’ve got your priorities screwed up.  For the rest of the trip after that first day, we made sure that we as a family were all in one car so that we could focus on our preferences.  We weren’t the only casualties of the birding though, someone else eventually got so frustrated to the point of tears sometime into our stint in the Serengeti.  It became somewhat of a joke amongst the non-birders of the group, that whenever someone pointed out an interesting looking bird, we would threaten to kick them out of our car and shove them with the birders.

Before we left for the Serengeti, we had a half-day visit to a local Masaai village.  For those who don’t know, the Masaai are one of the tribal peoples of eastern Africa, occupying much of North Tanzania and South Kenya.  They are one of hundreds of tribes remaining in the area, but they are the most famous of the bunch thanks to their continued commitment to their traditions and cultures (for the most part).  They are cow-herders, and a drive around Masaai land will expose you to a group of young Masaai boys herding groups of sometimes several hundred cows at least twice an hour. Other things they are well known for are the jumping skills of the males (the higher you jump, the more of a catch you are basically, I’m totally serious here), and drinking cow blood fresh from the jugular of a cow, which they extract without killing it (I wasn’t too pumped on this part).  Our trip to their village was nice, but they were very clearly putting on a show for us and it felt a bit awkward.  Here we were, a big group of tacky mzungus with ugly safari hats and digital cameras, ogling at them and taking pictures of their everyday activities as if it was for our own amusement.  But enough negativity, it is what it is.  Visiting a Masaai tribe is something that is included in basically every safari in that area.  They get paid well for it, which I’m sure helps erase some of the embarrassment of us ogling at them.  The nicest part of the visit for me was watching the kids play with the ball that we had brought them.  My parents brought a bag of six or so deflated soccer balls to give to random groups of kids on our trip, and it was really nice to see how excited they would get at the chance to stop playing with pieces of garbage and instead use an actual ball. Other activities included watching them make a fire from two sticks and a bit of cow shit (which was done impressively quick), as well as my least favourite part: watching them shoot an arrow through the jugular of a living cow and collect the blood in a container for us to drink.  My family and I opted out of this part, and the Masaai couldn’t quite understand why we were so adamant on not watching this take place.  We weren’t going to make a fuss about it, it’s a tradition as old as the tribe itself and us going all vegetarian on them wasn’t going to do anything, so we instead politely refused and played soccer with the kids while we waited.  Next up, after some traditional dancing and jumping (I’m told I can jump quite high, for a white guy, no big deal) the women of our group got to “help” with the building of a traditional Masaai hut.  In their tribe, the women do literally all the work, while the men are only responsible for hunting and getting sexy with their multiple wives. The “help” consisted of each woman going one by one on top of a hut and placing some straw, which was basically a photo-op and nothing more, followed by making them all shove their hands in piles of fresh cow shit to plaster a section wall, which was awesome to watch and not have to experience.  The men’s activity was a brief lesson on spear-throwing, which was then followed by target practice.  We all failed miserably.  At the end of the visit, we all gathered in one of their huts and were told about their lives including how the huts functioned and how the men were guaranteed sex whenever they wanted, whether one of their several wives was up for it or not.  Oh also, after giving birth, the woman must stay in the huts for three straight months.  I can’t remember what the logic was behind this, but it sucks.  It was hot as hell in there; I bet they have serious issues with postpartum depression.  As predicted, the day ended with a small market which was quickly thrown together for us.  At first I rolled my eyes, but they were very polite and didn’t even try to rip us off that badly so it was ok.  After buying some tat, we bid our farewells and headed back to our lodge. On the way we stopped to observe some carving by the Makonde people from Southern Tanzania, and it was quite incredible to watch.  They were carving piles of wood into a variety of finished products from small six-inch sculptures to five-foot tall, intricate works of art. This was followed by, of course, more opportunities for shopping.  These people did try to rip us off badly, so I went and waited by the cars.

Before we left towards the Serengeti, we visited a primary school which was part of the community outreach that was part of our program fees.  We donated textbooks and other materials and visited a grade 6 class where they sang some songs for us and we were told how the program had been helping the school get on its feet.  It was nice to know that some of the money we were spending was going towards a noble cause.  It’s a bit awkward travelling around such a comparatively poor country and seeing all the poverty and lack of access to things that we take for granted back home, so it was nice to have a brief stop at a school where some good things were taking place. One of the books that we donated was on the topic of sex-education, which I was pleasantly surprised to learn was being taught properly at this school.  Instead of telling everyone that CONDOMS ARE BAD YOU’RE ALL DIRTY SINNERS, this school system apparently wants to see HIV/Aids numbers decrease, which is nice.  I walked past one kid reading a page on condoms and while it was in Kiswahili, it was fairly obvious what the content was, and he embarrassingly hid the page from me while he tried in vain not to laugh.  Some things are not bound by international borders, like potty humour.  Penis, heh heh.

