kwaheri, kwa sasa

Return from Africa.  Plunge into America.  Just to make sure I felt it, I wore linen pants and sandals on the flight, letting the wintry Boston air bite my skin to greet me.  I’m the only one for a 1000 mile radius who appreciates this weather.

After five months in Kenya, Tanzania, and a splash of Uganda, I’m back in Rhode Island.  Retrenching.  A job offer in Madagascar, or graduate school in September…and at least a few weeks of down-time to figure it out.  In the meantime, I’m trying to just be.  And to be an auntie to my brother’s little twins, two new bright little lights in the family.  I couldn’t be more proud, or more happy to finally meet them.  There will always be difficult trade-offs to working in far-flung places.  It’s good to be home for a spell.

But I miss my students, of whom I am also immensely proud, and still so grateful to have had the opportunity to lead…  I hope they learned from me even one quarter of what I learned from them.

Kwaheri kwa sasa Africa.  Bye for now.
I will miss it, thankful for all that it’s given me yet again — parasites and all.

Bwana Mwangi, coconut craftsman extraordinaire

It’s difficult to sit with Mwangi without getting misty-eyed.  He reminds me too much of my beloved friends back “home” in the Ankarana.

Bwana Mwangi, one of my favorite faces on the island

Mwangi, or Bwana Mwangi as he’s known, is a woodworker by training and a coconut-craftsman by trade. His real name is Murathimi, and his home is the far-off Mount Kenya region. He came to Lamu to work with his brother, another artisan who had just begun selling in his own shop, Ogre Beads (to be featured here soon, I hope!), and assured Mwangi that Lamu was a lovely place to make a living. Tourists, warmth, ocean breezes, beaches, trade from around the world…

a poster I designed for Mwangi

Mwangi has found his own comfy corner in Lamu — the corner of Casuarina and Rhoda mosque, to be exact. He spends his days creating with coconuts: jewelry (rings, bracelets, earrings), decorations (windchimes, paperweights, trinkets), any number of different coconut-shaped cases and boxes, ashtrays, goblets, candle-holders… He lets a million combinations of form and function guide his creativity.

coconut creation: incense holder, with designs, decorations, door, and smoke hole on top!

I sat with Mwangi for two afternoons in a row, learning his story and his craft, and making my own coconut “jar”, cover and all. His instruction was patient, enthusiastic, and encouraging; my result was no prize-winning work of art, but something he helped me to create with my own hands nonetheless.

not beautiful... but not bad

Mwangi likes the strength, flexibility, and beauty of coconuts as a medium, and has come to prefer it to wood. He smiles as he files and polishes the surface of his pieces, slowly revealing the unique patterns in each shell as he works from his coarsest to his finest filing tools. Mwangi also prefers the sustainability of coconuts, as opposed to wood: they are abundant, cheap, harvested without harming the tree, and normally discarded after the water and “flesh” have been removed for consumption.

Using the shell for artistic and practical purposes is just one of many good ways to benefit from coconuts. The fibers can be used as natural sponges, mats, and brushes; the husk can be made into eco-charcoal; fibers can even be woven together to make erosion-controlling mats, as is done by the NGO “Cocotech” in the Philippines, recognized in the 2005 BBC World Challenge Award contest.

Mwangi isn’t the only artist using coconuts for his craft. Several other shops and individuals around town have coconut-made goods on sale; unfortunately there is little collaboration among them, much suspicion of idea-stealing, and no easy way for them to all reach or be found by their target market: tourists.

Mwangi works on our collaboratively-designed incense holder

When I daydream of staying in Lamu, one of my ideas involves founding a local art gallery, which would incentivize each artist and crafter in Lamu (regardless of where they originate) to create his or her best, unique pieces for display and sale. The gallery would provide a platform for equal exposure for each artist, along with artists’ biographies and a map showing where each artist is located around the island. Plus an adjoining cafe, rotating art exhibits, local music and events in the evening… but I digress.

tools, for coconut-carving and cutting and shaping and etching and polishing

Mwangi and I are now working on a coconut-shell dhow, a ring, a wine goblet. Sitting, sharing ideas for designs and small-business success, sharing stories.  And wishing that my L’Artisanat de L’Ankarana group weren’t so far away in Madagascar.

Look for Mwangi if you find yourself in Lamu!  And for other artists to be featured here.

sustainable tourism & cultural preservation for the Lamu archipelago: a profile of Issa Loo

For all its cultural and ecological delights, the Lamu Archipelago has few options in the way of sustainable tourism.  Personally and professionally, I am extremely interested in sustainable tourism, so I was delighted to be put in contact with Ahmed Issa Loo: Curatorial Assistant at the Lamu Museum, and sustainable tourism entrepreneur.

Issa in his office

Actually, an “intrapreneur” as he refers to himself, striving to forge fruitful partnerships across the cultural preservation, conservation, and tourism sectors to make his sustainable tourism vision a reality.  Issa exudes the passion of a visionary, the gravity of a documentarist, and the enthusiasm of a tour guide.  With his plentiful energy and wide scope of interests, Issa is a man with his hand in many pots at once.  He recently underwent training in how to sustainably exploit coconuts, and is experimenting on his coconut-filled farm.  He is endeavoring to document in multimedia format many of the key aspects of Lamu life: dhow-building, donkeys, sailing and fishing, and more.  Issa is also compiling a condensed written history of Lamu and the islands, hoping to create brochures, leaflets, and a book with its contents.  He is perpetually researching and contemplating how he can contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of his homeland, Pate Island, just north of Lamu in the archipelago.  He spends as much free time as possible on his farm on Pate, “recharging his batteries”, and working on his main project: sustainable tourism for Pate.

Issa, translating while I photograph and interview dhow builders in Lamu -- helping on one of his projects

“I don’t go home to cultivate land,” he says.  “I go home to cultivate a philosophy.”  Issa wants to make sure that the right story is told — about the culture, history, and current lifestyle of Lamu — no matter if the museum, tour guides, or hotels are doing the telling.  Involvement in sustainable tourism is another way to tell that story, while ensuring that the community is involved in every step of the process.  Issa is trained as a land surveyor, and had the opportunity to survey many of Kenya’s major Swahili archaeological sites.  In Mombasa, he was member of a cultural guide association, before starting work for the museum at Fort Jesus.  Working with his tour guide colleagues and the museum, Issa piloted a Swahili Cultural Tours project, designing tour packages on the Swahili Coast.  The idea has been incubating for a while, but now Issa is piloting a cultural tour of Pate island to launch Swahili Cultural Tours.  The program combines “agro-tourism” (visitors will stay on a traditional farm and have the option to partake in farm activities), ecotourism (walk and row through the mangrove, learning about their vital ecological services), and cultural tourism (visit traditional villages on Pate, learning local customs and participating in traditional activities).   The package, as Issa hopes, will be an ideal option for visitors to Lamu island to see the rest of the archipelago.

Our meeting, Issa says, was not by coincidence.  It is all part of the “collective consciousness” as he calls it, allowing us to share our ideas, experiences and interest to help one another reach our goals.  What a joy to meet someone so willing to share on this level, when so many others choose secrecy, or family business networks only.  Issa likes to be inspired by these connections; it fuels his growth, he says.  “As I grow, my trees are growing.  My philosophy is growing.  Philosophy is not taught; it is inspired.”

I also don’t believe that our meeting was an accident.  My passion for sustainable tourism has left me wondering why so few people in Lamu are attempting to offer tour packages, hotels, ecolodges, restaurants, or other businesses/products that follow the principles of sustainable tourism.  It’s been a pleasure to sit with Issa and other friends in the tourism business here and offer my advice on why and how to do this.  Like through following the Principles for Sustainable Tourism from TIES (The International Ecotourism Society), for example, or learning from the experiences and successes of northern Tanzania (where such principles have been widely implemented and their impacts measured), or following the basic guidelines of Participatory Analysis for Community Action in the same manner that  a grassroots development worker (or Peace Corps Volunteer!) would approach a community project.

global sustainable tourism criteria

The Pate trip through Swahili Cultural Tours will allow Issa to share his native culture, personal philosophy, and the joy and solace of farm life with guests, and all in a collaborative manner that works with local community, improves local livelihoods, and promotes local environmental protection.

Issa plans to have regular Pate tours fully online by the 2012 season.  For more information or to arrange your tour in 2011, contact Issa by email (ahmedissa34@yahoo.com) or by phone (+254722991272), or contact me via this post.

back in Lamu

There is an undeniable magnetism about this place. I began as a skeptic – how amazing can Lamu be? — but I’ve been converted. I’ve been to Lamu four times in five months, and this time I’m staying for nearly an entire month stretch. Lamu will be my base of operations for private Swahili lessons, online courses, photo essays, and relaxation, as I transition from one chapter to the next. And all the while, there is an excited little voice in my head that says, “I could make this place my home.” A daunting prospect for someone who loves her mobility as much as I do.

with faces like these....

...and faces like this....

For now, it is a haven of warmth, sea breezes, muezzin calls to prayer, windswept beaches, majestic dhows, captivating Swahili culture, and fun-loving friends. Not to mention a photographer’s dream.

