Hello hello!
So, I now have computer access for one afternoon, completely unexpected, as we make our way from the bush -- Part Two -- back to the Coast. We have one night in Arusha with all the general culture kids -- it's Devon's birthday! -- for a brief reunion, a barbeque, and this completely unexpected and brief access to the internet world.
For the past ten days, I've been solely with the Bio kids as we ventured back to Oldonya Sambu -- this time in full green flush; it's been raining for the past week -- for 9 dyas to commence our Independent Study projects and bask in all day biology lessons, including some more formal ones at night, followed by late night on rocks watching stars and campfire lessons from our ever-ethusiastic, and amazing professor, Ken.
Originally, Anton and I wanted, desperately so, to do our project on baboons. We knew there was a troop nearby (we had seen them last time), and the idea of following them around for a full day for nine days straight sounded immensely appealing. They have some of the most subtle societies of the animal world, with lifelong friendships formed and a fascinating hierarchy that keeps the whole thing together. Plus, their eerie similiarity to our own expressions and mannerisms makes them sounds like a riot.
On the first morning of our project, we rose at 5:30 and drove off to the side of the mountain with Killerai (our guide) and Ole-Maria, a Maasai guide at camp who has the best smile ever, hoping to catch sight of them as they made their morning voyage down from the rocks where they sleep at night down to the savannah for a day of gorging on the abundant food of the rainy season.
We heard them before we saw them, and you can be sure that they saw us before we even caught the slighest hint of them. The barks of the lookouts on the rocks rolled down to us from the tips. Anton and I exchanged "holy-shit-I'm-excited" glances, and started our voyage up the hill, Ole-Maria with a rifle over his shoulder, and Anton and I peering ahead with the verve usually associated only with third graders at snack time.
Not two minutes into the stalking, Ole-Maria pointed ahead through the trees at the bottom of the slope, and with a shushed voice said "Tembo. Ile."
So... Tembo in Swahili is....
ELEPHANT!
(And "Ile" is the demostrative "there")
Unbelievable. We're walking 50 meters from a family of elephants.
Elephants have these uniquely padded feet so that, deespite their massive gait and size, they made almost no sound as they pad through the forest, adding even more to the surreality of seeing one of the most massive mammals on earth, who walks right in front of you without even making a sound. We treaded around them quietly, and made our gradual way up the scree.
About halfway up we caught sight of Papio anubis, the Olive Baboon, and the chase began. We ran up the 30 degree slope with as much energy as we could muster, and with as much stealth as that running could allow, following the family around the curvature of the mountain. There must have been fifty baboons in that one troop. And they all we looking at us.
Aided by an evolutionary histroy that requires agility and manueverability on steep ground, the baboons left us in a wake of freshly dropped dung. (If you corner a family, or end up coming upon their roosting site inadvertently, they are know to throw liquid feces your way, without warning.) And given the departure from our own evolutionary history towards a rather sedentary life, we lost them within the first few minutes.
After summitting the mountain and taking a well deserved break (while the baboon got further and further away), a cloud rolled in overtop of us, and we were left walking through a dense mist that made us feel like we were an island in the sky. Beautiful moment.
We descened the other side, having long lost all traces of our primate friends, and had Killerai pick us up, slightly defeated, but elated at the adventure we had just gone on.
All this is to say that we didn't actually follow baboons around for the week, and gave the idea up after our one taste of the challenges of actually stalking something that is on par with your own intelligence. A humbling moment, but one that is beautiful in its own right.
Insterad, we followed Zazu around. You know, the Hornbill from the Lion King. There are three different types of hornbill in the area -- Red-Billed, Von Der Deckens, and African Grey -- and we decided to follow this guys around -- in the hey-day of their mating season (love was indeed in the air) -- measuring the strength of their pair-bonds: how often we find them together, and how often we find them apart, and what sort of crazy antics we find in the inbetween space.
It proved to be challenging to no end -- science in the field reveals the staggering mystery of everything around you, and how you really never quite know what's actually happening in the ecological tapestry around you -- but some of the most memorable time in the bush of the whole trip. Walking around eveyday with a Maasai guide (I swear, he spotted about 90% of the hornbills for us; all of us Americans proved to be, despite our actually pretty-good field skills, horribly deficient at spotting what we needed to in a timely manner), watching the overtly sexual behaviors of our study subjects (they have this courtship dance that involves pelvic thrusts), and soaking in some of the most stunning landscape I have ever walked through.
In the past week, we've been having almost daily thunderstorms and rain bouts -- the long awaited rainy season has finally arrived, and the world around us is rejoicing. Green everywhere, all in the course of three days. Animals starting hundreds of mile long migrations. Fat frogs gorging on the explosion of termites in the air (the winged fellows launch out from their mound as soon as the rain starts and try to start new colonies by breeding mid-air and falling to the ground wherever they may). Suessical flowers sprouting from the most unexpected of places. And the sounds of thousands of birds filling the air with their courtship appeals to the rest of their species, a time of the year when "kupanda"ing (kupanda is the swahili word for "to mount") seems to be happening everywhere. All said, pretty cool time to be out here.
We probably logged a solid 15 hours worth of actual observation time of hornbills (at least a good 40 hours of hiking time) over the course of our study, and we saw some crazy things. Hornbills, after they have copulated with their wooed female (bird sex is basically two birds rubbing butts together -- only about three species of the avian class have real penises), then have the female retreat into the nest they have arranged for them -- which is a hollowed out cavity in a tree, lined with mus that they have collected around the rim -- and then essentially lock them into there for the entire time the egg is incubated. They do this by filling in the rest of the opening with mud, leaving only a slit by which the male feeds the caged female insects for her entire stay in there. We were lucky enough to find a few of these nests (which many of our guides had never seen before), and to watch the male bring the female food. We even were able to see the eye of the molted female inside. SO COOL.