 The next day, we set off for one night at Tloma lodge before making the long drive through the Ngorongoro conservation area to the Serengeti National Park. To get there, we drove straight into the heart of a very, I don’t know a delicate way to put this, “African” village.  It was very basic and the people of the area didn’t seem to have much, but they seemed alright with that.  Imagine my surprise then, when we drove through the gates and arrived in what is easily the nicest place I have ever stayed in. They had a glorious swimming pool, unbelievably comfortable rooms, and a gigantic property which was complete with its own coffee plantation and vegetable farm (the coffee there was amazing).  We were greeted with a glass of cold ice-tea and a wet hand-towel; it was not something that I am used to at all.  The food was also out of this world.  Our one dinner there was a stir-fry bar where we got to choose our own vegetables (and meat if you’re the omnivorous type) which was then fried in front of us to our specifications.  And the salad, or dear god the salad.  Those who know me well know that I could drink balsamic vinegar by the bottle, and their salad bar was complete with ample supplies of said nectar of the gods, not to mention the freshest tomatoes and assorted vegetables imaginable, which was made twenty times better by the knowledge that it was all grown within the resort’s walls. It was a little upsetting that we only had one night to enjoy this oasis, but we would have two more on the way back.

We left the next day towards the Serengeti, which was to be the meat of our trip.  As we left Tloma Lodge, we noticed a group of schoolchildren playing with a soccer ball fashioned from plastic bags and twine, so we gave them one of the balls we had brought to donate.  They were absolutely ecstatic.  Combine that with the fact that I was wearing my Barcelona jersey and they were on cloud nine.  They kept calling me Messi (I can’t decide if it was because of my boyish good looks or my amazing soccer skills) but I was ok with it. To get to the Serengeti, we had a rather long drive through the Ngorongoro conservation area.  The Ngorongoro crater, technically a caldera (NERDDDDDDD!!!!), is a massive caldera at the centre of a rather sizable hill (formerly the tallest mountain in Africa) which has a diameter of 19 square kilometres.  It was, of course, at one time an active volcano, but has since become a haven for a plethora of different animals thanks to the fresh water lake in the centre and the fertile volcanic soil which grows some of the most nutritious grass in the world. Its characteristics are such that animals which are usually migratory live in the crater year round and therefore has an extremely high predator to prey ratio. It is also one of the only places in Africa where you are virtually guaranteed of seeing a rhinoceros which, due to poaching, is the hardest animal to find on a safari. Now seems like a good time for this rant, so here goes.  Fuck poachers.  Fuck poachers in their god damned whore mouths. More to the point: fuck the hundreds of thousands of people around the world (mainly in Asia actually, sorry but it’s true) who cause the demand for exotic animal parts to grow.  I’m sure we all know of the horrors of the removal of fins from living sharks which are then left to suffer a slow, painful death so rich Chinese fucks can enjoy a $1000 bowl of soup, but this whole rhino horn bullshit is fucking ridiculous.  In China, people actually believe that powdered rhino horn can cure cancer. So, even though that is a complete crock of shit, the international demand for rhino horn forces the price for one up to $250,000.  What this means is that even though, if caught, poachers are shot and killed on sight, these people are still willing to put their lives on the line to obtain a rhino horn for a quarter-million dollar paycheck. The pygmy rhinoceros was poached to extinction, the last one was killed in 2009, and the white rhino is not far behind. Sometimes the poachers will be straightforward about the ordeal and kill the animal before removing its horn, but some are in such a rush that they instead tranquilize it from a distance, and then slice the horn from its face without killing it.  When the animal comes to, it suffers a pain that I think none of us could even begin to wrap our heads around. And it’s all so that stupid motherfuckers in China can feel like big men for ordering an overpriced dish sprinkled with powdered rhinoceros horn.  It makes me want to rage-puke. Anyway, the crater is relatively safe from poachers, so there is a population of something around 20-30 rhinos living in the crater.  We were to be doing a full day drive on our last day and so on this occasion we just stopped at a viewpoint to take pictures, and it was beautiful. 