"impermanence"...one of my favorite shots

Camels, for example. I’ve decided that camels are the most beautiful animals on earth. Long, luscious eyelashes around deep, watery, enormous eyes. A swaying, floating, graceful gait. An endearing, gentle affection for one another, shown through soft nuzzling or the interlacing of necks. Long, almost whimsical shadows on the beach. Absolutely beautiful.

write your own caption...

from the series "chewing camel", mid-chew

camel, buddha-smile

An adult donkey is not nature’s most breathtaking creation: large head, stout torso, and short legs that don’t look nearly strong enough to support the hefty loads that they do. But donkeys, I’ve discovered, are still beautiful. In colors from gray, to brown, to auburn, to white; with a spiked mane, and a cross-shaped stripe across their shoulders and down their back. A well-loved donkey is a loyal, sweet, playful, and intelligent animal. I know a donkey named Kishuna who can open doors with her teeth, and has been seen standing on her hind legs, front legs in her owner’s hands, kissing his cheek.

art-deco donkey

mama's watchful eye while donklet drinks

Melissa, donk

But if I had my way, I’d have myself a herd of baby donkeys – or “donklets”, as I’ve taken to calling them. They are the epitome of cuteness. Gangly, with bushy fur and stumbly gait, scrawny legs, over-sized head, confused gaze, and utterly loving attachment to mama. It must be donklet season here on Lamu island – around every corner I see one that I want to steal. If I do happen to steal you donkey, I promise I’ll return it when its cuteness turns to stout comeliness.

fuzzy donklet

a true Lamu man in the making

And the dhows. If only I had grown up here, where sailing isn’t restricted to the wealthy folks like back home… Then again, as a woman in this very Islamic place, it’s not likely I’d have had much chance to learn to manoeuvre a dhow. At least now I get the chance to ride in them, admire their graceful tilt as they cut the waves, and the fearless, carefree men who sail them. So far I’ve only learned the names of a few parts of the dhow – but not how to make them go. I’m not sure I have the brawn and the guts to try… and risk sending fellow sailors sailing overboard.

returning from "sunset sail"

sunset fleet

dhow frame

dhows at dusk

Lamu architecture. Classic Arabic design and flourish. Attention to detail; fine, intricate carvings on and around doorways; inviting porches and balconies designed for shaded, cool, relaxing conversation; aquamarine, deep blue, creamy white, black rafters and red eaves; peaceful alcoves. Lamu is a maze of narrow alleyways – “vichochoro”, one of my favorite new words in Swahili – running among these buildings, some three and four stories high, most made of compressed coral stone. The coral is harvested from underground, from some of the other small islands surrounding Lamu; no living reef is harmed in the name of housing. The coral is absorbent: it captures moisture from the ocean breeze, helping to cool the rooms inside and the air flowing through the vichochoro. Heat that would be oppressive is tamed, pacified, and put to positive use by intelligent building design. The “green-design” trends of the West could stand to learn a lot from Lamu’s ancient wisdom.

Lamu from below

for displaying

Sipping spiced chai, listening to the call to prayer, cooking curries and baking chapatis, walking the hectic seafront or the deserted windswept beach, watching the night sky fill with stars, eating with my hands, contemplating the overlap of Islam and tourism, learning the rhythms of life in Lamu.

Misty Mountains

From these lofty heights, we can see into Rwanda and Congo, down into forests and valleys where both gorillas and guerrillas take shelter. Attacks and incidents in this part of Uganda are rare, but the Lord’s Resistance Army is not to be forgotten. The staff of 40 here at Clouds Mountain Gorilla Lodge is accompanied by two Ugandan soldiers each night, just in case.

built for relaxation

 

lofty outlook

luxury lounge

Luckily I would only encounter the real gorillas during my 8-day stay in Nkuringo…twice! Being friends with the lodge manager (who is in turn friends with the park warden of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, the main attraction in this part of the country) has its advantages.

Melissa found this guy in the garden... Rwenzori's chameleon! first tri-horn i've ever seen

Melissa had just flown out to join me in Lamu a week before my arrival here at her home in Uganda, a final vacation before her last few weeks of work as manager at Clouds. In Lamu, she had decided she would come back and join me there in January, but first we’d spend the holidays together at her upscale lodge.

enjoyed the view while we waited to get into the forest...

We got ourselves on a sort of informal waiting list – waiting to hear from the warden if an open slot happened to appear for gorilla tracking – and I spent the meantime reading, writing, relaxing, catching up on email, editing photos, taking new ones, relaxing some more… Transitioning. Melissa had handover reports to write, staff to manage, guests to please, and bags to pack. We spent Christmas inventing cocktails, and unsuccessfully trying to download sentimental holiday tunes from the internet. Apparently Uganda is trusted neither by iTunes, nor NetFlix, nor any other file-sharing and file-purchasing website, so we had to make do with the same three Burl Ives songs, over and over and over.

The 25th we had a false alarm as a Christmas present: two open spots for the Nkuringo gorilla group! Get dressed quick, run downstairs, 10 minutes to report to the office! But by the time we tied our sneakers, the two guests had showed up, arriving just in time from their hotel in nearby Kisoro. We relaxed, biding our time. And by the 27th we had our chance for real… But on the other side of the Bwindi Forest, with a recent splinter group formed by a rogue silverback named Mishaya. We packed our lunches the night before, slept well, arose early, and hit the road by 6:30am. Distance-wise the track is short – but the road conditions are so terrible that the 20 kilometer ride takes over an hour.

And you never know what might happen along the way: on our ride, coming around a corner, we nearly collided with a small crowd of people carrying a gurney up the hillside. A frail old woman was wrapped in blankets, wheezing and shaking, suffering from a severe asthmatic episode. We stopped our car, took in the sick woman and three companions, and dropped them off at the local hospital on the way to the gorillas. Melissa has seen all manner of medical emergencies in her year in Nkuringo: obstructed birth, trucks rolling down hills with passengers in the back, and worse. Once, even the rescue vehicle’s wheel came off its axle and went bouncing down the hillside, the front left side of the car grinding to a halt in the dirt road. Hours of agony ensued while suffering patient and comforting Melissa waited for mechanical assistance, and finally made their way to the hospital around 4am. Mother and newborn baby survived by a thread.

Tracking the Mishaya group would prove to be almost as challenging. Melissa had only ever been to track the Nkuringo group, where the hike starts just below the entrance to Clouds Lodge and often ends before lunch time – but our Mishaya adventure lasted nearly 11 hours, two of them on the road, and nine of them in the aptly-named Impenetrable Forest, cutting our own path through the thick growth, soaking in the heavy rains, scrambling and sliding down slick slopes and climbing hand-over-hand up steeper grades than any of us had bargained for. Luckily we were in good, young, strong, international company – a German, an Emirati, and two British to round out our American-ness – and in the care of phenomenal porters, and Benjamin our indefatigable leader. Whereas Nkuringo tourist-trackers are often back by noon, we didn’t even find our Mishaya gorillas until 1pm.

tracking the trackers

the "trail"

gorilla bed -- getting close!

The system is fantastic: UWA trackers (Ugandan Wildlife Authority) leave early each morning, walkie-talkies and Garmins in hand, trying to find where the gorillas have decided to roam and feed for the day. They pinpoint their location by GPS, starting from where they ended up the day before, and then follow along with them until the tourists catch up. Benjamin wasn’t just leading us on a wild climbing maze through the forest (although it did feel that way now and again) – he was in constant communication with the trackers, trying to cut us the easiest trail from our current location to the gorillas – but “easy” is a relative term in these parts. Each group of gorillas is visited by only eight tourists per day, and only for one hour. These strictly-enforced limits are what allow the gorilla populations to thrive – habituated to humans yet not harmed by their presence – and the high cost of tracking permits ($500 per person) allows UWA to maintain its parks and support the local communities, many of whose sources of livelihood have had to shift from forest resources to ecotourism to accommodate gorilla protection. From my short time in Nkuringo, it seems as if the communities are indeed deriving sustainable economic benefits and environmental services from the arrangement.

Melissa and I were lucky (and connected) and able to snag the un-purchased permits at fantastically low prices at the last second. Thank you Mishaya, Christmas, Tabu, and all of the other amazing gorillas that let me bask in your peaceful, graceful, powerful presence; thank you UWA, for your skill and devotion to these forests and their amazing creatures.