They also have the courtship ritual where the male tries to feed the female (while they are still dating and the female is not encased in her hole yet.... what a bizarre way to go about nesting) an insect that her has caught; if she takes it, they will probably be together -- if she doesn't, she flies off leaving the male looking dejected and lonely. We actually saw the female take the bug and then, after appeasing the male, drop the insect onto the ground. She then flew off. Poor guy.
And that isn't even the beginning of it -- there is so much more to explore.
At night we would have biology lectures from our professor, Ken, who is so obviously in his element that he can barely hold his excitement back. It's a fantastic atmosphere to learn in; we all love him. What a crazy place to be learning -- everything we've been absorbing in "class" is then displayed in the field right before our eyes. It doesn't get much more exciting than that.
Almost every night Anton and I would go up to the rock outcropping above camp and sit and watch the stars, often staying up there for hours as we talked and talked and thought about everything within us and around us. I'll be cherishing those hours for years to come.
One night we even heard lions roaring, not a kilometer away. AHHH. Going to sleep hearing lions; man, that's the stuff we dream about.
We also danced with Maasai, threw spears, and talked around embers of acacia long into the night. But lets not even get into that.
Life feels natural and at ease here; there is so much of an ancient vibe that rings though the place and that sways the savannah grasses that I can't help but feel like life will always be this way, that this place is so immutable, so inextricably human, that leaving it will feel like leaving a bit of yourself behind.
One more month left in this outrageous place.
Off to the coast for Ind. Study project part two: the sagas of the butterfly fish. Stay tuned.
I'll be back to computers on the 2nd/3rd of December.
And then! -- it's off to Lake Vistoria with a small group of wonderful friends, gradually making our way up to Uganda for some rafting on the Nile and jungle exploring. Heck yes.
Miss you all, of course. And much love from the land of Simba, the birthplace of us all. :)
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Part Two
PART TWO (See Part One below first)
And… now it’s time for part two, which will unfortunately have to be quite abridged, as we only have this one day to access internet before the group splits up (much sadness) and the bio side heads back out to Oldonyo-Sambu to do independent study research projects. Trying to both relax and get all of this accomplished, and the nice poolside location that I’m now sitting next to, and the wine Anton and I are sipping helps this process move smoothly along. Borrowing Rachel Young’s computer – hope she doesn’t mind! – to give you a short blow by blow of the days that followed from where I left off.
Our trip to the Yaeda Valley was dry, as usual. We spent a stunning four days with the Hadzabe hunting-gathering people, ones who still live their lives in the same accordance as they have since the dawn of time – gathering tubers and berries and surviving off of the changes in seasonal production, and hunting everything that creepeth on the earth (no joke – they go after everything) with primitive bows that they make from entirely natural material, and arrows that I was even able to carve with them in an afternoon.
Epic tale: on our fourth day with the Hadza, when we went out for five hours on an actual hunt with individual men (super cool!), one of the groups actually – I kid you not – shot a giraffe with a poisoned arrow. The hunter came back to camp to take a break and wait for the poison to set in, and then in the early afternoon, the entire group of us set out with a band of hunters to track this staggering giraffe down. They spotted it at a certain point (by way of finding drops of blood on the ground and on select thorn bushes – craziness), and we chased it down for four hours. All the while we looked at each other, grins on our faces, whispering, “we’re stalking a freaking giraffe!” The hunt was to no avail; the poison wore off, and the giraffe ran away safely, but nonetheless, a good story to be able to tell. We were able to eat some bush hyrax meat (a bizarre rodent-ish animal that hangs out in rocks and climbs trees), which was chewy and rather tasteless, but what we witnessed was an incredibly privileged and rare glimpse into perhaps the most sustainable way of life that humankind has ever imagined. I could go on for this for ages – indeed I did in one of my papers here – so talk to me about it when I get back, and you will be rewarded with characteristic long windedness.
After the Hadza we headed up to Ngorongoro highlands and into the world famous (actually, it’s a World Heritage Site, which is pretty sweet) Ngorongoro crater, a complete ecosystem in the largest caldera in the world (a cladera is the imploded crater of a former volcano). This is where we saw LIONS! And a whole manner of other things. Check out the online world for better pictures than I could ever provide. The most touristy thing we did, for sure, but still, the Crater is a place I have wanted to visit ever since I saw it in the glossy print of nature books. Again, ask me for more when I return.
We were then rewarded with three free “reading days” in Soit-Sambu where we basically hung out in our camp all day, reading and writing and reflecting and in general catching up on personal time that you are deprived of when you are constantly around 30 other people. We read a lot, but we also did some hikes with some Maasai and saw some amazingly goofy Colobus monkeys.
On Halloween, we all decided to dress up like each other, which was a riot. Since we spend so much time with each other, we were able to nail each others’ idiosyncrasies dead on. The next night we sat around the fire and listened to Daudi’s crazy elephant stalking, lion stalking, and general badassness stories. We then sipped away around the fire, reminiscing and laughing and trying to get people to dance naked (this is Anton’s constant prerogative), and went to bad happy and ready to tackle our next adventure, the infamous Maasai homestay.
We travelled to a new area, where dead cows lined the road, to do our Maasai homestay component of the trip. The homestay itself was outrageously, well, low key. Not that it wasn’t new or exciting or a fantastic learning experience, but the fact that we could not speak their language – Maa – and they didn’t speak Swahili, we were stuck with the strange social awkwardness of not being able to say anything to each other. We learned a lot, and many people loved it, but I myself was ready for it to pass – the smoke inside the house from the fire, the water used for cleaning the dishes, the straight inequality of Maasai culture (men do not do ANYthing – women gather wood, cook, make fences, gater more wood, haul tons of water on their head, make beads, provide for the children, buy the food; the men, well, they herd the cattle around, and sit on their butts while they cattle and goats eat. Yeah.) Again, I wish I could tell you more, but ask me when I get back.