Before arriving at our next stop, the world famous Olduvai Gorge, we had a lengthy drive through the conservation area which consisted of seeing more giraffes in one day than I thought possible. They really are incredible creatures, and seeing hundreds of them at one time made them even more so in my eyes. Just like how I said I didn’t think it was possible to grow tired of viewing elephants, which I was proven wrong on, I didn’t predict that by the end of the day we would be speeding past a group of giraffes without a second glance. We had a boxed lunch near the Oldupai Gorge (that’s not a typo, that’s actually the correct name for it).  The German who discovered the gorge as an archaeological dig sight in the early 1900s fucked up its correct name when he told the Western world about it, and so it is now mistakenly referred to as the “Olduvai Gorge,” when it was actually named for the plant, oldupai, that the Masaai people of the area use for medicine, among other things. We spent our time their looking at the natural history museum followed by a trip down to one of the former dig sites.  Our guide during this part of the day had a Hitler moustache.  I think he’s the first person I’ve ever seen sporting that, and I can’t say he’s doing a great job reclaiming it. The information was interesting enough, but it was really hot out and I wasn’t in the mood to pretend like I cared about fossilized humans. I know it’s an insanely important area for understanding our natural history and evolution, and it’s cool to be able to say I’ve been there, but I just wasn’t feeling it on that day.

We spent the next four days at a tented camp in the heart of the Serengeti and, besides the bugs, tsetse flies mainly, it was sublime. Our drives consisted of mainly looking for lions, and we were very successful in that regard, but we also stumbled into seeing pretty much everything else one could possible hope to see.  We saw tonnes of groups of zebras (called “a dazzle” who knew?), hundreds of giraffes (a “tower” if stationary, and a “journey” if mobile), lots of wildebeest, fat ugly warthogs (“warties” as we called them), some hyenas, buffalos, marabou storks (absolutely massive birds), and some hippos (including a dead one) which I’ve learned are the most disgusting animals alive.  We visited a pool where a big group of them hang out, and all they do if float there and shit, and then splash the shit all over each other.  It absolutely reeked there and the water was a thick, dark brown.  Probably the highlight when it comes to the animal viewing was that we saw a total of four leopards (most groups are lucky to see one) who like to hang out and sleep in trees.  Even at night we were not free from the wildlife.  Our tented camp was not fenced or anything, it was right in the middle of it all.  During the night, we often heard lions, buffalos, and other animals looking for food or water. By the end of our four days in this marvellous, world-famous national park, the only thing that we hadn’t seen were cheetahs and rhinos, the two most elusive creatures of the Tanzania safari circuit.

As luck would have it though, we still had another day with which to check the final two boxes.  We had a full day to experience the Ngorongoro crater on our way back to Arusha from the Serengeti, and it went perfectly.  After watching some zebras and wildebeest, some Kiswahili eventually crackled through our guide’s radio, and he shot off like a rocket.  They had a policy of not telling us what was said in order to not get our hopes up, but I knew he had been told that there were rhinos spotted. Sure enough, we eventually came to a gathering of safari trucks, all the occupants pointing their cameras at a crash of rhinos (my personal favourite term for a group of animals).  Rhinos are solitary animals and we were apparently incredibly lucky to see more than one of them.  We had been very lucky throughout the whole trip.  We had seen four leopards, tonnes of lions, and even found the elusive rhino. Furthermore, we were flirting with the start of the rain season pretty closely, and any rains would have derailed our animal-viewing plans, as it pours heavily in Tanzania when it does come.  Before too long, much to everyone’s surprise, another pair approached from off in the distance.  Most people who go on a safari are counted as incredibly lucky to see only one rhino, and we saw four! After watching these incredible animals from a distance for quite some time, we eventually went on our way, only needing to see a cheetah to complete the experience. As our good luck would have it, we were treated to a cheetah sighting immediately afterwards.  I don’t know whose eagle eyes spotted it, it took me two minutes to find it when we were parked right beside the patch of tall grass it was laying in, but it was a great spot.  Cheetahs are my personal favourite animal; I was obsessed with them when I was younger.  So, even though I saw plenty of them on my safari in the Masaai Mara over six months ago, it was the perfect ending to our safari.  Then, as if they had been waiting for us to complete our experience, after lunch it started to absolutely poor down buckets of rain, which was a sight in and of itself.  All in all, it was a positively perfect experience.  Mere moments after we had checked off our last box on our list of animals to see, we were greeted with the torrential rains that, had they come in any of the previous ten or so days, would have completely ruined our experience.  It was the perfect end to a safari that I don’t think could have possibly gone any better.

