Monday, June 16, 2008

Tanzania 2- Moshi and Lushoto


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After our safari we headed to the nearby small town of Moshi. It is the nearest town for trips to Mount Kilimanjaro. We weren't actually interested in climbing it, but thought it would be nice to spend a day in Moshi just to at least see it. It was totally clouded over when we arrived, but that's not why we ended up staying for almost two weeks...

On the first morning we hit the local mzungu (foreigner) coffee shop and somehow (Tracy's so friendly!) got talking to this American guy who lives here. We took the opportunity to ask him all about Moshi and mentioned that we would be interested in volunteering somewhere just for a week or two. He happened to know of a lady that had just opened up a daycare in her garden who would probably love our help. So we set off after coffee to meet Grace and the kids. Apparently there had been a spate of child kidnappings (their organs used in witchcraft ceremonies!) and parents were worried about leaving their kids in the streets when they went off to work. Hence the need for daycare. Grace and the kids, who sang us a Swahili song, were very welcoming and we planned to see them again on monday.

The daycare was closed over the weekend so we spent most of that time uploading the safari pics and doing the blog. It really took that long. Just getting into my hotmail account took fifteen and a half minutes! Internet connection is mind-numbingly slow here. Skype is impossible to use because of the connection speed. In South America, even in the remotest of places in the jungle, they had decent internet access. I feel bad about the effect of this on Africa's economic potential.

Anyhow, we spent the next week helping out at Grace's daydare center. I wish I knew more Swahili because one little girl, Doreenie, liked to sit on my knee and poke my face and examine my skin and hair very carefully and contentedly chatter away. I think at one point (she had her fingers up her nose in demonstration) she was trying to articulate "my, what big nostrils you have", but unfortunately her delightful chatter was completely lost on me.

There were a lot of young 20 year olds in Moshi volunteering who were like, totally funny to listen to, yeah? We met a couple of US girls at Grace's, they were more than happy for Tracy and I to overlap during the afternoon, showed up with sweets for the kids and looked relieved when their shift was over. In contrast, we met the 2 girls (one Scottish, one Irish) who took things way more seriously and turned up each day with a THEME they wanted to get across to the 3-5 year olds! I don't think either of them had ever watched Sesame Street.... the theme for the first day was "Geography". Not one country, nor a letter or number, but the entire world. I think they gave up when the kids started to kick the blow up globes at each other. I was deadly curious to see what the next day's topic would be...Supply-side Economics perhaps? Anyway, it really was fun interacting with the kids and other helpers.

I am a bit embarrassed, but I actually teared up one day. Grace doesn't have much money, but she feeds the children who won't get fed at home. We were there one lunch time and we declined the food, (fried rice and beans) cos we had eaten a late breakfast and we wanted it to go to the children. However, we also felt that we might have upset Lillian, the preacher's wife who cooked the meal...so we went to Grace, who speaks English, and explained that she needn't feed us, and we hope we didn't offend Lillian. She said that she didn't want us to worry, "God will provide". Something about the way she said it was so sincere, not just a phrase, that it pushed my tear buttons and I had to come up with a lot of distracting displacement behaviour, like loud coughing and random pointing to throw her off the scent of fresh saline.

Talking of eyeballs, we had run out of contact lens solution so on Saturday we made it our goal to find some. (contact lens solution, not eyeballs) We asked at several pharmacies but the answer was no. We finally got a lead however... 'the Christian Hospital has an eye department and they probably have it'. So we took a taxi in the rain and after 10 minutes arrived at the hospital grounds. Conveniently, there was a sign for the eye pavillion just where the taxi stopped. We followed the sign and entered the 70's two-storey concrete building. The door opened into a dark empty hallway that was so creepy we both instinctively stopped in our tracks and shuffled backwards. But then we heard footsteps descending the stairwell nearby. We asked the man where the eye pavillion was. He indicated we follow him, he walked for a few minutes then pointed. We then found ourselves conveniently walking through what we feared was the infectious diseases ward towards the eye department. We passed another two dark wards, one with moaning people lying in cots. Naturally, the eye department store was closed. However, after passing through the hospital our day's priority to source lens solution felt a little frivolous and we happily hailed a taxi into town, glad that we had our health. Then we went shoe shopping. Kidding.