Settled here in Arusha for a few more hours.
We’re heading off for Lake Victoria and Uganda for rafting and other shenanigans post trip with a few people, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories from that as well.
Sorry to have cheated you all of so much information, but it’s all I can do to keep sane. Rest assured that I am safe and having the unmistakable time of my life.
LOVE LOVE LOVE :) Take care everyone, and send me texts to that international phone of mine if you get the chance to! Number is in one of the first blog posts.
I’ll be back to Arusha on December 1st.
Miss you all.
Zach
And… now it’s time for part two, which will unfortunately have to be quite abridged, as we only have this one day to access internet before the group splits up (much sadness) and the bio side heads back out to Oldonyo-Sambu to do independent study research projects. Trying to both relax and get all of this accomplished, and the nice poolside location that I’m now sitting next to, and the wine Anton and I are sipping helps this process move smoothly along. Borrowing Rachel Young’s computer – hope she doesn’t mind! – to give you a short blow by blow of the days that followed from where I left off.
Our trip to the Yaeda Valley was dry, as usual. We spent a stunning four days with the Hadzabe hunting-gathering people, ones who still live their lives in the same accordance as they have since the dawn of time – gathering tubers and berries and surviving off of the changes in seasonal production, and hunting everything that creepeth on the earth (no joke – they go after everything) with primitive bows that they make from entirely natural material, and arrows that I was even able to carve with them in an afternoon.
Epic tale: on our fourth day with the Hadza, when we went out for five hours on an actual hunt with individual men (super cool!), one of the groups actually – I kid you not – shot a giraffe with a poisoned arrow. The hunter came back to camp to take a break and wait for the poison to set in, and then in the early afternoon, the entire group of us set out with a band of hunters to track this staggering giraffe down. They spotted it at a certain point (by way of finding drops of blood on the ground and on select thorn bushes – craziness), and we chased it down for four hours. All the while we looked at each other, grins on our faces, whispering, “we’re stalking a freaking giraffe!” The hunt was to no avail; the poison wore off, and the giraffe ran away safely, but nonetheless, a good story to be able to tell. We were able to eat some bush hyrax meat (a bizarre rodent-ish animal that hangs out in rocks and climbs trees), which was chewy and rather tasteless, but what we witnessed was an incredibly privileged and rare glimpse into perhaps the most sustainable way of life that humankind has ever imagined. I could go on for this for ages – indeed I did in one of my papers here – so talk to me about it when I get back, and you will be rewarded with characteristic long windedness.
After the Hadza we headed up to Ngorongoro highlands and into the world famous (actually, it’s a World Heritage Site, which is pretty sweet) Ngorongoro crater, a complete ecosystem in the largest caldera in the world (a cladera is the imploded crater of a former volcano). This is where we saw LIONS! And a whole manner of other things. Check out the online world for better pictures than I could ever provide. The most touristy thing we did, for sure, but still, the Crater is a place I have wanted to visit ever since I saw it in the glossy print of nature books. Again, ask me for more when I return.
We were then rewarded with three free “reading days” in Soit-Sambu where we basically hung out in our camp all day, reading and writing and reflecting and in general catching up on personal time that you are deprived of when you are constantly around 30 other people. We read a lot, but we also did some hikes with some Maasai and saw some amazingly goofy Colobus monkeys.
On Halloween, we all decided to dress up like each other, which was a riot. Since we spend so much time with each other, we were able to nail each others’ idiosyncrasies dead on. The next night we sat around the fire and listened to Daudi’s crazy elephant stalking, lion stalking, and general badassness stories. We then sipped away around the fire, reminiscing and laughing and trying to get people to dance naked (this is Anton’s constant prerogative), and went to bad happy and ready to tackle our next adventure, the infamous Maasai homestay.
We travelled to a new area, where dead cows lined the road, to do our Maasai homestay component of the trip. The homestay itself was outrageously, well, low key. Not that it wasn’t new or exciting or a fantastic learning experience, but the fact that we could not speak their language – Maa – and they didn’t speak Swahili, we were stuck with the strange social awkwardness of not being able to say anything to each other. We learned a lot, and many people loved it, but I myself was ready for it to pass – the smoke inside the house from the fire, the water used for cleaning the dishes, the straight inequality of Maasai culture (men do not do ANYthing – women gather wood, cook, make fences, gater more wood, haul tons of water on their head, make beads, provide for the children, buy the food; the men, well, they herd the cattle around, and sit on their butts while they cattle and goats eat. Yeah.) Again, I wish I could tell you more, but ask me when I get back.
Settled here in Arusha for a few more hours.
We’re heading off for Lake Victoria and Uganda for rafting and other shenanigans post trip with a few people, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories from that as well.
Sorry to have cheated you all of so much information, but it’s all I can do to keep sane. Rest assured that I am safe and having the unmistakable time of my life.
LOVE LOVE LOVE :) Take care everyone, and send me texts to that international phone of mine if you get the chance to! Number is in one of the first blog posts.
I’ll be back to Arusha on December 1st.
Miss you all.
Zach
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Gad - Welcome back to the blog! -- post safari, post madness, post experiences that I can only hope to convey to you in the short (one day!) time that I have to convert them all to this electronic medium.
We have now returned to marching in time with civilization's beat (who thought we would all be so thrilled to see bustling Arusha?), which means a blessed pair of clean jeans, clean shirt, fans, sumptuously luxurious hotels, romantically lit restaurant booths, good wine, clubbing, the like.