We found Mishaya just after a midday downpour. We actually found the trackers first, who with a smile told us to relax, have some lunch, leave our heavy bags and walking sticks behind, and then follow them up into the bush. There was no path; our guides and trackers were hacking through the brush, matting it down as footing, and leading us up a steep slope with vines and prickers and leaves as our steps. The apprehension was palpable…

And then, suddenly, the magnificent, breathtaking silence of Mishaya. You could tell by the size of his head that he was enormous, but only his head and shoulders were visible as he pulled vines from a tree trunk and stripped the green bark with his teeth, the rest of his hulking body sunk into the greenery. I was stunned, watching his hands, three times the size of human hands, with elongated palms, and skin like the thickest black leather gloves, and black fingernails. He was mostly still for a long time, obscured by green, feasting on leaves and bark, only his arms moving. I watched him in utter reverence and respect. The forest around us seemed more impenetrable than ever; this moment was a wrinkle in time, a long inhale, all-encompassing awe.

no easy way in or out

gorilla hand

Mishaya appears

Eventually he stood up, and suddenly, smoothly, began to glide up the slope, mere meters from our silent, humble gazes. How such a massive creature can move so silently is incredible to observe, and through thick bush that had set us bumbling humans a-sliding and a-stumbling hundreds of times throughout the day. Our one precious hour with Mishaya and the others in his group, slowly emerging from the dense greenery all around us, passed like sweet molasses. I could hardly speak, and had to force myself to take photos. I could hear the gorillas chewing, breathing, grunting, wondering myself just how habituated they were to us gawking humans. Proximity to that much power and bulk, despite the fact that our trackers and guides were confidently and peacefully looking on, makes you pause and give thanks for your life up until now, just in case…

Mishaya pays us little mind

Our Mishaya tracking left us exhausted. The whole adventure took from 6:30am to nearly 6:30pm, and the hike out of the forest after our hour with the gorillas was at least three times harder than the morning trek had been. We resisted the urge to ask “how much farther”, “how much longer”, “is it steep”, and other anguishing questions; Instead I replayed the gorilla visit over and over and over in my head, smiling as serenely as I could despite the strenuous hike up and down muddy slopes, across slick log bridges, through deep muck and cold streams.

Melissa and I, soaked, filthy, sweaty, ecstatic

out of the Impenetrable Forest, still an hour to go, winding down the mountain

adorable boys on the hillside

universal children fact: there's nothing like seeing yourself make silly faces in the camera

One day of rest and photo editing back at the Lodge, and our luck struck gold again: there were two empty spots to track the Nkuringo group the next morning! Our knees could barely bend and walking downhill was minor torture, but we bucked up and showed up for a second, final forage into the Impenetrable Forest.

We found the Nkuringo group by 11am, not far from the main trail, and not even into the actual protected area of the forest (we were still in the buffer zone). The Mishaya trek had left me weary, and our co-trekkers on this second visit were young, sinewy, energetic, and strappy Canadian/Spanish/French/British trail-warriors; I felt like an 80 year-old chain smoker. My knees were on fire by the time we made it to the gorillas.

approaching the forest

much more open forest than Mishaya experience... and some sun!

This time we were surrounded. No more waiting and wondering if we would catch sight of a full gorilla body; we had silverbacks, blackbacks, mothers, adolescents, and babies all around us, idly taking note of our presence as they grazed and lolled and played. I could smell gorilla. There were matted-down patches of brush where gorillas had been laying, shaking trees where gorillas were pulling down vines for lunch, piles of fresh gorilla dung, swarms of small flies biting gorillas and us alike, audible gorilla breathing, grunting…
and farting.

Tabu, the sweetest little gorilla

almost human

unconcerned with our watching eyes

with relish

munching

Christmas, the silverback born on Christmas day, seemed to delight in his own farts like a 15-year old boy. He slowly looked around him as he farted, as if checking to make sure everyone else was as proud of his gastrointestinal prowess as he was. He ate and ate and ate, and his round Buddha belly gave the impression that this was indeed his favorite pastime.

Our guides eased us into the midst of the group, cutting through brush, leading us across moldy fallen logs and mud pits, until the “seven-meters distance” rule was broken on nearly all sides. We stayed in a relatively tight group however, moving slowly, keeping our camera flashes switched off and our voices down so as not to create any apparent threat (as if I could manage to speak in anything above a whisper anyhow), and following our guides’ cues. Melissa had me take a photo of her with Christmas in the background, sitting atop a perch of mud and stone, as if he were sitting on her head. We slowly switched spots so she could take the same shot, but Christmas was already sliding down from his throne; he sunk into the shade beside his former perch and not far from my side, pulling leaves from the branches above him and continuing to feast.

I switched from a telephoto to a wide-angle lens, and watched him feed. I wasn’t more than 20 feet from him, with a guide by my side, congratulating me on taking nice photos. And then suddenly Christmas decided to move, and apparently I was in his way. In a matter of seconds that felt like a gruesome eternity, he rolled forward onto his hands and feet, came towards me, and smacked me in the knee. That long arm reaching out toward me, I was sure, would be the last thing I lay eyes on in this existence. The guide held me by the shoulders from behind, whispering to me to stay calm as I whimpered helplessly under my breath. I was sure Christmas would next bite my arm off, but instead he just reached for the branch above my head and continued eating. Laughing, another guide urged me, “take the picture! now is nice picture!”; but having just seen my life flash before my eyes, I could only crumple onto a muddy log and wait for my hands to stop shaking. I thanked my lucky stars that gorillas are herbivores.

I managed to get some lovely shots anyhow, and somehow my knees carried me all the way back up the hill to Clouds. I don’t remember how many new cocktails Melissa and I invented that night, but they did the trick.

It took days for the gorilla smile to melt from my face.

steel rails

My job as assistant leader on the Lewis & Clark College overseas studies program ended in early December, and I returned to Lamu for the third time.  For nearly two weeks I spent time with ten of my former students, relaxing and decompressing, as peers and friends rather than just teacher and students.  More than ever, I realized just how fortunate I am to have had such a unique, fantastic group of students, and I know I’ve come away with lifelong friends.

last fireside gathering, at the econest

They all went home for the holidays, only just making it to the airports through the unprecedented snowfall of the European winter.  Myself, I decided on an overland African journey, from Lamu in northeast Kenya to Nkuringo in southwest Uganda.  I wanted the travel to be as meaningful as the destination, and had enough free time that my arrival dates were flexible.  How many more times in my life will I have such a luxuriously unstructured stretch of weeks?

classic view from a dhow

I left Lamu by dhow to reach Mokowe, the nearest mainland village and the departure point for the bus.  I caught the 10am bus to Mombasa, seven hours south along the Kenyan coast.  At 4pm, sweaty and dusty from the bus trip, I took a tuk-tuk from the bus station (a street with lots of bus company offices, really) to the train station, where a friend had already reserved my spot in a first class car to Nairobi.  With better planning I’d have arranged to have a shower somewhere in Mombasa… dirty, frumpy, and inconsolably hot, I struggled to distract myself as I waited for the train to depart.  Without luggage storage services at the station and traveling solo, I was forced to carry my backpack with me up and down the platform, and could only muster the energy to take a few shots of the scenery.

Mombasa platform

on or off what? is it that easy to derail?

Finally the train was ready to depart, only an hour late — not bad for African norms of timeliness!  A first-class ticket includes bedding, dinner, and breakfast, and a cabin for only two passengers — my cabin turned out to be just me; the entire compartment seemed to only have six or seven people in total.  The window only opens halfway, and hte only message passed on by the train staff was “please keep your door locked and window closed, Madame”… But the heat was still stifling, so I took my chances with train rustlers and opened both.  It wasn’t until after dinner, sometimes around 10pm, when the train crossed into more merciful climes and the temperature dropped…

my luxury accommodations

first class

looks like it's from a space ship... but didn't work, alas

Dinner was announced by bell in the most direct manner: via bell-boy, walking through the cars, jingling and clanging as he shouted that dinner was served.  In Lamu just the night before, I had been sharing my hotel (Abdul’s lovely Econest once again) with a couple from the south of France, the first French people I’d met in East Africa; as chance would have it, in the dining car I found myself seated across from another man from the south of France, and flanked by two men from Poland.  Behind us, a group of Kenyan-Americans; across from us, German teenagers; standing in the middle of the car, two singer-guitarists serenading the diners with the usual triage of tourist tunes: “Malaika” (a Kenyan classic), “Jambo Bwana” (a coastal favorite), and “Three Little Birds” (the classic Bob Marley hymn).

international railway dining

jambo...jambo bwana...

The servers were impressive, riding the waves of the pitching, rocking train while ladling soup into each bowl, and pouring wine into our glasses.  (My table mates and I didn’t share a common language among the four of us, but we did find a common taste for red wine).  With their specially-designed food carts and pre-packaged meals, flight attendants suddenly seemed to have an easy job.

night, from the train window

Several times in the night I awoke to a stopped train and a dark and windy nightscape.  At breakfast, my French table mate swore he had seen elephants and lions in the shadows during the night…

Myself, I dreamed of scenes from Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, and Vik’s grandfather’s stories of laying the railway back at the end of the 19th century.  The narrow tracks, the cars and coaches in their faded glamor and glory, the slow pace, the deserted stations in the middle of the countryside… not much has changed.  In fact, the train is used far far less nowadays than it was in the previous century.  But what a memorable way to cross Kenya.

In Nairobi, I had enough time to shower, wash some clothes, and relax before my next train — and “luckily” Louise, one of my studnets from the program, was stuck in town, bored at her cushy hotel where KLM had paid for a room while the airports in Europe dealt with their snow issues. I relished the shower, and we shared a cocktail and a buffet lunch that Louise managed to pilfer for me.