Our final day was spent in a local village or the Iraqw people (which is pronounced “Irack*cksdgl;hkag*, the sound of someone throwing up, our guide joked to us) who migrated here from the Ethiopia area hundreds of years ago in search of more fertile soil.  It was another interesting cultural experience, and we got to see how they made their livelihoods by turning clay and dirt into bricks. We even got to get our hands dirty ourselves. We were treated to a local dish of beans and corn for a mid-morning snack, and were then given a performance by the leader and his family, in which he played a zeze, a traditional guitar like instrument with two strings and a hollow, spherical body, while son played a hand drum and his daughters sang and danced.  It was a nice way to end our safari.  We finished it all off in Arusha the next day.

One of the things that made the safari so enjoyable, for me the thing that made it exceed all the expectations I had, was the interaction that we had with the three guides.  They were Daniel, Zablon, and Emmanuel, and they were all very nice and knowledgeable guys.  One day when we were riding with Emmanuel, I had the front seat and engaged in a lengthy conversation with him.  We started off talking football (he’s an Arsenal fan, could be worse I guess, at least he doesn’t support Chelsea like everyone else in Africa) put when he found out that I had been in Africa for seven months including four in East Africa, it evolved into a very interesting conversation about the politics and issues of the region.  But, the absolute highlight of the whole trip for me was the night in the Serengeti when Daniel, the trip-leader, spoke to us about the problem of HIV/Aids in his country. He started the conversation by talking about the pills which can keep people that are infected with the virus alive, and how they have been recently (relatively) introduced in his country.  He said, and I quote “I really hate those pills” and went on to explain that he feels that it is making the spread of the disease worse and these people take no personal responsibility and go on to knowingly infect other people.  From his perspective, I could understand how this was a somewhat reasonable opinion.  Tim then spoke up.  Tim lives in San Francisco, specifically the Castro area, and has since 1996.  He has seen HIV/Aids destroy the lives of many of his friends and is very knowledgeable about the actual logistics of the disease and what proper education and action can do to prevent its spread. Tim asked Daniel to view the issue from a different angle, and ask if he would still feel the same way about these pills if it was one of his children that was infected, through no fault of their own but rather through, say, transmission at birth.  He preached that the real issue at stake was one of education and awareness, and that simply condemning infected people to death was the wrong attitude to have.  Tim was close to tears during his speech, and it was a very emotional interaction.  The conversation slowly started to involve more people as some of us communicated to the Tanzanians (the guides and staff at our camp) that this was an issue with no simple, easy solution.  By the end of the discussion, which delayed our dinner by half an hour, Daniel had legitimately changed his opinion and was seeing things from a different perspective. It was an absolutely fascinating meeting of different cultures and attitudes and I feel like I witnessed some real change there that night. It was one of the most interesting and constructive discussions I have ever been involved in, and its effect was so personal and, I don’t know, real.  HIV/Aids is a huge problem in Tanzania, and what happened that night was an important discussion on how this country could start to positively effect change, hard to do with so much bullshit religious influence.  While we witnessed some truly amazing natural phenomena and wildlife over the course of the 12-day trip, that discussion was my clear-cut highlight.  It was wonderful.

So, that’s it for now.  I hope you enjoyed reading about my second safari in Africa one small fraction as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.  Hillary and I will board a 30+ hour bus tomorrow morning (grosssssss) at 6:00AM from Dar es Salaam to Kigali and I am preparing myself for possibly the least pleasant experience of my life. On top of the fact that we have to ride in a possibly sketchy, possibly disgusting bus through the length of Tanzania, we have to do a border crossing into Rwanda, which requires applying for a visa ahead of time, and can take three days to process.  I applied for our visas two days yesterday, so there should be no problem, but with no internet connection before we arrive to check the status of our applications, I will be stressed until our entry is allowed.  I will write and submit my next post hopefully within the next few days, and it will detail the end of our fam-jam, which took place on the island of Zanzibar, and our last few days in Dar es Salaam.  Until then, keep it classy.