As wonderful as this present moment is, all of it's peripheral -- it's the past three weeks that I'm sure you're dying to hear about, and I'm eager to write about, that we'll devote the rest of this blog to.
First off, thanks to all who wrote to me while I was away! It's one of the best feelings in the world to come back to the land of internet access and see messages coming from everyone that I love. Your world feels so far away as I look out around me and see the mountains of the rift valley and slogans of Swahili or botched English (one of my favorites along our many hours of driving and town pass-throughs was "Ultra Modern Hotel and Restaurant" in a remote little derelict town; the paint on which this name was printed had all but chipped off, and was barely legible -- quite modern indeed... just one of many funny language botching situations), but yet closer to me than even when I am there as I give in to daydreams of nostalgia, stories of time where we could never stop laughing, people and places and landscapes that come back to me when I close my eyes. It's true -- you love people all the more when you have time to miss them and remember exactly why they mean the world to you.
I mean it seriously when I say I have absolutely no idea where to begin.
Three weeks of traveling in a land that supports some of the richest biodiversity in the world, but is as arid as any place I have ever passed through, a place where the guise of human life reveals itself as nothing but hardship, heat, and holdovers from a time that has all but disappeared from our own cultural conciousness. We're stuck right now in one of the worst droughts this land has seen in years; the rainy season has now failed to come in many regions for at least three years running now (do climate change naysayers still exist? Let's send them to the Serengeti for a month when it's supposed to be turning green again, look at the hundreds, thousands of dead cattle, the crackle of the land beneath their feet, the lack of any moisture on the plains, and see if their fantasties and shouts of negativity still ring through the halls of the Capitol...), and the plains of northern Tanzania, those all-too-familiar sights of the Discovery Channel, are mowed down to the ground by the hundreds of thousands of wandering ungulates in search of food. The only green that breaks the landscapes on the plain are the umbrella of the acacia trees, and our own tank-like vechiles hurtling over the rough single-track road that became our haunt for the three weeks. The situation is bleak for all -- not just humans -- and we're finally seeing a little bit of rain over the past few days. Hoping for more, for the sake of everyone here.
But through all of this hardship and what may appear to be desolation (just had to set the scene for you), life persists in all the ancient ways that it has through these valleys and mountains. Animal life, plant life, human life -- simaltaneous accents of energy playing themselves out on this ever-dramatic and heart-wrenchingly beautiful landscape, herds of zebra, impala, elephant, giraffe, all the antelopes of Africa (of which there are an absurd amount) punctuating the stillness with that purposeful yet unmistakably relaxed assertion of life amidst a place that feels hostile to even the most seasoned of us. Our journey through this land has been everything we imagined it to be (though that phjrase does nothing for the imagination), and filled with, of course, the side treks and surprises that make a journey truly worth its while.
We waved goodbye to the tourist capitol of Tanzania, the city of Arusha, on the 15th of October (whoa!) from the seats of two huge, military sized, so-incomprehensibly-large-that-I-can't-possibly-convey-how large-they-are, Mercedes safari trucks, completely open on both sides (no windows to speak of -- only open air and bars to hang onto), roaring diesel engine (not the most environmentally friendly segment of my life, as far as gas consumption goes...), and those smiles that are characteristic of anticipation.
Dry, dry, dry. As soon as we left Arusha, the artificially kept green gardens and manicured drives disappeared and gave way to the rugged bush that I think we all remember from some distant glimmer in our evolutionary past.
Our first few days were spent at the Dorobo Safari's (I must stress again how incredible these guys are -- the three brothers that run this company. You'll hear stories of how badass they are) camp outside of Elboreet Village, a streching land of Maasai pasture and failed attempts at agriculture, where we stayed for three nights, tracking elephant and giraffe, and even some lion on foot (we didn't see any of them at this point). It's incredible the amount of life that you can discern exists in a certain area simply by the tracks they leave -- and in this time period, we all became coniseurs of the many forms of dung that dot the landscape, sometimes even using the ball-like dumps of passing elephants as projectiles for across camp matches of dominance (just so you all know, maturity is overrated...). The nights were filled with card games -- Mafia being key of these -- laughter, exchange of thoughts, and oh-my-Jesus-Christ STARS. They were just as incredible on the coast, and you can't beat stargazing on the beach with the Indian Ocean lulling you to sleep, but out in what I am convinced are some of the darkest palces left on earth, your own little place in the universe is but a tiny blip of conciousness bathed in starlight. Unbelievable.
We climbed up onto a mountain called Oldonyo-Sambu on the third day we were there, watched a family of baboons make there lumbering way down the mountain from atop a rock (Anton and I will hopefully be doing our independent study project on those same baboons! Hell yes), made our own lumbering and labored breathing way up, which involved crawling through a skethcy tunnel up over some rocks, and sitting on the summit surrounded by beautiful friends (it's a bit absurd how much we all love each other sometimes), baboons below, banana chips in our stomachs, spirits sooooaring.
Daudi (the oldest of the badass Peterson brothers -- he's in his 60s now, though is still incredibly young at heart and in actions, and has the most subtle wit of anyone I know) then proposed offhand to us that we bushwhack down the side of the mountain back to camp, which was a good 10K away. We all laughed -- of course he was kidding -- but then he just shrugged his shoulders and starting walking down the hill. We looked around in shock, and the more eager and adventurous of us (about half the group) quickly shouldered our bags and ran off to join him. Walking off the side of a mountain to get back to camp? I like this guy already.
