Ostriches on Safari Pt.1, Or The Beginning of Our Insanity

It would be hard for nearly anyone to give a depiction of an entire months-worth of activities, much less a man who has been on a month long Tanzanian safari. The task becomes even more strenuous and conclusively pointless when done over a single blog post; as far as I'm concerned, the best way to hear about what I have accomplished (and for that matter failed to do) is over coffee. This, however is not a possibility at the moment, and I have a hunch that at least my family would like to hear from me. Therefore, instead of trying to boil someones eyeballs with a novel-length post about each and every event encountered in the last month, I will split them into each campsite we visited, each about three days long, so that you as the reader can stop and start at your leisure.

So. Stop one. Arusha. We arrive at Dorobo Bros. homebase, a camp on the cusp of the village of Olasiti, a place we would be told to get acquainted with, due to our month long stay homestay to come. Our tents are aligned much like army bunkers, an ironic fact that is only propelled when our safari-mobile, a 1960s Army Transport Vehicle rolls up to the campsite(but more on this to come).

The behemoth truck is driven by Habibu, a sarcastic maniac who made us fear for our lives at least once a week. Habibu is one of the best drivers in the world, I'm sure of it. Along with us is Douglass, who accompanied us in Pembe Abwe, and Thad Peterson. Thad is an ox of an old man, with feathered "grandma hair" and bulging calf muscles. His sense of humor becomes both our relief at the end of an exhausting day, and eventually the bane of our existence. Both Thad and Douglass, although not trained scientists, seem to have a bottomless well of knowledge on all matters Tanzania. "Living here, you can't not immerse yourself completely in it," Thad tells us.

As we roll out of Olasiti in the massive transport, the noisy city slowly subsides. The horns and exhaust trickle away until all that is left is a makeshift shack or two. Then, abruptly, we hit a dirt road. The ways of Western civilization are behind us and will continue to be. After an hour, we abandon even the road and begin to twist through thorny acacia trees. Our first siting of a Grants gazelle is exciting, but in hindsight a laughable thing; if we only knew how tired we would get of gazelle.

We arrive at our first campsite, outside of the Maasai village of Emborette in a place called Oldonu Sambu. Our scenery consists of a dry river bed (rivers are only found flowing for three months of the year), a giant rock-hill (one that we would prepare to climb), and ashy, burnt fields. We soon find that the fields are burnt by the Maasai to prepare for the rainy season and the bounty of new grass it brings. Burning of land is somewhat frowned upon by much of the country, but getting the Maasai to do what the government thinks is acceptable is comparable to getting a llama to do your dishes.

Climbing the rock the next day brought sweaty brows (due in part to the intense heat that makes the Tanzanian Savannah famous) and a new glimpse of what we were inside of. Vast and dry, the trees are scarce and spread out enough to collect as much precipitation as possible. Wild life has adapted to such extremes by becoming virtually independent of water. It was humbling, the vast arid landscape, and yet reminded me strangely of eastern Oregon.

We were hosted by a number of Maasai from the village. Our first assignment was to interview(in swahili, of course; English had to become our second language around each of our many hosts on the trip) one of our hosts. We all became quite embarrassed when told that asking how many cows or new pastoral friends owned was much like asking an American if they were richer or poorer than us. Our Maasai hosts were quite welcoming, but for the most part kept to themselves. Our consensus on a favorite was Sitote, an elder who claimed to have fought several lions, and bragged about his many wives. We still think he's full of it.

Our first campsite also brought our first field ID, and now that safari is over, I can say this with confidence: I hate birds. I really do. I always have. Birds do nothing for me, they do not excite me in the least. I have a phobia of pigeons. The birds we had to identify and write about were, to some, quite beautiful. The most colorful bird in the world lives here: the lilac breasted roller. Or maybe its the most colorful in the country, I don't know. I don't care. I hate birds. We encountered so many ostriches ( a bird I once found quite interesting, actually) that it soon became a running joke that ostriches were the worst animal ever.

