The 'Legend of Pinky' and the 'Pedro Incident'

I was reluctant to let the kid bring a stuffed animal to Africa but what the heck, she's eight and I'll admit I love the one she chose:  Pinky, a large rat that Santa delivered this past Christmas.  And, our friend's daughter brought along Pedro, a rather realistic-looking stuffed monkey.   It turns out that on safari in remote Africa the stuffed animal comes in quite handy creating a diversion from one's day-to-day routine.  See, despite the fact that every day of this journey has been an amazing adventure, it does become routine in its own way:  same car, same group, same Africa, just another sleeping lion.  Same guide, too.  Although we had two guides, after we'd spent hours every day sharing amazing encounter after amazing encounter, combined with our esteem for them, they quickly felt like family.  Therefore, it was agreed early on that we needed a diversion, and, what better way to show our love for the guides we held so dear than to make them the brunt of a great practical joke.  Especially since they are, commendably, so professional in their work.   From their reactions, I don't think any other group of safari tourists had tried anything like this before, making it even more fun for all of us.

On our second afternoon in Amboseli, Dominic had slowed the van to show us something out the driver's side window.  While he was leaning out, pointing and explaining, Kirsten, who was in the front passenger seat exclaimed "What's this right here?"  Leaning out her her window, she gasped, and fidgeted, and leaned further out...and lurched back in across the front seat screaming with Pinky attacking her arm!  Dominic, with the honed skills of a twenty-year safari driver, jammed on the e-brake and was fleeing out the door before our hysterical laughter brought him back to his senses.  He immediately ordered Kirsten out of the van and made us promise not to do anything like that to him or anyone else ever again.  Promises were made to be broken.

At the beginning of our last game drive with Daniel, as we entered the Lake Myanara preserve, our truck was quickly surrounded by baboons so numerous we had to stop.  Everyone was leaning out their respective windows looking at the curious, unintimidated baboons when a blue monkey climbed on to the hood and began to play with the windshield wipers.  I was in the passenger seat, and Joe, screaming out his window behind me in alarm, handed me Pedro, who I, screaming, flung into the cab of the truck at Daniel, now also screaming and trying to hide under the steering wheel in hopes that the intruder would exit out his window.  Gotcha! 

We commended Dominic and Daniel on being such good sports, it seemed that they were both very amused.  And, explained at great length that it was only because we cared so much about them that we'd pull such a gag.  

Safari

Safari Day 1:  Maasai Mara Game Preserve.  First day on safari!  You immediately knew we were headed for something special when the driver would impatiently wave us off for asking to stop to see that one "giraffe!" or photograph an amazing "zebra!" on the way into the park.  Within the first afternoon's short game drive we saw more animals than I had imagined was possible for the entire trip:  wildebeest, zebra, Thomson's Gazelle, dik-dik, hornbill, guinea fowl, giraffe, cheetas, Cape Buffalo, lions, long crested eagle, secretary bird, Coke's Hartebeast, crown crane, Kirk's Dik-dik, impala, eland.  Even more amazing:  all the animals have babies now, too.  Baby giraffes and zebras were cute but we sat for a long time watching the lion cubs

 wrestle within reach of the van's window, and, a mother cheetah napping while her cubs fought over some recent kill.  Our driver Dominic, who's great, continued to show a sort of disinterested impatience and while he endured our enthusiasm for taking one hundred pictures of that first zebra we began to get the idea that incredibly, there could possibly be better sights to be seen.  

Safari Day 2:  Maasai Mara Game Preserve.  Lots of animals again today.  Highlights included an interesting encounter with the first male lion we'd seen.  He peed on his tail and we were all amused that this seemed like some pinnacle of deliberate laziness.  Our guide explained that the tail-soaking was deliberate but well-intentioned and that the male lions would even splash urine from their tails into the faces of elephant calfs they were trying to subdue.  We think he was just making excuses for such a slovenly display from the king of the jungle.  Later, we witnessed an amazing procession of over a hundred elephants with many calfs, some possibly one day old.   Dominic said he'd never seen that large a heard moving in this area and insisted we go somewhere other than where they may be heading despite our curiosity.  The elephants are exteremely destructive and the wardens do their best to keep them within the preserve but we secretly hoped they were heading for our lodge.  The day also included visiting a Maasai village.  Amazingly primitive and charming, fairly touristy.  The Maasai were very welcoming but at $20 bucks a head you'd be friendly too.  There were introductions, song and dance; our visit concluded with a dead-end in their high-pressure hawking gauntlet, I mean market, where we bought some trinkets of questionable origin.  