We said goodbye to Grace and the kids, (the kids and staff waved and waved until we were all just little dots in the distance! cute!) and then headed to Lushoto to do a little hiking in the Usambara mountains. Lushoto was picturesque but muddy. We went into the little tourist information place to find out about hikes and met a couple of germans who had just returned from a 4 day hike. They had mud up to their knees and were not overly enthusiastic about their experience. Tracy admitted in our hotel room that she's just not a bad weather hiker, that maybe we should just move on to somewhere with sun. We decided to sleep on it. Next morning it was only lightly drizzling and I (having grown up in fine drizzle) persuaded Tracy to do just a day hike. We hired a guide (though we'd have prefered hiking on our own the guidebook encourages one to hire a guide so that money is going in to the community) and set off to see the Irente viewpoint. It was magnificent and all along the way we practiced our Swahili greetings with the people we passed. Turned out to be a glorious day, but as the rain started again in the evening we decided over dinner we needed a little beach action....so the very next day we took the very early morning bus towards Zanzibar.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Tanzania Safari


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We flew from Cape Town to Dar (that’s Dar es Salaam for you out-of-towners) in Tanzania. We were eager to do a safari right away so the very next morning we took a taxi from our pad at the YMCA to the bus station for the 7am bus to Arusha. The 8 hour bus journey was one of the best I’ve experienced. Thanks to a little early finagling on Tracy’s part I had leg room, a seatbelt and an unobstructed view of the road. We made only one stop for lunch where we sampled ugali (like mashed potato in texture and colour, but made from maize) and banana beef stew, a local favorite (had to try it), all very tasty and healthy.

The countryside was lush, green and splashed with vibrant colours from village signs, fruit markets, and people’s clothing. Women balanced huge loads on their heads and guys on bicycles teetered with their loads of wood dangerously near our rapidly moving bus. We arrived in Arusha only 45 minutes late (the bus drivers were stopped and questioned by the police, not sure why) and found a hotel for the evening just before sunset.

We had been warned about the touts selling tours in Arusha and woah, it’s as bad as the guide books say. The next day we had a coterie of 6-7 men follow us everywhere as we walked about town, all urging us to visit certain tour operators. Two young English girls whom we met on the bus the day before, showing little interest in developing a long term friendship at the time, suddenly ran across the life-threateningly busy road, fleeing from their own entourage of touts to say hello. We joined forces and soon realized that all the companies did pretty much the same tour. In the end we chose a company, Shidolya Tours that didn’t lie to us about where the migration was (The migration of wildebeest and zebra were already in Kenya). This company also guaranteed there would be no more than 5 tourists in the jeep. As is turned out we were fortunate in having the jeep to ourselves for the majority of the game drives.

The safari was truly incredible. We half expected David Attenborough (or Marlin Perkins for you Americans) to jump out behind the high grass. The first day of the safari we drove to Lake Manyara. We thought we would have to actually earn a viewing, you know, drive for hours attempting authentic mating calls while spraying ourselves with baby gazelle pheromones. But there was no need. Zebras and impalas and wildebeest in the same frame! We’d go from spotted hyena to warthog to lilac-breasted roller in a matter of minutes. We camped the first night at a town that translates from Swahili as Mosquito Creek. The following day (one bottle of mosquito repellent later), we headed to the Serengeti where we would camp for the next two nights. One night we were woken up by loud braying noises, (sounded like a cross between a donkey and Freddie Mercury). We listened as the creatures hurriedly passed through our camp until the sounds were distant. Then Tracy decided to go outside for a pee. I pointed out that the zebras sounded fair distressed to me, which could mean only one thing…..predators of the feline kind. Tracy waited it out.

We had been VERY lucky in the Serengeti to see a leopard and cub only a few feet away from our jeep on a very early morning game drive. We were able to follow them for 20 minutes before they went off along a river. Leopards are apparently one of the most difficult to see since they don’t like people. Even our driver was excited and took every opportunity to show other drivers a picture we took of the pair. Other highlights were watching a group of female lions surround a herd of nervous zebra. While we and the other jeeps were all focused on the distant lions and zebras, Tracy pointed out a lion who had quietly positioned herself just 4 feet away from us. It was really fun to watch the expression of the guys face change in the jeep in front of us (with his lens that was long enough to spot dust on the moon) when Tracy “psssst”-ed him and pointed to the lion next to our jeep.

Our last day took us to the Ngorongoro Crater Nature Reserve, unique in that it is basically a big bowl that contains a wide variety of animals. That night my sleep was disturbed once again. This time by Tracy anxiously shouting, “Is that you???!”. “Is WHAT me?”, I even more anxiously responded, while simultaneously feeling and hearing something violently banging the tent wall next to my head. After I very bravely and instinctively hit back at the object beyond the tent wall, the ‘thing’ moved on. A few minutes later, still hearing an enormous amount of crunching going on, Tracy bravely popped her head out the tent to find that it was just our old pals, the zebras, grazing near us.