I'm glad I got that out of my system. After three days we packed up, said our "kwaherini" (or goodbyes) and packed up our excursion-mobile. On to Terigere Park.

More to come,

Tim

Aptly Named Hotels, Or Why My Life Looks Like A Postcard, Recently.

My feet hurt, oh, do they ever hurt. My fellow wasafiri all say the same; it seems like we've all somehow massacred the healthy condition of our feet. Conch shells to step on, coconut trees to climb, rusty bicycles to skin your toes on. By the end of our Marine Biology Course on the northern coast of Tanzania, we appear to have hopscotched shoeless through 1970's Vietnam.

And yet there is something almost romantic, enchanting perhaps, about our crippled state. we are slowly adjusting to a culture, blossoming into our new selves. With this painful and blistered transformation we will arise ready to face our surroundings, like wildebeest, with newly fashioned hooves.

Or maybe these are just the rantings of a rhetoric major, smearing his flourished crap on his blog post.

In any case, we have had quite the week. We ended our Zanzibari journey at the almost unhumanly beautiful White Sands Beach Resort. Oh yes, my friends, the beaches, they were white, the water, a color of blue I once thought to be alien in nature. The standard beach chairs all replaced by hammocks and Italians. It was surreal, and I was strangely uneasy about the entire situation.

I think what irked me was the drive from glorious touristland Stonetown to White Sands, both of which make up an extremely small population of Zanzibar. In between the two, the poverty line is virtually tangible: the city limits of both make up a haunting gap. While Stonetown and the resorts of the north are known for their lavish wealth (of which only 10 to 20 percent actually stays in Africa), the inland country is on a slow burn. Makeshift shacks sprouted like matchstick books among smoldering landfills and hungry families. It's heartbreaking, to say the least, to have felt apart of a system that seems to rub the country's poverty problem in it's face. Tourism is both the reason Zanzibar hasn't been crumbled by now, and also the reason it eventually will.

We took another boat back to the mainland and were greeted by the Peterson brothers, Mike and Thad. Behind them were two young men who looked like they had jumped out of romance novel covers. Tan, shirtless men with steroid-like muscles, later to be introduced as the next generation of Petersons, were immediately followed by ten or so of the girls on our trip, as if they were pied pipers fluting mice ashore. Thad and Mike (along with their older brother Daoudi) are the sons of Minnesota missionaries who moved to Tanzania before the brothers were born. Although they are all fluent in Swahili and German, their extreme northern Minnesota accents were perfectly retained.

For the next week we were scientists. Or at least snorkelers. Our mission was to travel to two reefs, Fungu Maziwe and the drastically less protected Fungu Zinga, and to perform quadrat and transect surveys on the biodiversity of the surrounding substraights. In short, we counted fish for a week. It was glorious.

And now we are here in the bustling urban metropolis of Arusha, in a somewhat nice hotel that the students all picked out. WiFi, internet altogether, even phones, will be history starting tomorrow. The beginning of our 3 week safari. Hope the world keeps turnin