We bushwhacked down a steep side of the mountain and eventually made it back down to the acacia studded plains at the foor of the hill, led by our Maasai guides, and treked across, gradually making our way back to camp. Along the way we surprised a family of giraffes from behind and watched their awkward gallop as they ran from us, occasionally looking back to see why we were there to begin with. The land seemed too dry to even support all the little grassland ungulates (think deer back at home, except in every shape, size, color, and horn type imaginable), let alone the hordes of cattle that the pastoral Maasai try to keep on the land. Population pressures (too many people on far too little resources) have made the Maasai fall on hard times. In a way, I don't feel particularly sorry for some of the hard times thy're having -- as long as they keep on pumping out kids (I think I found a statistic saying that over 50% of Maasai are under 18), they will keep on running into these problems. I know, I know, it's unfair to these people to say that, but there is nothing that makes you more axcutely aware of the world's inabilty to hold this burgeoning population of humans afloat than being in a place where it is physically impossible to squeeze more from the land. We need to turn our efforts to encouraging birth control (the prevalence of Catholic missionaries in the land has only exacerbated this, as many Maasai in the Arusha area cannot appeal for birth control methods because this imposed religion forbids it -- talk about frustrating!) and while it can be argued that these families need these children for help with work, given the experience I just came from where I stayed with a Maasai family for three days, I don't think this is the case. Removing the individual people-based perspective from the population arguement is never a sound idea, but I do think the ideas I've gleaned from being here can be seen as a microcosm for population control as a whole. Our experiences with the Hadzabe hunter-gatherer people gives an even more interesting tilt to these ideas. More on that soon.
Got back to camp exhausted, physically and mentally.
The next day we moved onto Tarangire National Park, which out last camp bordered. Not a minute after we crossed the parks borders we saw our first family of elephants. No lie. The fascinating thing about elephants (one of the many) is that during the poaching wave of the 80s, the population of elephants within the park skyrocketed. While poaching was covertly doable in the park boundaries, the elephants for the most part were safe inside. Knowing this, elephants flocked from all over their wandering areas back to Tarangire to escape from the poachers that lay in wait in the thousands all over land that was unprotected. They even discovered that they were completely immune to shooting if they gathered around the gates to the park where the highest concentration of rangers were. A chillingly cool example of animal intelligence, and added to the fact that elephants have mouring rituals over the skulls of disceased family members, and that they communicate by way of subsonic (deep, deep sounds) means, it gives us, by way of those massive relics of the age of the mammoths, a glimpse of the tendency of evolution to move towards more intelligent beings. And this, above all else, gives me hope -- and an immutable reason -- to call for more sustainable means of life so that others, like the elephants (who may come to "rule the world" as the most highly evolved, self-aware animals if we allow them to after us) may simply continue to live.
Thanks for listening to my enviro-philosophical rants. You know that I appreciate it.
In Tarangire, we saw pretty much everything. And I'll have to say that that statement is the only, and best, way to put it. A leopard, a family of lions, thousands of elephants (I kid you not), impala, zebra, warthog, wildebeest, buffalo, griaffe, water birds galore, kudu, hartebeest, gazelles, everythiiiing. The day of gamedriving even ended in a freak rainstorm which we embraced with all of our Portland love of those drops from the sky. Sam, Anton and I sat atop the bars of the truck, holding on and swiging back, as we hurlted through the bush, watching the sun set through the clouds and the animals run in palpable excitement. Needless to say, the opening of the Lion King rang through my head (we may have had a rousing, off key, chorus of it later that night...)
Tarangire gave us that "Africa Experience" that we all expected and looked forward to, and in all reality, will be remembered as one of the most beautiful, "in touch" days of the trip. But even that could be viewed as peripherary compared the next 20 days of safari -- all those moments that made us turn to each other and say, wait, this right here around me is Africa? The things that catch you off gaurd are the things that you remember the most.
After our two days of touristy experience in Tarangire, we headed up to the verdant, green, rugged, jungle-laden mountains of the Nou Forest. Never heard of it? No one has. Another check on the cool factor of Dorobo. The drive up was nothing short of spectacular. We hung off the side of the trucks the whole way up. I cannot wait to be able to actually show you guys pictures. Even then though, it might not be enough. I'll try with words.
Immidiately, everything was green. The mountains were almost perpetually in fog and misty rain, which fed the myriad cyrtal streams than crossed through untouched jungle. And....
Pine Trees! You have no idea how excited a group of Portlandians can get over the sight of a coniferous tree when you haven't seen one in a few months. We quite literally jumped out of the truck to grab at its branches and pull them in, crunching the needles in our fingers and breathing in the oil that all of us miss so dearly. And moss as well! In Africa? What is going on?
The forest was freezing at night, and our campsite was tucked away in a spongy little groove on the edge of a meadow, where we seriously all got the best sleep we have had all night. Fleece came out, knit hats, wool pants, wool socks, snuggling in tents to keep warm (ah, the life). Even slugs to keep us company (along with leopards, vervet monekys, and everything else that remained hidden in the forest and out of sight [but not out of mind]). These days were built in to the trip to allow us to see a side of East Africa that rarely anyone ever sees, and so that we could have some time to talk with the Iraqw people (the name of the agriculturalist tride that inhabits these hills) who thankfully spoke some Swahili. Their native language involves clicks, and has no sort of relation to any of the Bantu or Nilotic language groups that surround them, which is yet another fascinating thing about the evolution of languages. These days were also relaxing ones, where we could catch up on our course readings and journaling (I am still having class, just so you know! :p ), which Anton and I of course did, we wouldn't dare think otherwise, and we certainly wouldn't spend our time tracking animals in the deep jungle for four hours. Or getting lost too on the way back.
What can I say...
We found the tracks of some sort of fairly large jungle cat though, and got scared off by the aggresive barking of a hidden animal in the bushes! Totally worth it.