Louise finally left for Europe, and I left for Kisumu that evening, the second leg of my railway journey. This time I booked a second-class car — four people per cabin (ladies only, men are put with men), breakfast, and bedding. I bought my own snacks for dinner. Luck was with me again: my cabin-mates (although they exceeded four persons) were a sweet mother and her three adorable children, and a deaf Peace Corps Volunteer. Writing notes back and forth in her small notebook, we discovered our common link as PCVs (she wrote “my site” and I guessed from there) and mutual PCV friends in Kenya, and shared our stories.

cabin to Kisumu

2nd-class comfort

upper-level view

I took the top left bunk, and laying on my stomach, absorbed the dust and noise and lights of the Nairobi outskirts, and then the peaceful night scenes of the countryside, gently easing into morning light and dew. The train chugged past zebra, careened over rickety bridges and coursing rivers, crossed rural roads with scarcely a stop sign, and attracted dozens of local children running and gathering alongside our line of cars at each whistle-stop. I lost my shorts out the window, drying in a breeze that was stronger than I’d expected. I tried to capture the ambiance of the ride thorugh my lens… But really, should the opportunity ever arise, you must take the journey for yourself.

early morning countryside

countryside from the train

In Kisumu, I grabbed another tuk-tuk from the train station to the bus station, where I booked myself a seat across the Ugandan border all the way to the capital, Kampala. The public restroom was a passable half-shower, after my 14-hour journey by train, and the local market proved a reliable supply of chapati, mangoes, and peanuts for the ride ahead. No hotel stays on this journey; at least the trains had afforded the delightful luxury of a cushioned, pillowed sleeping cubby, and Louise’s delayed-flight plight had provided me with a shower.

Kisumu tuk-tuk

The border crossing at Busia was hectic, with throngs of pedestrians and peddlers, hordes of lorries, fleets of buses, general pandemonium. The system was the same as it had been at the Tanzanian-Kenyan border: disembark from your bus, walk to the exit immigration office, and then walk across the border to the entry point, register there, and hope to god you don’t lose sight of your bus or your fellow passengers. Somehow it seems to work out alright, although I discovered later that my wine had been taken from my luggage — it had been sitting atop my clothing, so easily snagged that the police must have thought it was a Christmas offering. Otherwise unscathed, and with a Ugandan visa and several thousand Ugandan shillings in my pocket (don’t be fooled — it was only about 10 dollars), the journey continued.

from the EasyCoach... didn't dare taking my camera outside!

I arrived in Kampala just before 10pm, and made my way from the EasyCoach bus drop-off point to the Akamba bus office, escorted by some friendly policemen on a walk that was too short for a taxi but too dark for a lone white girl at night in the city. Apparently there would be an 11pm bus from Kampala to Kigali, Rwanda that could drop me off in Kabale, Uganda in the southwest. I almost wished there were no seats left, wanted an excuse to find a hotel for one merciful night’s sleep — but I managed to snag one of the last two spots on the bus. The ride was neither comfortable nor even-temperatured nor pleasant-smelling, but I was exhausted enough to doze anyhow.

At 5:30am I awoke just in time to stumble out of the bus into a drizzly, overcast Kabale crossroad, preparing to somehow figure out where to catch another bus, my last one, to Kisoro. So close to the finish line.

The “boda boda” motorcycle taxi drivers were already clamoring to take me for a joyride, knowing that as a dazed newcomer I wouldn’t realize whether they were just spinning me in circles or actually taking me across town; but luckily as the Akamba bus pulled away, it revealed another, dirtier bus idling just across the muddy street. “Kisoro! Kisoro!” I heard, and escaped from the boda boda’s early-morning swindling claws.

By 9am I had made it. A real swindler posing as staff on the crowded, musty, smelly bus had stolen my bus fare, and at double the actual cost, and then alighted at the next stop — but the real staff took pity (and maybe a little shame at their own pitiful operations?) and let me off without paying a second time. Little did they know that I only had enough for a stick of gum left in my pockets anyhow…

And suddenly, euphorically, I was in Melissa’s SUV, starting on the very last two-hour leg of the three-and-a-half-day journey, headed into the luxurious arms of the Clouds Mountain Gorilla Lodge.

…But far too exhausted to do more than smile and snooze.

ending / mwisho

At the beginning of safari, I thought it was the raddest, baddest vehicle I’d ever seen: a WWII-era German supply truck, with 4-foot-high tires, and a bed converted into a 17-seated viewing gallery from which we would absorb northern Tanzania.

Thad told us we’d come to have a love-hate relationship with the Unimog, our truck. How right he was. By the last few days of safari, I found myself slapping the side of the truck and kicking its tires in futile, angry frustration, cursing its suspension system and resenting its open sides, which blessed us with beautiful vistas over the African landscape, and tortured us with smacks in the face from thorny acacia branches. I came to associate the vehicle with lower back pain and the unshakeable fear of toppling over each time we hit an uneven patch of road. Which is nearly every five minutes.

at least the view was, in a word, stunning

I made my peace with the truck on the second-to-last day of our safari, when I discovered that the best way to ride in it is lying on the floor in the aisle. Chelsea let me lay on her sleeping bag, dirty enough already from 30 days on the road that some floor grime wouldn’t hurt it. From this low vantage point, the roar of the engine became a soft rumble lulling me to sleep; this near to the ground, the pitching and tipping of the truck bed felt like the gentle rocking of a giant bassinet; even the raw smell of my students’ feet down below was preferable to the dust, dirt, and acacia thorns in my face up above. I knew I was missing a few hours of possibly beautiful scenery, but it was worth a few peaceful hours of sleep.

At some point while I slept, the truck must have crossed over to Mars. I awoke to a dramatic, surreal landscape: the skies ahead were split down the middle into two distinct colors, a deep hazy gray and a vivid sapphire blue. Rain to the left, above the glassy sulfuric waters of Lake Natron; sunshine through clouds to the right, casting deep shadows on Oldonyo Lengai mountain. This is the hottest part of Tanzania, yet at 5pm it felt tolerably warm, almost cool, and looked astonishingly beautiful enough to forget the temperature for a moment.

japanese garden, complete with african mountain

We were passing through Natron only for the night, a stopover to break the painful monotony of the long return drive to Arusha. What a tease to only spend 12 hours there! We arrived at dusk, changed into our swimsuits and kanga wraps, and headed off at a brisk pace through a gorge across from the lake. Deeper and deeper, fording the shallow river again and again, the mildly sulfuric smell of the water and lime green sheen of the rocks drawing us in, we finally made our way to the most beautiful, dramatic waterfall: walls of water plunging into the river from both sides of the crevice, almost too strong to stand underneath, powerful enough to wash away weeks of safari grime and dust. The students and I transformed into water sprites, floating and swimming and dancing in the blissfully cold water, wishing sundown wasn’t mere minutes away.

just before everyone decided to skinnydip

Less than an hour of swimming and soaking, and we headed back to our campsite, a dark and somewhat treacherous hike. Unfortunately at camp two of the students ended up with a fierce bout of nausea and vomiting, something they had begun to feel around lunchtime that was now reaching a nighttime crescendo. This was neither the first or last time there would be illness in our ranks. Loving family that the students had become, many spent the night awake looking after one another in shifts, and care was taken to assure people comfy spots on the truck for the last long leg of our journey back to Arusha.

Oldonyo Lengai

Winding through the volcanic valleys at the foot of Oldonyo Lengai and its neighboring peaks, across gorges and acacia woodlands, and finally down an escarpment towards the main road… leaving Lake Natron was one of the most beautiful parts of our journey. I stayed awake for the first few hours, enough to soak in the Martian landscape, tell it I’d be back someday for a proper visit, and to take some photos…

morning over Oldonyo Lengai

 

evening skies

I eventually found a spot on the floor, head to toe with Jahhavi, and dozed my way back to Arusha. The abrupt change in road surface – from despicably rocky to silky smooth – awoke me as we neared the city. I stood at the front of the truck bed with Killerai our guide and marveled that our 30 day roadtrip was reaching its end. When we finally pulled into the Ilboru Lodge parking lot for two days of post-safari poolside lounging, I was almost sad to say goodbye to the truck. Almost.

The lodge shower was disappointing, but luckily the previous day’s waterfall had done a fine job of scrubbing away several layers of dirt and skin. I did a load of laundry in the sink, brown water rinsing down the drain… At dinner time I convinced Rich to allow the students to send their laundry off to be cleaned by the lodge. It was technically against the rules for us to wash it in the sink, and the students’ clothes were by and large far dirtier than my own, especially after those last few days living with the Maasai, having absorbed the smell of goats, cookfires, and dung, and fleas and bedbugs to boot. It was the least the program could do, since the students hadn’t had the opportunity to wash in over a week, and we were probably a minor health risk to the rest of the lodge guests in our unsanitary state.

After dinner, looking at Abby’s photos from home, trying to sip a glass of wine, I had myself become quite nauseous quite suddenly. I had to excuse myself rather abruptly, and trotted back to my room in time to vomit up dinner. I spent the rest of the night dry heaving, drinking water, and trying to make the room stop spinning. Whatever Louise and Nate had just gotten over was apparently taking me under. I didn’t get in any time by the pool, but spent most of the next day making a nice dent in my bed, drifting in and out of sleep until the nausea and headache had subsided. My students kept a caring eye on me, brought me food, kept me company. It was one of the millions of times I’ve thanked my lucky stars to have such a great group of students on this trip.