More to come,

Tim

Immodium Pt. 2, or How the Western World Got It Wrong

Back again, with hopefully better luck internet-wise.
Where was I? Ah, Mombasa. Unstoppable forces. We saw the immense Fort Jesus, built in the 1500s, conquered by seemingly every empire since. Each of the women bought bui bui, the traditional muslim cover-wear, and kangas, a colorfull alternative to the standard black (a perplexing color choice for the hottest place in the world). The four men bought kanzu and kofia, traditional muslim wear for men, which, unlike the well recepted kangas, made us really just look like Ultratourists; instead of allowing us to fit in, stuck us out like 4 non-muslim sore thumbs.
After two days in Mombasa, with, let me just say it again, the coolest 80 year old man on the 3rd rock, we travelled to the remote island of Pemba.
A 3 hr motor boat ride on high seas and a still uneasy stomach region didn't give my initial impression of the place the get go it needed for such a extreme change. The tiny island, one of two that makes up Zanzibar, is mainly farming lands, or straight up uninhabited. The people live in mud huts, which sound terrible, but is really no worse that a spanish mesa or a cabin for that matter. That said, the furthest extent of westernization found here is their clothing, and even then only half of them wear what we call "modern garb". I was given to my host brother Khamis in the village of Tumbe, immediately cast away from the women sitting, trying and failing to communicate. This was something you notice quickly as a man in a muslim culture: the idea of men and women intertwined is seemingly unheard of. Men are blue, women are red: no purpling allowed. It's sad to see at first, quite honestly, but once you realize that your American values and ideals on life are similarly, completely foreign and sad likewise, you are humbled by their rocksteadiness.
For the women, on a whole, it seemed the Tumbe experience was the most difficult yet. Touching of faces, rummaging of private belongings, and parading of wazungu seemed to be on the local's agenda. The men on the other hand had a wonderful time: soccer with the local boys, hangin' out, waited on day and night. It's a lesson I learned in Riruta not to try to help with female-role jobs, much less in the crevace of gender divide called Islam.
The next day, we met at a sea weed farm. A beach that looked like it was straight out of a post card was our port to a rickety hand carved boat, in which all 14 students and 2 captains dragged us to the shallow underwater shamba. It was surreal to say the least.
Now I'm nestled in a Zanzibari hotel. Tulitembeatembea, or we walked around for a while, surrounded, for the very first time in a month, hoards of white people. We felt out of place, like fakes, meandering through the "Authentic Maasai Staff!" Signed streets, beautiful as they may be. Stonetown in one of the oldest cities in E. Africa, and is now world reknown as a tourist destination, something we were initially excited for, but now, after 3 African families, we felt like we knew something they didn't; cocky I know, but truth all the same.
Trying to find a singular identity for Islamic Swahili coast is impossible. Islam is a maliable, adjustable religion, regardless of what those headlines say. If a culture doesn't allow for lavish muslim ammenities, it just focuses more intently on a certain element. The people of Tumbe weren't as fortunate as those in Mombasa to attend brilliantly decorated mosques or travel to Mecca, so instead, they take the covering of women and their domestic roles much more seriously. The familily aspect is much more prevalent because, well, their on an island...where are the men gonna go?
Safari in a week
More to come,
Tim

Island Dishes: Or How Immodium Saved My Life

First, let me preface this post with a prayer filled outreach to my Swahili professor Rose. On our final day of class, during a celebration with our homestay families, her father unexpectedly passed. Rose was my first Kenyan friend, and my deepest condolences go out to her and her family.
Mombasa. Oh, sweet Mombasa, how I love you. If you have ever seen Aladin, which you have of course, then you have seen a cartoon, non-tropical ideograph of Mombasa. Islam is king here. Women are covered head to toe, separated entirely from the male population, bound to domestic labor; a discussion perhaps better performed in person rather than over this Interweb thingy.
All four boys on the trip were more than privileged to stay with Professor Ahmed Sheik. The man is seriously one of the most influential figures of the 21st century. For God's sake, he came up with the word for email, video, cellphone, television, etc. in Swahili. He invents words!
And then, Island Dishes. A restaurant for 5 meals straight, and, for lack of a more delicate term, the worst diarrhea I have, or ever will experience. As my fluids drained on a toilet for literal hours, I couldn't help but overhear the wonderful city sounds of a town created in the 16th century.
I would love to say more, but my internet is about to expire. I hate to leave it on that note, of all notes, but...I will.
More to Come