Our last full day in the forest was mainly spent trekking off to a hidden waterfall way way way off the beaten track (I'm convinced that I'm probably the only person in the state of Maryland, probably much of the East Coast other than previous LC trip goers, who have seen this waterfall). The hike was basically bushwhacking through the jungle -- we do this often -- for two or three hours, following our local guides, and ending up at this spectacular, crystal clear 200 foot tall waterfall pouring over the side of a rock face into a huge basin. And what do you think we all did? Stood there and took pictures, marvelling at just how "gorgeous" and "serene" and "beautiful" the cascade was? That's a big no. We quickly stripped down to our skivies (not that we're good at that yet... there haven't been anu naked runs on the beach or skinny dipping in the Indian Ocean or anything of the sort....) and threw ourselves into the pool. It took my breath away, the glacial freeze of it shocking your lungs and heart, and I couldn't help but remember when I watched some people dip themselves into a glacial meltwater lake on the side of Mt. Adams, where an Antartica of ice still floated like a perpetual ice cube, and saying to myself that I would never put myself into water that cold. We cursed and laughed and tauted each other to come in and join us; we bathed under the hail storm of water falling from great heights; we picked leeches off of each other afterwards; we took EA09 Swimsuit Edition calendar pictures; we broke the cardinal rule of African watersources -- to never get into them (although this one was fresh enough that it was completely safe, no parasites for me...); we emerged from the water and froze and ate cookies and gave each other hugs and listened to the thunder of the jungle coming to greet us. And then we made the trek back and fit six people in a three person tent and spooned until it was time for dinner and class. This is the Africa that I will remember. And it keeps on going.
On one of the mornings, a group of six of us got up at 4:30 to go and hike into the jungle to look for leopards. They're most active at dawn and dusk, and we wanted to hear one calling or at least spot its eyes in a tree. As far as big cats go, they're actually not all that dangerous, mainly because they are solitary and will only go after you if a) you provoke them or b) you look particularly tasty. Being a stringy runner has its perks sometimes. While our moonlit, foggy walk proved to not yield any leopards, we did see two sets of eyes, green and luminescent in the beams of our headlamps. Pretty damn cool.
The trek out of the Nou Forest was soggy and cold, and it was with sadness that we left the pine trees and soothing sounds of the jungle at night. But -- we were headed to the Yaeda Valley, home of one of the last hunter-gatherer people in existence -- the Hadzabe -- and there was nothing but excitement in the air.
BUT, I need to take an internet break. Three hours in a hot room is tough. I'll be typing part two of this later today, don't worry.
Love and miss everyone, more so than ever as we launch into the last bit of this trip. One day of internet to get back in touch with everyone! Ah! Not enough. Sorry that I haven't responded to any personal emails, but I will try to later today, and of course I love hearing from you and thank you for taking the time to do so.
All together strange to be back again. But tonight will be a night of Club AQ, perhaps more wine, and a much needed dose of civilization after the bush.
More soon.
Zach
We have now returned to marching in time with civilization's beat (who thought we would all be so thrilled to see bustling Arusha?), which means a blessed pair of clean jeans, clean shirt, fans, sumptuously luxurious hotels, romantically lit restaurant booths, good wine, clubbing, the like.
As wonderful as this present moment is, all of it's peripheral -- it's the past three weeks that I'm sure you're dying to hear about, and I'm eager to write about, that we'll devote the rest of this blog to.
First off, thanks to all who wrote to me while I was away! It's one of the best feelings in the world to come back to the land of internet access and see messages coming from everyone that I love. Your world feels so far away as I look out around me and see the mountains of the rift valley and slogans of Swahili or botched English (one of my favorites along our many hours of driving and town pass-throughs was "Ultra Modern Hotel and Restaurant" in a remote little derelict town; the paint on which this name was printed had all but chipped off, and was barely legible -- quite modern indeed... just one of many funny language botching situations), but yet closer to me than even when I am there as I give in to daydreams of nostalgia, stories of time where we could never stop laughing, people and places and landscapes that come back to me when I close my eyes. It's true -- you love people all the more when you have time to miss them and remember exactly why they mean the world to you.
I mean it seriously when I say I have absolutely no idea where to begin.
Three weeks of traveling in a land that supports some of the richest biodiversity in the world, but is as arid as any place I have ever passed through, a place where the guise of human life reveals itself as nothing but hardship, heat, and holdovers from a time that has all but disappeared from our own cultural conciousness. We're stuck right now in one of the worst droughts this land has seen in years; the rainy season has now failed to come in many regions for at least three years running now (do climate change naysayers still exist? Let's send them to the Serengeti for a month when it's supposed to be turning green again, look at the hundreds, thousands of dead cattle, the crackle of the land beneath their feet, the lack of any moisture on the plains, and see if their fantasties and shouts of negativity still ring through the halls of the Capitol...), and the plains of northern Tanzania, those all-too-familiar sights of the Discovery Channel, are mowed down to the ground by the hundreds of thousands of wandering ungulates in search of food. The only green that breaks the landscapes on the plain are the umbrella of the acacia trees, and our own tank-like vechiles hurtling over the rough single-track road that became our haunt for the three weeks. The situation is bleak for all -- not just humans -- and we're finally seeing a little bit of rain over the past few days. Hoping for more, for the sake of everyone here.
But through all of this hardship and what may appear to be desolation (just had to set the scene for you), life persists in all the ancient ways that it has through these valleys and mountains. Animal life, plant life, human life -- simaltaneous accents of energy playing themselves out on this ever-dramatic and heart-wrenchingly beautiful landscape, herds of zebra, impala, elephant, giraffe, all the antelopes of Africa (of which there are an absurd amount) punctuating the stillness with that purposeful yet unmistakably relaxed assertion of life amidst a place that feels hostile to even the most seasoned of us. Our journey through this land has been everything we imagined it to be (though that phjrase does nothing for the imagination), and filled with, of course, the side treks and surprises that make a journey truly worth its while.