After Ilboru, we headed back to the Dorobo camp at Olasiti on the edge of Arusha, where we would spend our last three weeks working on the independent study portion of the program. Students were trained in basic quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, and each picked a topic to study and develop into a hypothesis in the community of Olasiti. A few days of preparation, research, and survey design at camp (where internet and books were available) were followed by a week-long homestay in Olasiti, where students would live in situ while conducting their independent study project. Students worked in groups or individually, and each had a translator working with them to ensure as accurate and effective a study as possible. I had also decided to pursue an independent study project, and committed to finish it through the end to the best of my ability, biding any issues or emergencies needing attention among the students. My days of research with my fantastic translator, Hance, were interrupted with a few trips to the hospital to deal with eye infections and belly bugs among the students; but even so, in the end, I was able to uncover a good amount of information regarding my topic, ecotourism. I look forward to reworking and reusing the questionnaire that I designed in various other contexts – like in Lamu, where I’ll be living all January, or in Madagascar, where I’ll be returning in March…

It’s difficult to write about the end of our journey. It was busy, yet slow like molasses by comparison: a completely different pace than safari, where we’d been sleeping one-to-four nights in each place, traveling great distances in the Unimog in between, covering a breadth of some of Tanzania’s most dramatic landscapes in a relatively short amount of time… And now, camped out for over a week, in a homestay for over a week, with short trips into town every few days for research or errands or museums. Yet working hard – I was finishing my graduate school applications while doing my independent study project and attending to the needs of the program, students were finishing up papers for other parts of the program and registering online for their next semester of classes at LC, plus everyone worrying and planning for their post-program travels. And amidst the energy and excitement, I heard from home that one of my oldest and dearest friends, Seth, had taken his own life. The sudden and devastating news caught me off guard during such an immensely happy time, and I let myself retreat a few steps, contemplate our life and memories together, celebrate his loving spirit, and mourn his passing. Once again, my students were the epitome of caring, understanding, and supportive. It is always so wrenching to be so far from home when things like this happen, but yet hard to feel alone with so many points of light all around you.

Goodbye didn’t really feel like goodbye when it finally came on December 3^rd, after much merry-making, toasting to one another, and devouring delicious Ethiopian cuisine… As it was in the beginning (over Habesha Ethiopian food in Nairobi) so shall it be in the end (at Arusha’s Herbs and Spices Ethiopian restaurant) – although we enjoyed every last East African mandazi, chapati, and coconut curry in between.

All but four of the students would be staying on for a while. Ben and Annalisa headed to Nairobi, and then hopped a plane to Madagascar (!!) where I hoped they’d connect with all of the friends and NGOs I tried to put them in touch with before their departure. (Now that their trip has ended, I know that everything went fantastically and they are well on their way to devoting their lives to conservation and development!) Gareth headed straight home for the holidays, while Sam gave herself a week in Nairobi to stay with her Riruta host family, with whom she had become very close at the beginning of our program and with whom she enjoyed her last days in Africa. As for the rest of the crew, Nate and Abby took off for Moshi to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, before joining the rest of the students in Lamu, where I’d helped them to book rooms and possible volunteer work for their last days in Kenya. For better or for worse, a lot of the volunteer opportunities didn’t pan out as planned, mostly because it’s so hard to organize and achieve something meaningful for such a short period of time – but the students took advantage of the beautiful breezes and beaches of Lamu island and let themselves just relax.

I spent three days in Kajiado, in the dream-like hillside home of Mike and Judy Rainy, not far from Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya. Delicious chai and shared meals, windswept views over the valley, zebra and gazelles and birds by the thousands below, and an intense debriefing of my experiences as assistant leader of the overseas studies program. Mike and Judy developed the biology component of the program and ran it for a number of years before Dorobo Safaris took over, and had many memories and insight to share. I would have like to stay with Mike and Judy as their intern, as we had planned, but in the end we decided it wasn’t the right time. I had accepted a job in Madagascar starting in March, and they don’t have many safaris scheduled until at least that time, and in the meantime have holiday celebrations and personal matters to attend to. I look forward to seeing them again before moving on from Kenya… They have been an enormous inspiration, with a fount of warmth and hospitality to boot.

So I joined my students in Lamu, via a small splurge-of-a-flight with Safari Link, in another amazing little 12-passenger plane. This time I was slightly less afraid to use my camera – the last time, I was sure I would be the cause of electronic interference and a spiraling plunge back to earth. Maybe someday I’ll have the guts to skydive, but for now the closest I’ll get is the dips and shimmies and shakes of miniature planes. (Dad, I assure you, I scoured the internet for crash reports, and the only Safari Link accident was when a parked unmanned plane was side-swiped by another aircraft as it tried to park alongside it. Far safer than driving.)

from the air...our tiny shadow

Thus my latest, greatest job has come to an end…and I truly hope that my students appreciated our time together even half as much as I have.

Thus I find myself on a long and lush vacation…

Ngorongoro

The misty Nou Forest felt like an ancient home. The Hadza, like distant family. Tarangire was a dizzying menagerie of animals we’d only begun to dream of seeing in real life, after years of watching them in zoos or TV shows.

Descending into the Ngorongoro Crater, the heart of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, we couldn’t have fathomed what the next eight hours would hold.

From the rim, the crater is spectacular. Thad said I was imagining, but I could swear the skies above the crater were a vivid aqua-tinged blue, more so than other days elsewhere on our journey. A low-floating cumulus cloud mass cast a sharp reflection in the still, sulfurous water of the crater lake, like a subterranean sky. As we inched down the gravel crater access road, small black dots seemed to crawl along the grasslands below, slowly growing into the recognizable shapes of zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, ostrich, elephant, gazelle, warthog,… hundreds, thousands of them. All gathered in this permanent watering hole, migratory crossroads, biomass basin of East Africa, waiting for the rains to come. Nearly overwhelming.

approaching Ngorongoro Crater lake

We enjoyed Ngorongoro as tourists in the comfort of three safari 4x4s, standing on our seats with our heads and shoulders poking above the open-top roof, as we’d seen so many other tourists do while we pitched and rumbled along in our massive Unimog. That beast isn’t allowed into the Ngorongoro Crater, the most visited tourist spot in Tanzania and a designated World Heritage Site; my students and I could study conservation and mass-tourism from the inside today.

not much sand around to stick one's head in

We stopped along the access road to observe vultures at close range, hunkering nearby an apparent kill, unseen in a ditch just outside our view. “Just like on Disney’s ‘Robin Hood’!” someone said. This was neither the first or last time we would relate something we see in Africa to a cartoon from our childhood. “Hakuna Matata” and “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” have been sung far too many times for your average group of 20-year-olds. We called warthogs “pumba” before we learned “ngurue”; someone guessed “zazu” meant hornbill back when we spotted our first few in Oldonyo Sambu, and turned out to be right. Ah, Disney. Thanks…kind of…

vultures!

Vultures circled overhead as we reached the crater floor, catching warm air currents to soar themselves higher. After morning coffee and the long car ride, we of course stopped at one of the two crater toilets; elephants lingered just a few dozen yards away. The enormous horned skull of a buffalo lay half-stuck in the muddy swamp between us and the elephants. Once again I reminded myself that this entire safari is eons beyond a zoo, and nearly Jurassic Park.

zebras grazing

Wildebeest and zebra, intermingling, grazed just feet from our vehicle as we crept along the crater floor. After decades of motorized wildlife viewing and Ngorongoro, animals have come to consider (we suspect) cars to be lumbering, senseless, non-threatening and unappetizing parts of the landscape. Imagine! But don’t stick too much of your hominid body out of the vehicle, or risk being fled from by ungulates, attacked by predators, or evicted by park authorities. The zebra, wildebeest, and buffalo graciously allowed me to take their picture, observe their behavior, marvel at their uniquely adapted bodies and mannerisms, and at their power in numbers. I imagined the tension at the edges of their herds.. There are lions out there.

gazelles, alert, at ease

wildebeest herds

Ben was the first to spot a lioness in the distance. She ambled up a small hillock, looked around, lay down. Gazelles stood at alert attention as she moved. Buffalo continued to ruminate, unfazed. Zebra and wildebeest nearest to her seemed more skittish. We hoped and didn’t hope to witness a hunt.

lioness on the lookout

Thousands of flamingos stand in the lake in the distance, hazy through our binoculars and the midday heat, some pinker than others. The birds are born white, and the krill that they sieve from the lake as their daily diet slowly dyes their feathers pink.

flamingos in the distance

The Marabou stork in a small marsh around the corner has a shriveled, tiny bald head and a massive black feathery body by comparison, and white legs. Except that its legs are only white because it poops on them… I can’t help but see the bird as a crotchety, incontinent, hunchbacked old man. And yet, beautiful – a running take-off to flight, a wingspan like a hang-glider, soaring as if by magic.

Marabou

Hyenas are far larger up close than I’d imagined. Slumbering boulders, they raise their spotted heft and lumber away from us, looking vaguely irritated. Females are larger and stronger than the males, and determine the group hierarchy. Someone quotes another line from “The Lion King”.

spotted hyena, strutting

We’re all looking at the lioness and hyenas in the distance – but for some reason I turn around, and see dozens of wildebeest and zebra bounding across the road. Cars don’t normally cause that kind of stir here. I look toward where they’d fled from. “Lions!!”

Two males are striding through the grass, coming toward the road. Incredible.

eek!