How Are You, Mzungu? Or How My Personal Space Was Demolished

My first week in my first homestay is a major adjustment to say the least. The idea of "lone wolf time"? Extinguished. My homestay family rolls 10 deep in a house roughly the size of my living room back in the states. Even as I type this I am pressed firmly against two large Kenyans (one of which not smelling especially appealing) in a tiny cyber cafe.
I am in Riruta Satellite, a suburb of Nairobi that resembles absolutely nothing like a suburb of America. Forget clean, ticky tack mansions with lawns and Pomeranian yapper dogs. I'm not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
I arrive at the house with my mother Ruth who has bought me a Maasai cloth, now draped around my shoulder, only making me stick out more. Not only am I the only gangly white boy in my neighborhood, I'm the only one dressed in traditional tribe garb. As we open the turquoise iron gate to the small complex, seemingly endless hoards of watoto (children) pause from their daily activity of rolling tires and playing with half burnt garbage. The awkward pause is followed by a chorus of shrieks, laughing and yelling "mzungu! Mzungu!" or for you in the states, "White man! White man!"
I move into the cramped house to meet my brothers Richard, Eunice and Joshua, my sisters Winnie and Maggie, my aunts my uncles, my cousins. My father is still at work (and even today he has only said "how are you" to me, before he decompresses with a Tusker beer and an evening with KTN Leo). The rest of my weekend? Television. Simply television. It's a relatively new shipment to this suburb, so no matter where you go in Satellite, you will here a TV blaring 24/7. It's not that I don't love WWE Wrestling or overdubbed Spanish soaps, or even the freakin' news for that matter. But to be truthfully honest, I didn't come here for that. I could do that in Bend (and believe me I did).
Lately though I have been working to have my family speak in Swahili with me, walk with me, even if I have to drag them from their programs.
I've gotta say, of all the women in the world that I've seen (and Mama Barb, I mean no offense) Ruth is by far the strongest. She wakes up at 5 every morning, cooks and cleans for the rest of the day (for 10 people mind you) for the soul purpose of allowing her children to attend schools worth going to. She's tough and witty and doesn't take any of my mzungu shit. If she serves me a meal, by god, I'm eating that damn meal, even if it's more than I eat in a week (and normally, that's exactly what it is).
So what have I learned so far? A little Swahili (although no one here uses it; it will be very useful in Tanzania, however), some tribal studies. Mostly I have come the conclusion that Nairobi is a town of contradictions. The sweet tantalizing smell of roasting maize on the cob and samosas filled with goat meat dance around your nostrils, but are swiftly kicked in the shin by the grotesque odor of raw sewage and burning trash. Riruta claims to be a family-centric neighborhood, but as soon as the clock strikes 6, children best be inside, not to mention the speeding matatos and buses fly through the thin roads like their in a Tom Cruise movie. And finally, in a city as politically corrupt, a city that is run with the intentions of feeding the full rather than the hungry, it was my brother Eunice who said it best:
"It is not the garbage, or the sewers, or the politicians or even the land that makes a community. It is the people. We Kenyans are all about community, therefore, we are all about the people". And that I have seen most prominently.
More to come--
Tim

Being Mark Wahlberg, Or How I Commence My Journey

As I sit on the plane that takes me to my first destination, Nairobi, I find myself flipping through an article in the inflight magazine entitled "Being Mark Wahlberg", which I personally think, would be freakin sweet. How amazing would it be to produce a show based on your own lavish lifestyle and entourage? Someday, perhaps...
But as I land, 400 something hours later, in a dingy corner of Nairobi airport, I realize Mark E Mark is anywhere but here to familiarize my surroundings. It smells, not particularly bad, but I wouldn't call it an enticing smell either...just different. The locals stare at us, a group of 15 wide-eyed white kids, aimlessly stumbling through the crowded hallways.
We arrive at the Kolping Guest House and fall into our beds, which could be comfortable, but for all I cared, I could have lay face first on a bed of nails and I would have said"Christ, these nails are comfy".
Our days are filled with 4 hrs of Swahili lessons by two of the most engaging and thoroughly entertaining teachers I have ever had, Rose and Julius. Rose has a hearty laugh that fills you up and makes you want to impress her with your butchered vocab. Julius is missing a front tooth and loves to poke fun at those who can't quite pronounce the African "Ooh" sound. The rest of the day is dedicated to, at this point, sleep and wandering of the streets.
More to come, my friends. More to come.