We waved goodbye to the tourist capitol of Tanzania, the city of Arusha, on the 15th of October (whoa!) from the seats of two huge, military sized, so-incomprehensibly-large-that-I-can't-possibly-convey-how large-they-are, Mercedes safari trucks, completely open on both sides (no windows to speak of -- only open air and bars to hang onto), roaring diesel engine (not the most environmentally friendly segment of my life, as far as gas consumption goes...), and those smiles that are characteristic of anticipation.
Dry, dry, dry. As soon as we left Arusha, the artificially kept green gardens and manicured drives disappeared and gave way to the rugged bush that I think we all remember from some distant glimmer in our evolutionary past.
Our first few days were spent at the Dorobo Safari's (I must stress again how incredible these guys are -- the three brothers that run this company. You'll hear stories of how badass they are) camp outside of Elboreet Village, a streching land of Maasai pasture and failed attempts at agriculture, where we stayed for three nights, tracking elephant and giraffe, and even some lion on foot (we didn't see any of them at this point). It's incredible the amount of life that you can discern exists in a certain area simply by the tracks they leave -- and in this time period, we all became coniseurs of the many forms of dung that dot the landscape, sometimes even using the ball-like dumps of passing elephants as projectiles for across camp matches of dominance (just so you all know, maturity is overrated...). The nights were filled with card games -- Mafia being key of these -- laughter, exchange of thoughts, and oh-my-Jesus-Christ STARS. They were just as incredible on the coast, and you can't beat stargazing on the beach with the Indian Ocean lulling you to sleep, but out in what I am convinced are some of the darkest palces left on earth, your own little place in the universe is but a tiny blip of conciousness bathed in starlight. Unbelievable.
We climbed up onto a mountain called Oldonyo-Sambu on the third day we were there, watched a family of baboons make there lumbering way down the mountain from atop a rock (Anton and I will hopefully be doing our independent study project on those same baboons! Hell yes), made our own lumbering and labored breathing way up, which involved crawling through a skethcy tunnel up over some rocks, and sitting on the summit surrounded by beautiful friends (it's a bit absurd how much we all love each other sometimes), baboons below, banana chips in our stomachs, spirits sooooaring.
Daudi (the oldest of the badass Peterson brothers -- he's in his 60s now, though is still incredibly young at heart and in actions, and has the most subtle wit of anyone I know) then proposed offhand to us that we bushwhack down the side of the mountain back to camp, which was a good 10K away. We all laughed -- of course he was kidding -- but then he just shrugged his shoulders and starting walking down the hill. We looked around in shock, and the more eager and adventurous of us (about half the group) quickly shouldered our bags and ran off to join him. Walking off the side of a mountain to get back to camp? I like this guy already.
We bushwhacked down a steep side of the mountain and eventually made it back down to the acacia studded plains at the foor of the hill, led by our Maasai guides, and treked across, gradually making our way back to camp. Along the way we surprised a family of giraffes from behind and watched their awkward gallop as they ran from us, occasionally looking back to see why we were there to begin with. The land seemed too dry to even support all the little grassland ungulates (think deer back at home, except in every shape, size, color, and horn type imaginable), let alone the hordes of cattle that the pastoral Maasai try to keep on the land. Population pressures (too many people on far too little resources) have made the Maasai fall on hard times. In a way, I don't feel particularly sorry for some of the hard times thy're having -- as long as they keep on pumping out kids (I think I found a statistic saying that over 50% of Maasai are under 18), they will keep on running into these problems. I know, I know, it's unfair to these people to say that, but there is nothing that makes you more axcutely aware of the world's inabilty to hold this burgeoning population of humans afloat than being in a place where it is physically impossible to squeeze more from the land. We need to turn our efforts to encouraging birth control (the prevalence of Catholic missionaries in the land has only exacerbated this, as many Maasai in the Arusha area cannot appeal for birth control methods because this imposed religion forbids it -- talk about frustrating!) and while it can be argued that these families need these children for help with work, given the experience I just came from where I stayed with a Maasai family for three days, I don't think this is the case. Removing the individual people-based perspective from the population arguement is never a sound idea, but I do think the ideas I've gleaned from being here can be seen as a microcosm for population control as a whole. Our experiences with the Hadzabe hunter-gatherer people gives an even more interesting tilt to these ideas. More on that soon.
Got back to camp exhausted, physically and mentally.
The next day we moved onto Tarangire National Park, which out last camp bordered. Not a minute after we crossed the parks borders we saw our first family of elephants. No lie. The fascinating thing about elephants (one of the many) is that during the poaching wave of the 80s, the population of elephants within the park skyrocketed. While poaching was covertly doable in the park boundaries, the elephants for the most part were safe inside. Knowing this, elephants flocked from all over their wandering areas back to Tarangire to escape from the poachers that lay in wait in the thousands all over land that was unprotected. They even discovered that they were completely immune to shooting if they gathered around the gates to the park where the highest concentration of rangers were. A chillingly cool example of animal intelligence, and added to the fact that elephants have mouring rituals over the skulls of disceased family members, and that they communicate by way of subsonic (deep, deep sounds) means, it gives us, by way of those massive relics of the age of the mammoths, a glimpse of the tendency of evolution to move towards more intelligent beings. And this, above all else, gives me hope -- and an immutable reason -- to call for more sustainable means of life so that others, like the elephants (who may come to "rule the world" as the most highly evolved, self-aware animals if we allow them to after us) may simply continue to live.
Thanks for listening to my enviro-philosophical rants. You know that I appreciate it.