We slowly approach them in our vehicle, watch them cross the road in front of us, unperturbed, and saunter into the grass just opposite. They aren’t hunting; the females do that job anyhow. Still, when they come to the neighborhood, it can set the crowds a-whinnying and a-leaping.

on the fringe

Further along the track, something has drawn another crowd: a row of 4x4s lined up on the shoulder. We approach them, excited as we draw near, catching sight of the male lion ambling amongst the vehicles, and the delighted faces of the passengers. Holy shnikies!

roadblock

Thad, our fearless leader, explains in a hushed voice that the lion is just looking for a shady spot to curl up and have a nap. What kind of crazy ecological impact…? I’d never imagined lions were that acclimated to cars. Lazily, showing no aggression or apprehension, he stretched out beside the fender of a car that some of my students were in. Sam the aspiring photographer had joy in her wide eyes, snapping away, capturing point-blank lion-face expressions.

Sam goes for it!

She lets her legs dangle from the roof; Jah begins to stand on the roof in the car beside her. Thad gets serious. “They should NOT be exposing their bodies like that.” Enough sight of legs, arms and head will trigger a lion’s recognition of a human, his ancient predator and prey. “SAM!! JAH!!”, I hiss from our rooftop. “Get inside!!” They comply. Gareth sticks his head out the window just feet away from the lion. Sweet Jesus. I imagine a flash of feline anger, a paw smack in Gareth’s face, unspeakable aftermath. “GARETH PUT YOUR F-ING HEAD BACK IN THE CAR!!”

a carload in awe

A second and third lion join their lazing companion. Ambling around cars, nuzzling a hello to their buddy, looking for shade of their own. One comes straight toward us.

friends arriving...

hello

Abby, Jessica, Ben, Tim and I go hush, except for whispers of “BLEEP! BLEEP! BLEEP!” I take as many photos as I can as the lion examines the shady spots, and lays down along the left side of our 4×4. We’re standing on our seats, peering out through the open roof, just feet above his heaving chest, full mane, powerful outstretched paws. We snap the windows shut at our ankles. He’s relaxed. We relax ever so slightly, absorbing his presence, stretching out the seconds and minutes of this eery, terrifying proximity. I take more shots with my ultra-wide-angle lens, holding the camera out in front of me and aiming down.

shot from above (see shadow?)

I check the shots on the camera screen: our legs are in the frame, seeming vulnerable through the thin windowpane just beside the lion. I’m having trouble getting a good exposure of him with my camera, with half the frame in bright light and half in shade. I decide to meter for the sunlit area (sorry for the jargon) and use a mild flash to brighten the shaded lion. I push the shutter release. The flash fires. The lion whips his head around and glares at us, and it’s as if a gale gust has blown us backwards all at once, gasping and stumbling down into the car. HOLY. SH**T.

an image worth the risk...?

this close.

“Sorry guys!” The flash was a stupid idea. But a good photo. And a far greater adrenaline rush than even climbing inside a baobab tree or firing an arrow had been. That split second of eye contact…eesh…perhaps reminded us all how woefully defenseless we modernized, westernized humans are, in the wild, without firearms, without a vehicle to shield us, without much more than cartoons and circus acts to teach us about lions. I’m exaggerating a bit. But that close encounter, that one primal glare…

Made this whole. Trip. Worth it.

And I haven’t even told you about the elephant that raided camp at 4am.

Hadza!

From the heat and abundant wildlife of Tarangire National Park, to the mercifully cool heights of the misty Nou Forest, and back down into the sun-scorched, expansive acacia woodlands of the Yaida Valley. It’s the kind of landscape that at first glance invokes words like “harsh”, phrases like “eke out a living”, and makes you wonder how anything but scorpions and cacti could survive. Yet this is where we were to spend six days with the Hadzabe (or Hadza), one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer societies, who would show us how they thrive in the Yaida, a land that they are fighting to protect from settler encroachment and from parceling by the Tanzanian government.

Yaida terrain

We arrived in the late afternoon, battered from yet another long ride in the Dorobo Unimog, a beast of a military-esque truck with little suspension or shocks to speak of. But this time our day had begun with a lovely hike down from Nou Forest, enjoying our last hours of cool mountain air; and the sight of our Yaida campsite was enthralling to even the sorest eyes. A flat escarpment, scattered baobab trees for shade, and a massive 20-foot-high boulder at the edge, with sweeping views across the Yaida below.

 

overlooking the Yaida

The students and I spent a few hours getting settled and rested before gathering around the evening fire to meet our Hadza hosts. As we had done with our Maasai hosts at Oldonyo Sambu, we broke into groups, and each group got to know a few of the Hadza staying with us, before introducing them to the rest of us. Abby and I got to introduce three Hadza men, Anga!khe, !Oye, and Moshi. The “!” represents a click-like sound, nearly impossible to get right without several dozen (hundred?) awkward failed attempts. Fortunately the Hadza are full of good humor, and endured our botched pronunciations of their crazy names. Somehow Moshi and I took to calling each other “mwalimu” (“teacher” in Swahili, and how I’m often referred to on this program), and he’d be a fantastic mwalimu over the next few days.

But first, we were to learn from the Hadza women.

Early the following morning, we hiked down to the nearby Hadza camp, where most of our hosts and several dozen other people were living. (the Hadza don’t have permanent homes, as they own little more than a few clothes and their bows and arrows, and move around according to the seasons.) We greeted everyone individually, going from one to another with a light handshake and “mtaanà”, Hadza for hello. The Hadza women were called together by Anga!khe, who in an indecipherable click-and-cluck-filled language reminded them of the day’s schedule. Suddenly, we wazungu (foreign) women found ourselves grabbed by the hands and led down the path into the forest at a cheerful clip. They were a flurry of laughter and banter, speaking to us in a mix of Swahili and Hadza, me trying to learn a few words along the way. Understanding one another enough to share laughs if nothing else. After a few kilometers the women slowed our brisk pace, and began tapping the ground around certain trees with the blunt end of their sticks. They were listening for edible roots: they knew the roots were there by the vines wrapped around the stubby trees, and they can tell by the sound of their tapping if the roots below are ripe, and how far from the surface they’re growing. Amazing.

digging for roots...lunch!

digging...

We stood in fascination as the women crouched around the base of a few trees, flipped their sticks around and began to dig with the pointed ends. No shovels, no hoes, just sticks and hands. Slowly we shook ourselves from our stupor, crouched in closer, watched as roots emerged in the hard ground, listened as the laughing women urged each other on and continued their banter. One by one we began to ask women if we could help, and found ourselves sitting in the dirt, digging amongst the women, following their lead with sticks and hands unearthing cassava-like roots and piling them at the base of the trees. Nobody makes her own pile with the Hadza; food is gathered collectively, shared collectively, and never stocked. Today’s harvest is for today’s consumption; tomorrow we harvest again.

The Hadza also don’t live by regular mealtimes. If you get hungry, you find food. If you want to eat some roots while you’re gathering them, so be it. Using tiny hand-made knives, some of the women began cutting off the roots’ ends and peeling off the skin, and then handing out strips and chunks from the fibrous interior. The particular root that we’d dug is chewed and sucked for its water, not swallowed — like sugarcane, but not nearly as sweet. Pretty bland to be honest… But an incredible experience. Those women dug with relish and zeal for over an hour, exposing root after massive root, before deciding we’d gathered enough. They tied a few of their kanga (cloths) into shoulder bags and placed the roots inside, and gave them to me and the students to carry. We met up with the Hadza men and our four male students, who’d been gathering honey from a nest of stingless bees in a baobab tree – a man’s job. And the sweetest damn honey I’ve ever tasted. No wonder this honey is how the Hadza pay for weed.

Back now with the rest of the group, some of the women made a fire (with nothing but sticks to spark it) and laid the roots on top of it to roast. Other women sat in a group resting, and someone began to pass around a small stone pipe. The smell of marijuana mingled with roasting tubers. The pipe moved from young to old to ancient women; some of the men took a hit before it was spent. I was reminded of Terra’s description of the Hadza from her earlier experience out in the Yaida: they do what they want to, eat when they want to, and smoke like fiends. So true.

After the hike back to our camp and an afternoon rest, we gathered atop the boulder to learn to make arrows. Moshi was my mwalimu extraordinaire: patient, enthusiastic, positive, and helpful, as he showed me how to hammer and carve a 6–inch nail into a bona fide arrow head using nothing but a mallet, a flat rock, and a small chisel. I’m sure he could’ve made ten arrow heads in the time I took to make one, and could’ve well lost a fingernail if I missed with that mallet – but he was nothing but smiles, we high-fived after every little chisel, and eventually ended up with an arrowhead that just might kill a small rabbit.

Moshi makes my arrowhead

this started as a nail...

pride and joy

I didn’t make an arrow shaft, but checked out the students’ progress atop our boulder-cum-classroom, as they learned to straighten an arrow with their teeth, peel it clean with a small knife, and carve designs in it however they liked. Over the next two days, during our hikes, they’d be searching for guinea fowl feathers to attach to their arrows… The Hadza were perceptibly excited to be sharing their specialized knowledge, and to be so appreciated.

Hadza-style arrow construction

And then suddenly, still unexpectedly to my Western mind, a pipe was lint and passed around. I’ve never seen anyone suck so hard on a burning lump of weed. As if their life depended on it. Sucking all the way to their earlobes, every muscle in their cheek and jaw straining. They kindly let me photograph the pipe-smoking, and the wheezing coughing aftermath. It was hard not to laugh my ass off.

Hadza smoke session...

harsh...