Safari Day 3:  Lake Nukura National Park.  Lake Nukura is a managed game preserve that borders a city of two million people; somewhat of a safari-themed Disneyland.  It offers an abundance of animals concentrated in a very small area and not one bit shy of your vehicle.  We saw two leopards here:  nocturnal, elusive and among the most difficult of the 'Big 5' animals to view.

Also, a female white rhinoceros and her calf grazing unintimidated two meters from us.  Despite the great game viewing, the park was crowded (with animals and tourists) and we were glad to be heading for someplace wilder and more remote.

Safari Day 4:  Amboseli.  Wilder and more remote we got.  When your safari guide of almost twenty years experience makes blatant exclamations like "Very long drive.  Very long." , or, "The worst road in Africa.  The worst.  Terrible."  you're guaranteed a long drive on bad roads.  Fortunately he had exaggerated, either out of his own frustration or just to prepare us for the almost nine-hour trip, and our route was downgraded to "the worst road in Kenya" and then to "not even the worst road we've been on."  After scrounging a quick lunch, those of us who hadn't cracked from being in the van all day were immediately back on the road for an afternoon game drive.  Amoboseli is an expansive dry lake bed and translated from the Maasai language means something regarding "dusty" but you don't need translation here:  if the Maasai, who just might be the hardest people in the world call it dusty, you're pretty much assured of some impressive dust.  Wildlife continues to be abundant, with most of the big game concentrated in and around the scarce, swampy remnants of water in the area making for some great viewing.

Safari Day 5:  Amboseli.  Morning and afternoon game drives highlighted by a baby elephant who, trumpeting his prowess, refused to yield the road to our van.  This is where cute baby elephant intersects with jumping out of your seat and when that little thing trumpeted we were all thinking escape!  I'll admit he alone scared us but his massive mother and other family members were within a few feet and we certainly hadn't intended any offense or foreseen the possible range of 

consequences.  This afternoon's game drive featured Pinky's appearance that had Dominic fleeing the van and will remain among the most memorable moments of our trip (more on that later).  

Safari Day 6 :  Travel day...leaving Amboseli we enjoy another opportunity to traverse the "worst road in Kenya"  and then are quickly ushered through some version of the safari-tourist border crossing entering Tanzania.  Today we must change tour companies from Naked Wilderness Afrika to Leopard Tours Ltd. and that means saying goodbye to Dominic, our Kenyan driver whom we have come to love.  Our new man Daniel is nicknamed "Mamba" (crocodile in Swahili as well as the black- and green- varieties of deadly snake) giving him instant credibility.  The East African tour continues over what must truly be the worst road in Africa, to Arusha, and following a quick but welcome stop in civilization (ATM, vodka, candy) we are on our way to Tarangire.

Safari Day 7:  Tarangire to Ngorongoro.  In what is now beginning to feel like a rock tour of East Africa we enjoy a brief morning game drive in Tarangire National Park with legendary baobab trees and one of the highest known diversities of birds in the world, then we are on the road again.  Our afternoon travel is over what could be the best road in Tanzania, donated by

 the Japanese government, to Ngorongoro Crater.  While each of the parks we have visited has been magnificent in their own rights, Ngorongoro is overwhelming and truly feels like remote African wilderness.   Our lodge is in the thickly forested crater rim surrounded by dense Red Acacia trees and foreboding jungle.  Stretching below is the expansive Ngorongoro plain within the giant volcanic crater.  The landscape alone is outstanding and even around the lodge, where enormous Cape Buffalo greet us after dinner, wildlife is almost too rancorous for us to sleep, highlighted by cries of Tree Hyrax:  amazing creatures that may win my award for Africa's loudest - you'll have to Google them because if I tried to describe them you wouldn't believe me.  Trust me, very loud.

Safari Day 8:  Ngorongoro Crater.  We leave on our game drive before dawn.  Descending out of the mist from 7800 feet rapidly to the crater floor in total darkness feels primordial and a dinosaur would not seem out of place.  Wildlife caught in our headlights freeze as we approach offering some amazing views of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo.  At dawn we discover a pack of lions and enjoy watching numerous cubs fight over the remnants of a kill.  The Ngorongoro Conservation area is over 8,350 square kilometers and the crater floor itself is 250 kilometers square and over 23 kilometers at its widest point.  Touring plains, forest, salt marshes and a spring-fed lake we see an astonishing variety of densely populated wildlife.  Spotting a black rhino with a calf we are thrilled even though they are distant: endangered and two of only 29 in the entire conservation area, they are the missing piece of many travelers' incomplete 'Big 5' lists.  Daniel was previously a ranger in the Serengeti and we can tell from his enthusiastic lecture he is pleased with the sighting as well.  He relates that  within his lifetime black rhino were as abundant as cape buffalo, wandering in groups of three to six.  However,