In Tarangire, we saw pretty much everything. And I'll have to say that that statement is the only, and best, way to put it. A leopard, a family of lions, thousands of elephants (I kid you not), impala, zebra, warthog, wildebeest, buffalo, griaffe, water birds galore, kudu, hartebeest, gazelles, everythiiiing. The day of gamedriving even ended in a freak rainstorm which we embraced with all of our Portland love of those drops from the sky. Sam, Anton and I sat atop the bars of the truck, holding on and swiging back, as we hurlted through the bush, watching the sun set through the clouds and the animals run in palpable excitement. Needless to say, the opening of the Lion King rang through my head (we may have had a rousing, off key, chorus of it later that night...)
Tarangire gave us that "Africa Experience" that we all expected and looked forward to, and in all reality, will be remembered as one of the most beautiful, "in touch" days of the trip. But even that could be viewed as peripherary compared the next 20 days of safari -- all those moments that made us turn to each other and say, wait, this right here around me is Africa? The things that catch you off gaurd are the things that you remember the most.
After our two days of touristy experience in Tarangire, we headed up to the verdant, green, rugged, jungle-laden mountains of the Nou Forest. Never heard of it? No one has. Another check on the cool factor of Dorobo. The drive up was nothing short of spectacular. We hung off the side of the trucks the whole way up. I cannot wait to be able to actually show you guys pictures. Even then though, it might not be enough. I'll try with words.
Immidiately, everything was green. The mountains were almost perpetually in fog and misty rain, which fed the myriad cyrtal streams than crossed through untouched jungle. And....
Pine Trees! You have no idea how excited a group of Portlandians can get over the sight of a coniferous tree when you haven't seen one in a few months. We quite literally jumped out of the truck to grab at its branches and pull them in, crunching the needles in our fingers and breathing in the oil that all of us miss so dearly. And moss as well! In Africa? What is going on?
The forest was freezing at night, and our campsite was tucked away in a spongy little groove on the edge of a meadow, where we seriously all got the best sleep we have had all night. Fleece came out, knit hats, wool pants, wool socks, snuggling in tents to keep warm (ah, the life). Even slugs to keep us company (along with leopards, vervet monekys, and everything else that remained hidden in the forest and out of sight [but not out of mind]). These days were built in to the trip to allow us to see a side of East Africa that rarely anyone ever sees, and so that we could have some time to talk with the Iraqw people (the name of the agriculturalist tride that inhabits these hills) who thankfully spoke some Swahili. Their native language involves clicks, and has no sort of relation to any of the Bantu or Nilotic language groups that surround them, which is yet another fascinating thing about the evolution of languages. These days were also relaxing ones, where we could catch up on our course readings and journaling (I am still having class, just so you know! :p ), which Anton and I of course did, we wouldn't dare think otherwise, and we certainly wouldn't spend our time tracking animals in the deep jungle for four hours. Or getting lost too on the way back.
What can I say...
We found the tracks of some sort of fairly large jungle cat though, and got scared off by the aggresive barking of a hidden animal in the bushes! Totally worth it.
Our last full day in the forest was mainly spent trekking off to a hidden waterfall way way way off the beaten track (I'm convinced that I'm probably the only person in the state of Maryland, probably much of the East Coast other than previous LC trip goers, who have seen this waterfall). The hike was basically bushwhacking through the jungle -- we do this often -- for two or three hours, following our local guides, and ending up at this spectacular, crystal clear 200 foot tall waterfall pouring over the side of a rock face into a huge basin. And what do you think we all did? Stood there and took pictures, marvelling at just how "gorgeous" and "serene" and "beautiful" the cascade was? That's a big no. We quickly stripped down to our skivies (not that we're good at that yet... there haven't been anu naked runs on the beach or skinny dipping in the Indian Ocean or anything of the sort....) and threw ourselves into the pool. It took my breath away, the glacial freeze of it shocking your lungs and heart, and I couldn't help but remember when I watched some people dip themselves into a glacial meltwater lake on the side of Mt. Adams, where an Antartica of ice still floated like a perpetual ice cube, and saying to myself that I would never put myself into water that cold. We cursed and laughed and tauted each other to come in and join us; we bathed under the hail storm of water falling from great heights; we picked leeches off of each other afterwards; we took EA09 Swimsuit Edition calendar pictures; we broke the cardinal rule of African watersources -- to never get into them (although this one was fresh enough that it was completely safe, no parasites for me...); we emerged from the water and froze and ate cookies and gave each other hugs and listened to the thunder of the jungle coming to greet us. And then we made the trek back and fit six people in a three person tent and spooned until it was time for dinner and class. This is the Africa that I will remember. And it keeps on going.
On one of the mornings, a group of six of us got up at 4:30 to go and hike into the jungle to look for leopards. They're most active at dawn and dusk, and we wanted to hear one calling or at least spot its eyes in a tree. As far as big cats go, they're actually not all that dangerous, mainly because they are solitary and will only go after you if a) you provoke them or b) you look particularly tasty. Being a stringy runner has its perks sometimes. While our moonlit, foggy walk proved to not yield any leopards, we did see two sets of eyes, green and luminescent in the beams of our headlamps. Pretty damn cool.
The trek out of the Nou Forest was soggy and cold, and it was with sadness that we left the pine trees and soothing sounds of the jungle at night. But -- we were headed to the Yaeda Valley, home of one of the last hunter-gatherer people in existence -- the Hadzabe -- and there was nothing but excitement in the air.
BUT, I need to take an internet break. Three hours in a hot room is tough. I'll be typing part two of this later today, don't worry.
Love and miss everyone, more so than ever as we launch into the last bit of this trip. One day of internet to get back in touch with everyone! Ah! Not enough. Sorry that I haven't responded to any personal emails, but I will try to later today, and of course I love hearing from you and thank you for taking the time to do so.
All together strange to be back again. But tonight will be a night of Club AQ, perhaps more wine, and a much needed dose of civilization after the bush.
More soon.
Zach
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