Honey and weed. Roots and arrows. Hunting for wild game. Feeling a little wild. On our fourth day we hiked across the Yaida Valley, a 14-kilometer trek to a second campsite. Moshi and Maroba led the way, arrows and bows over their shoulders; but we were far too boisterous for the animals to not hear us from miles away and run for cover. Ah, well. I’m glad to have had an uneventful walk as far as hunting – Douglas, our guide with Dorobo, regaled me with stories of their last few hikes across the Yaida with the Hadza, and the bushbabies they speared, impala they bludgeoned, and giraffe they slayed, sliced up, and carried back to the community. Yikes.

A few of us girls were feeling feisty. We came to an enormous baobab tree with a small hole in the trunk. “I bet we could crawl inside there,” I said to Louise. I asked Moshi if it was a big and old enough tree to be hollow inside, as big old baobabs are. Yes, he said; he’d even been in it. “Let’s go in!” I said, bouncing around, nervous and excited. Peering in the hole, it was pitch dark inside. What if we couldn’t fit? What if there was a deadly black mamba snake curled up inside? “Could be,” said Thad. Eek!

if this hole is big enough for me to climb through, you can imagine how enormous the tree is...

Jah climbed in first. Wriggling and inching, arms first; she shined her headlamp around once her head reached the end of the tunnel at the hollow center of the baobab. “No snakes!” Phew. Jah wriggled all the way in. Louise got the feisty bug too, and climbed in after Jah, feet flailing as she wriggled, as if she were being swallowed in slow gulps by the baobab. Finally I reached up, arms first, and pulled myself in. An inchworm with only inches of wiggle room encircling me. As my head pokes through to the hollow center, my eyes fall on an impala skull on the floor, and the remains of a fire. It’s roomy in here – room enough for a few of us to stand anyhow, and obviously enough for a small cook fire and a space to curl up beside it. WOW.

I wriggle until my hands can reach the floor, then lean forward until my legs pull through. Looking up, darkness, and a small point of light in the distance. The smell of bat guano. “Can someone hand me my camera?” I shout back through the hole. It’s placed in the tunnel as far as an arm can reach from the outside; I reach in and grab it. Popping up the flash, wary of the faint hum of bees, I aim my camera upward and fire a few shots. We look at the camera screen, huddling and giggling as bats begin to dive around our heads from unseen heights. The flash had lit upon rows and rows of pegs, zigzagging up the inner trunk of the tree. These were the same pegs used by the Hadza to collect honey from baobab trees from the outside; apparently the inner space of the baobab is prime honey territory as well.

up into the baobab

inside out

The prospect of the honey-makers angrily descending from the dark heights of our hollow hideout slowly dawned on us. We decided to climb back out before things got scary. Louise went first, shrieking as a bat flew out just behind her. Jah and I dared to take one photo of ourselves, risking one more flash before she wriggled out.

not scared per se...

Jah, born of baobab

A few solitary moments inside the baobab trunk, and I pulled myself back into the hole and wriggled out, just as I’d wiggled in, squirming until my hands hit the ground and then pitching forward to pull my legs through. Standing, brushing off, breathing out… and whooping! jumping! high-fiving! Our minor thrill lust had been sated. Now we can say we’ve been inside a baobab tree…INSIDE! I feel a lot closer to understanding why these sprawling, looming, swirling, enduring trees are sacred to the Hadza people. (And to the Malagasy, for that matter).

It took a while to notice the bleeding scratches on our arms, knees and hips. I don’t recall any pain, just adrenaline. I was sad to see the scabs disappear as the days passed…

We spent an exhausted night at Hadza “camp two”, and the next day students went out in small groups to conduct walking transects, observing and measuring the abundance of certain ungulate species. Myself, I hiked with Maggie (another guide and cook for Dorobo Safaris) and Maria and Marite, two Hadza sisters in their 50s, as lively as 20-somethings. Our destination: small caves with possibly ancient cave drawings on the walls. The journey was a light and lively one, filled with banter, laughter, and reminiscing (with Maggie helping to translate), and even dancing. We were all sisters by the end, shuffle-stepping and swaying down the path, humming a Hadza dance tune along with Maria and Marite.

Maria, cave drawings

cave drawings... the sun? the sun-god?

Maria, straight-faced

Marite and Maria, cracked as usual!

the dancing continues

too happy to hide it

After an hour or so at the cave, pondering the simple drawings and their historical and cultural significance, as well as having our own little portrait session (such spunky photogenic ladies!), we turned back toward camp. On the way, nearly noontime, the ladies began to examine trees more closely, tap-tap-tapping around their bases, speculating aloud whether roots may be underground.

They found a promising spot and started digging – sitting down in the dirt, flipping rocks, unearthing a baby snake and a tiny scorpion, getting nearly two feet deep, and finding six monstrous roots in the process. What powerful women. I helped to move some of the larger rocks, but other than that they were completely self-sufficient. I thought of my grandmother, barely 70 by the time she died and so very weak…

strong ladies, "shopping"

the "-gatherer" part of "hunter-gatherer societies"

Maggie took my camera bag, and Maria tied the roots into her kanga and then over my shoulder. We danced and laughed our way back to camp, and then sat and roasted the roots together. At one point I looked up from the fire, and saw the skinned (yet still hoofed) hind leg of a dik-dik in the tree branch…It would show up in the soup at dinner.

back at camp

The students had nearly all arrived from their transects, with many-a story of animal sightings and hunting forays by their Hadza guides…Some more traumatic than others. Tim’s belt had become a harness for a dead bushbaby, shot and bludgeoned by his guide before being tucked by the legs into his belt. His shorts were bloodstained, and he said he’d gotten far too good a look into the enormous, heart-wrenching eyes of the lemur-like creature. Yikes. We’re not quite hunters ourselves…

But in the afternoon, we got to try our hand at shooting arrows! I wasn’t going to try – something about hunting – but when Jah commented from beside me that she felt like a mom watching the kids have fun, we jumped out of our stools and joined in. Moshi and the others had tied a cardboard box target to a skinny tree. “Mwalimu!” he cried when I approached, and handed me a bow. Moshi helped me to balance my arrow (no arrowheads, just sharpened ends for our shooting lesson), tilt my bow, pull back the cord, aim, and…”Moto!” Fire! My arrow went straight, but landed a few feet short of the box. Second try: prop arrow, tilt bow slightly, eye behind the feathers, pull back cord, and Moto! I missed the box again – but my arrow stuck straight into the skinny tree that the box was tied to!! “Nipe tano Moshi!”, and we high-fived.

Making arrowheads, climbing inside trees, cave paintings, shooting arrows… Feeling a little too fierce.

On our last bittersweet evening in Yaida Valley, we all gathered atop the massive boulder above camp two (even bigger than the boulder at camp one) and pondered the future of the Hadza society, culture and home. Thad stood in front and directed our conversation; the Yaida sprawled below while storms brewed in the distant skies and bush fires glowed on the opposite slopes. We discussed the community-based land management project in progress, another collaborative effort with Dorobo to help the Hadza gain permanent rights to their land and protection from encroaching immigrants. The Tanzanian government is reticent (to say the least) to grant property rights to a people who refuse to build permanent settlements and need the land only to hunt, gather and find water. We discussed the many aspects of environmental sustainability to the Hadza lifestyle: the roots, berries and other forest products are naturally occurring, seasonally harvested, and done so in a non-destructive manner. Animals are hunted as needed only, with no particular species targeted more than others; overall populations are maintained. But with a Hadza population of less than 2000… It’s hard not to worry that they may disappear, assimilating into the modernity that is trying to engulf them. I remain hopeful that they can resist, and continue to take only what they need from modern education and the outside world, and keep their core culture alive.

After dinner, we gathered around the fire and shared music. Tim played some American songs on the guitar and we wazungu sang; after a few songs, the Hadza stood up and led us in several chants, songs and group dances. We kicked up dust, trying to follow their footfalls and mimic their words, laughing and dancing under the stars. So much uniquely ours and uniquely Hadza; so much we share in common.

Maasai memories, from Oldonyo Sambu to Ololosokwan

We sat in a circle under a leafless tree yesterday, a vain attempt to shield ourselves from the afternoon sun with the bare branches. No matter: the sun’s rays weren’t nearly strong enough to detract from our session, listening to two elder Maasai men of Ololosokwan explain their culture and how it is changing, particularly for boys and men. I was completely enthralled by our discussion.

Ololosokwan camp

After covering the traditional life cycle of the male Maasai, I asked about education, and how these elders felt school was affecting the Maasai culture. I told them I was having trouble imagining a Maasai warrior (murran) going back and forth from class to his Emanyata, or traditional murran “training camp”, given the very heavy and very different responsibilities that each entails. I knew that the Tanzanian government now requires all children to be enrolled in primary school, and that more and more Maasai families want their children to have an education. I also asked if anything was changing within the Maasai system or the public education system to accommodate both sets of responsibilities. These were meant to be probing questions.

Makaroti translated my enquiries to the men. I watched their eyes. The elder of the two smiled and chuckled, and spoke. Timothy translated his answer. “Our daughter here, I think she has traveled. I think she knows much about these issues. She has asked very important questions.” At least part of that is true; and at the very least, I was able to put my questions in such a way as to elicit complex answers.