Anyhow, we saw lions, leopards, elephants, buffalos, a rhino, cheetahs, all sorts of antelopes, wildebeest, heartbeast, dik diks, rock hyrax, giraffes, baboons, warthogs, monkeys, hyenas, hippos, crocs, all sort of pretty birds and blah, blah. We would recommend this trip to everyone. Unless of course you have fur allergies.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

South Africa


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AAAfffrica! Tracy was beside herself with excitement. Finally she gets to set foot on African soil, land of our ancestors. I was totally cucumber-like, having already been to Egypt many years ago and Morocco last October (nonchanlant sniff) and I did not hesitate to point this out. Many times. Tracy said my trips didn't count, that wasn't the real Africa. Whatever. So we landed in Cape Town, South Africa and even though I knew it was approaching their winter, I still expected to be greeted by a blast of hot air once we left the plane. Wrong. It was a little chilly. Then we are picked up by a taxi who takes us to our hostel, Salty Crax, (I know, I know, Tracy chose it) in Table View, a suburb of Cape Town next to the beach.

Initial impressions were how like the States it looked, and how brilliant it was to have so many British foodstuffs in the stores. Curly Wurlies, Marmite, Licorice Allsorts, real wholemeal bread and muesli without added sugar, greek yoghurt, a huge variety of real fruit juices. We were finally inspired to cook (not necessarliy using the ingredients listed above). We were also blown away by the friendliness of the South Africans we met. Within 48 hours we had 2 rounds of drinks bought for us (one from a guy in a Mexican restaurant and the other by the barman in a different establishment). We had a clothing store clerk give us free coffee coupons when he saw Tracy drinking her latte. And, in the aforementioned bar, we met Nola and her friend Eugene, who after talking to us for five minutes, invited us for breakfast the next morning. They picked us up at Salty Crax, we had a big Vera's (Ballard, WA.... sigh!) style breakfast and then they took us for a tour round the coast. We stopped at a Cuban bar for some refreshments and had a really good laugh.

Apart from being overwhelmingly friendly, another thing we noticed about the South Africans we met was their directness. On our first day at Salty Crax (sorry, had to mention the name just once more) the maid, after saying hello, immediately inquired: Do you have children? Why not? Which bed are you sleeping in? This big one or the bunk beds?

Then the conversation with the super-friendly waitress at the Mexican restaurant went something like this:

Waitress: Where are you from?
Tracy: The States…Seattle, Washington.
Waitress: So you must speak Spanish, yeah?
Tracy: huh?
Waitress: Yes, I’ve heard Seattle is a very run down place and poor.
Tracy: Interesting. You do realize Seattle is on the border with Canada? And that companies like Microsoft, Boeing and Starbucks are based there?
Waitress: hmmm, well, that's what I heard.

After a few days at ......Salty Crax, we moved into the center of Cape Town, to the Cat and Moose backpacker's on Long Street. We did a wine tour of 4 different wineries, where we sampled over forty different wines, champagnes and ports. At first we actually drank the wine, but by the second winery we realized we needed to spit out if we wanted to maintain decorum. We went out to dinner later that day with some of our fellow wine tasters to a game restaurant where I had the shark and Tracy had the warthog. We also took a tour to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. The interesting part of the trip is that at one point we were shown around by a former prisoner. I would like to have asked him so many questions, but we were in a huge tourist cluster and it was just easier to shuffle along with the group. One day we climbed up Table mountain, and it was so nice to do some exercise. We were chuffed to realize we climbed up in less than half the time it's supposed to take. Wow, we are so great... and the views were really nice from the top. On Saturday night we met Nola and Eugene again in Long Street and we did a tour of a few bars/clubs. Cape Town is totally 'tucked in'. (One of our 'in jokes'). We had a tucking good time.


Hiring a car for two days, we drove out to the Cape Point Nature Reserve. Beautiful scenic coastal roads. We stopped in Simons town, a place my dad visited when he was in the Navy and had some delicious fish and chips and a beer in his honour. We also stopped in at the african penguin colony near Boulder's beach. The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point were great to see, partly because I remember learning about it in primary school and because it's a beautiful spot. We took some pics for Renee and Sean who were getting married that day. So hope they felt the vibes! Though we were enjoying Cape Town, we had to decide where to go next. We finally decided to go first to the place we most wanted to go....the Serengeti, Tanzania for some animal action......keep tuned.