 they are only able to reproduce once every four years, their calfs are favorites of the lions and their horns (at about $5,000/pound) targeted by poachers.  Although conservation and protection have been a priority in the past twenty years, their numbers are slow to recover.  In the afternoon we hike on the crater rim with a ranger and a Maasai who, spear in hand, guards us from our fantasies of lion and buffalo attacks in the jungle.  The walk provides panoramic views into the crater and we celebrate the opportunity to be out of the Land Cruiser even as we finish hiking in the pouring rain.  

Safari Day 9:  Traveling again, we spend the morning at Olduvai Gorge, anthropologists' presumed location of our species' origin.  Then we are on to the vast Serengeti, named from the Maasai word siringett meaning "endless place."  Our afternoon game drive features abundant antelope and their like, zebra, wildebeest and buffalo.  The Serengeti is indeed expansive but we've come to understand and trust the Maasai assessments of their surroundings and though it feels like we traveled hundreds of kilometers through the plains before reaching the lodge we arrive energized in discussion of sights we'd seen.

Safari Day 10:  Serengeti.  Searching for the 'Great Migration' we depart for a day-long game drive crisscrossing Serengeti's eastern plains and forests wondering how the professed movement of millions of wildebeest through this area could remain hidden from view.  These wildebeest, numbering over two million, migrate annually in great herds between the Serengeti and Maasai Mara.  Those we'd seen so far were mainly females that stayed behind because they were pregnant or had a calf.  We finally become mired by the migration in forested reaches of Serengeti's

eastern end; wildebeest scattered through the trees, on the plain in groups reaching from one horizon to the other and on the road, often blocked by their scattered, indecisive procession.  Large groups of zebra join the parade and our driver jests that the zebra know they are safe from lions while moving with wildebeest but after watching them for a while I'm sure he's not joking and share the zebra's assessment of them as dumb, awkward and slow.  Our day culminates in one of the trip's most memorable encounters with not one but two male lions, one of whom we catch in the act!  Lion's mating schedule is legendary, rumored to last as long as a week and include over forty encounters per day.  Despite the scope of this epic undertaking it is allegedly very difficult to witness and we experience the competitive safari pride such accomplishments have come to provide as our driver proclaims that groups of professionals spend months here without witnessing the spectacle we've collected.

Safari Day 11:  The last day on safari, we cross the Serengeti one more time traveling to Lake Myanara.  Our final game drive of the trip in Lake Myanara Biosphere Preserve doesn't disappoint.  Both the landscape and the abundance of wildlife are impressive.  Plus, the area is literally infested with baboons and monkeys.  Within a few meters of the gate our Land Cruiser is surrounded by both, providing a perfect stage for the now-infamous "Pedro Incident" (more later).  We see hippos and giraffe.  And, after so much big-game saturation are excited to see an elusive python and later a leopard tortoise.  While we are sad for the adventure to come to an end, we are animated in our accounting of the game collected, triumphant in our successful quest for the 'Big 5' and continually break into laughing fits recalling Pedro's exploits.   

Culture Shock

Heading for safari, we overnight in Nairobi's Safari Park Hotel & Casino.  It's like we took off from Mwanza and landed in Vegas.  There was even a floor show that I will politely describe as "stereotyped":  African-themed modern dance in fishnet stockings.  Dinner was excellent though and I've included a picture of the menu.  At our hotel in Nansio the "menu" was a guy in a bloody apron who didn't speak any English, and, was grumpy because you interrupted him slaughtering a goat, who'd come to the table and tersely say "ugali, wali, m'buzi."  Or, if you were lucky, Angelina was working and you'd get the menu in English: "ugali, rice, meat of cow, meat of goat."  Here, the menu only hints at the feast to follow and in case you were having a hard time choosing between the pork, goat, chicken, camel, turkey, lamb, beef, ribs, sausage or crocodile don't worry, you're getting them all, served on a sizzling cast-iron plate at your table from a sword.  We're anxious to get out of the city, though and skip the song & dance to catch some sleep looking forward to our morning trip to the Maasai Mara.  