Without a doubt education is changing the Maasai culture. As these elders explained to us, the community is still very much struggling with the issue, trying to balance the need to increase literacy levels and to preserve traditional roles and responsibilities, to enable Maasai to be educated advocates for Maasai issues without distancing them too far from these very issues… How to adapt to the modernizing world without letting their culture get completely lost in the shuffle?

Culture is of course a fluid, flexible, evolving entity, as much as we’d like to think of it as static, amber-esque, preserved for the ages. The Maasai culture is evolving as much as any other – a cell phone in every pocket, helping communities to stay connected and aware of regional and national issues. Pastoralists making room for a bit of agriculture, what with an ever-growing scarcity of land for grazing their large herds. Their expanding population has become more and more sedentary, unheard of just a few generations ago.

Maasai women and girls are also changing in significant ways. In a culture traditionally dominated by men, women are now gaining the right to own property for the first time. Neither cattle, nor other livestock, nor even children traditionally belong to a Maasai woman; widows, divorcees, and barren women faced an invariably difficult future. Now women’s rights groups, like the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) of Ololosokwan, are helping women to earn small supplemental incomes for themselves, enough to put their young children through primary school. They help them to access family planning services, and help victims of domestic violence to access assistance and legal services. More and more girls are getting an education into their teens, and refusing to marry the men their fathers choose for them. PWC is also helping Maasai communities to secure their rights to their land, whether for homes (called “boma”) or for grazing and watering their livestock, as more and more is lost to development. Just west of Ololosokwan, for instance, last year the UAE bought the rights to bring Emirati tourists to hunt for sport; hundreds of Maasai were forcibly displaced by the Tanzanian government, more interested in massive amounts of foreign investment money than the land issues of the Maasai. Incidents such as this are, for better or for worse, part of what is convincing the Maasai that it needs a more literate, more aware population in order to defend and preserve their culture.

It was PWC that had organized our talk with the elder Maasai men, and another discussion with elder Maasai women just before. PWC has its hand in many pots: helping women to access legal rights, to raise their own livestock, to access microcredit and manage small income-generating projects; it also manages a local school just nearby our campground at Ololosokwan, and with the help of Dorobo Safaris and other sponsors, provides dozens of scholarships per year to Maasai girls. Dorobo has also made PWC the coordinator of the Maasai home-stay program that my 14 students just completed: three nights of living in a boma, sharing in the daily chores and activities, and gaining a bit of inside perspective on what it means to be Maasai in 2010. Dressing in wrapped cloths but carrying cell phones, learning English in school but sleeping beside baby goats in the house, watching satellite TV at a nearby bar but using the outdoors as a bathroom. Changing.

students during Maasai homestays, looking and feeling the part

The first stop along our safari (could it have been nearly one month ago?) was a camp deep in the woodlands of Oldonyo Sambu, also Maasai land. We were accompanied by Oleseki, Boshika, Saitote, Shino, and Matinda, five Maasai from the nearest village of Emboret who were to be our camp crew and field guides. For three days we trekked with them throughout the territory, including a hike to the top of Oldonyo Sambu (the hill after which the area is named) with a 360-degree vista over the land below, and spotted not one solitary home, boma or village. We had our first encounters with giraffes, Thomson’s gazelles, klipspringers, elands, and dozens of bird species; we tracked the scat, enormous round footprints and broken trees of elephants, but saw none until our next stop at Tarangire National Park. We came across only two other Maasai, digging for water in a dry riverbed, striking it nearly five feet below the surface; their boma was yet miles in another direction. It was easy to imagine the Maasai living a relatively isolated existence, despite Saitote’s sneakers, Oleseki’s cell phone, and Matinda the warrior’s watch. Appearances can be deceiving, and we were only scratching the surface.

a murran (warrior) digs for water at Oldonyo Sambu

At Ngorongoro Crater, we learned of the issues facing the 60,000-plus Maasai living in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA). With a population that has increased eight-fold since the NCA’s inception, there isn’t nearly enough land to support their increased need for grazing land without severely disrupting the ecosystems and wildlife being protected in and around the crater. The NCA management authority and Tanzanian government are seriously considering a mandatory relocation of thousands of Maasai for the sake of the crater, a natural phenomenon unique enough to be a World Heritage Site. The situation has turned ever more confrontational. Maasai vs. nature. Maasai vs. government. This is the worst way to provoke cultural change and the gradual adaptation of traditional practices.

zebra and dozens of other species abound at Ngorongoro Conservation Area

Dorobo Safaris embodies a cooperative approach. With the Maasai of Oldonyo Sambu and Ololosokwan, as well as the Iraqw of the Nou Forest and the Hadza of Yaida Valley, Dorobo has helped to create community-based environmental and natural-resource management structures. This means that from the bottom up, communities determine how they will manage their natural surroundings, the rules and laws by which they will govern the sustainable use of forest and water resources, and how they will manage and benefit from ecotourism activities. The process of acquiring community management rights to the land can be lengthy, complicated and expensive; Dorobo acts as an advocate and facilitator of this process, and helps to subsidize it through ecotourism in partnership with the community (even before formal management rights are secured) and through the Dorobo Fund. When done right, community-based conservation and ecotourism is a major way to avert confrontation in the future, as long as the community benefits outweigh the perceived costs of altering their resource-use practices and focusing on sustainability.

But what about population? Can it be that rapid population growth will make a mockery of even the best-laid community-based management plans? Tanzania has nearly 40 million people to take care of, presumably part of the reason the government was so willing to give a relatively small chunk of Maasai land to the UAE at such a hefty price. The sprawling Yaida Valley of the Hadza is being encroached on by all sides by pastoral Datoga and Maasai peoples, themselves compelled to seek out open land for their crops and livestock because of overcrowding in their former homes. The Yaida is hardly amenable to livestock grazing and agriculture, and the Hadza hunter-gatherer society is less and less able to survive traditionally on its disappearing land. The Maasai of Oldonyo Sambu have managed to establish a community conservation area, benefiting economically from Dorobo ecotourism, confining their cattle to certain grazing areas and patterns, and therefore preserving the land for the migratory wild animals that roam in and out of nearby Tarangire National Park.

camp at Oldonyo Sambu

In Ololosokwan, the Dorobo campsite is on land owned by the aforementioned school, which belongs to the community and is managed by PWC, both of whom benefit from the student home-stays as well as our use of the campsite. The economic benefits are divided is such a way as to support youth education, women’s empowerment, and Maasai land use and management rights all at once.

Emanyata Secondary School, Ololosokwan, managed by PWC

But how can any of these changes be sustainable if the population continues to swell? What forests will be left if the Maasai continue to clear land for more cattle? How can the Iraqw community of the Nou Forest all continue to benefit from ecotourism in a meaningful way if their numbers continue to rise, and more families choose to carve agricultural land out of the protected forests? Where will the Hadza find food, if pastoralist immigrants burn the land that shelters the wild animals they hunt and the roots they dig, in order to make way for their grazing herds? Will it matter if the Maasai manage to balance education and tradition, if they continue to have large families, with less and less land to live on?

Ah, modernization. Never a clear-cut process. At the very least, the Maasai of Ololosokwan have seen improvements and have hope for the future, although sacrifices and compromises must be made. Across the border in Kenya, just 50 miles away, there are communities from the same Maasai branch as in Ololosokwan. On the Kenyan side, the elders explained in answer to my original question, the “murran” warrior rites of passage have been modified and compressed to fit school time-tables, with initiation circumcisions over winter vacation and Emanyata “training camp” over the summer. That way, Maasai boys can be literate and educated in the modern system without missing some of the most crucial aspects of their development as men in the Maasai community. The elders of Ololosokwan hope to soon adopt this system.

abandoned Emanyata "outpost" in Oldonyo Sambu, where murran made temporary camp, hunted for food, and drank herbal "teas" for strength and vigor

In the same vein, they are beginning to allow girls to go through school as long as they wish before marriage, and to have gradually more say in who their husbands will be, how many children they will bear (reexamining the widespread cultural notion that more children are better than a few), and even to choose whether or not to be circumcised. Deeply ingrained practices and ideas.  Changing these ideas and practices involves a substantial sacrifice on the part of the Maasai, but could help give them the resilience to preserve their cultural core in the face of government pressures. In the same manner, good community-based natural resource management will allow them to benefit from ecotourism while conserving the local ecosystem and reducing the impacts of livestock on the environment.

In Maasai culture, as men mature they move through a series of “age-sets” with their peers, from herdsboy, to murran, and eventually to senior elder. Men in every age-set are to act as mentors to the men in the age-set two below them. According to this system, one of the elder Maasai is a mentor to Timothy. Smiling, he pat Timothy on the knee. “we don’t have all of the answers, although we are deeply concerned. But we leave it up to the next generation.” Timothy is the youngest of 21 children, from one father and three wives, each with four boys and three girls apiece. When Timothy was young, the Tanzanian government was conducting enrollment by rotation in public school; when his family was selected his father chose him, the only one of 21 siblings to get a formal education. Although he spent most of his murran days in school, he has become a warrior for the Maasai as Coordinator of the Pastoral Women’s Council, helping to increase Maasai access to civil and human rights while celebrating and promulgating the Maasai core culture. The elders are perhaps thankful to leave the future in his hands.