Kwaherini

Means goodbye.  After a month we're all ready to leave Ukerewe.  But for such a small place, sure seems like we are leaving a lot behind.  It means school's done.  That will be missed.  And many goodbyes...our students, classmates, the teachers we've met, our friends and sponsors on the island and even the staff at the small hotel where we stayed that entire time who've become somewhat of a strange extended family to us.  It also means we're traveling again.  A final ride on the ferry to Mwanza feels like the longest one yet.  Back to the now familiar Hotel Talipia where we'll spend the weekend.

It also brings to a close the volunteering phase of our trip.  Now begins the vacation (from our vacation, as it were).  Off to Nairobi where we'll rendezvous with Kirsten's cousin Kim & Chris arriving from the US and our friend Joe Kenoyer and his daughter Kelly who've been traveling in Egypt; check out Joe's blog and Kelly's blog.

We're on safari!  Leaving Nairobi Monday for a two-week adventure beginning in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve.  Even looking at that destination's website seems a bit comical to us but I think we'll enjoy the contrast in our Africa experience this next few days.

Ukerewe

This weekend, our last on the island, we toured Ukerewe. The Ukerewe District (Tanzanian Districts are equivalents of our states) is composed of 32 islands in Lake Victoria that are home to about 250,000 people. Ukerewe is the largest island and Nansio, where we are staying, is the district's largest city of about 50,000. Accompanied by two Danes and an Aussie we've befriended we hired two cars and a guide and were off. The guide doesn't drive so me and the Aussie are each behind the wheel, which by the way is on the wrong side of the car just as the car is on the wrong side of the road. I'd done this before but it still would have been daunting except for the fact that "side of the road" is a very relative expression and the "side" of the "road" that we drove on was the one with the least threatening ruts and potholes. In fact the various combinations of washed-out dirt, two-track, pedestirans, cyclists and livestock we traversed in our beat-down Toyota sedan was only referred to as "the road" for about the first five kilometers of our trip. Encounters with oncoming car traffic were horn-blaring games of chicken to win the smoother side of what was really only a one-lane rut to begin with. Oncoming truck traffic was avoided by all means necesary...they seemed to speed up when passing as if to reinforce the idea that it was preferable to put your car in the ditch rather than fulfill their ambition of a head-on collision.

Our first stop on the far western reach of the island was Rubya Forest Reserve. Essentially a plantation of Caribbean Pine trees harvested for lumber, driving through the forest felt very much like being in Oregon. Except for the monkeys; entertaining displays by several bands of Vervet monkeys complete with a flourish of their rumored bright-colored genitalia that had been the source of much speculation in our house before arriving here. We passed the afternoon enjoying a swim and picnic lunch at Rubya Point.

After lunch a short drive to the overlook and remains of the Olwego Museum near Halwego. Excellent views of Ukerewe and surrounding islands from the top of this transformed natural rock formation, the island's highest point.

From there, driving past dark on dwindling two-track, we arrived at the small village of Buzegwe, our overnight destination on the island's northeastern shore. We are greeted with traditional dancers and in short time the drums, or, rumor of mzungu, have drawn the entire village. All very entertaining.

Sunday, after one of the most elaborate open-fire breakfast displays I've ever witnessed, we're off to Irondo Point for a hike over the rocks and another swim. The kids lending a hand to some fishermen pulling in their nets.  Then it's back toward Nansio with a brief visit at what is best described as ruins of the last chief's palace near Bukindo. The palace's current inhabitants are room-fulls of bats, making the stop quite worth it.

Buganda

Our accomodations this weekend in Mwanza are 'aboard' The Buganda. See also: Buganda, the kingdom of the Baganda people, largest of the traditional kingdoms in present-day Uganda on the north shore of Lake Victoria. The name Uganda, the Swahili term for Buganda, was adopted by British officials in 1894. That may also have been the last year this tub sailed. Now she's permanently moored on the south shore of Lake Victoria; converted into five rooms as part of the Tilapia Hotel we are visiting again this weekend. Her hull is painted with the quaint script "African Queen" belying a theme and our suite is the "Swanwick" named for Peter Swanwick whom had some bit part in the film I can't remember. I guess the Bogie and the Hepburn were booked. When Kirsten said we'd be staying here, I replied "What an absurd idea! Lady, you got ten absurd ideas for my one." At least we won't be running any rapids. Fortunate, too 'cause even moored this heap is listing about ten degrees to the port. It's a good thing my gin got tossed overboard as walking across the slanted floor feels tricky even when sober. I'd recommend the movie over the suites. After seeing it, check out another of my favorite Africa-themed movies, "White Hunter Black Heart" starring a belligerent Clint Eastwood over-acting the part of belligerent director John Huston while shooting "African Queen" on location in the Lake Victoria region.