Africa: A Travelogue
Jun. 17th, 2004 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAs before, we arrived in Arusha in the middle of the night. And as it turned out, in the middle of a rainstorm, which made us all look rather worriedly towards the sky. Rain the entire time would have ruined this particular vacation. However, the locals assured us it was only a temporary thing, and true for Arusha but not the Serengeti.
The next morning we took one of these small air planes which automatically make you think of "Out of Africa" and "The English Patient" and flew to the Serengeti. Lo and behold, we were indeed received with sunshine there, and by the driver Hussein who was to be with us for the rest of the time, a very nice man with quite the reputation for excellence. The only thing missing at first were the animals. Now, one of the few parts we had not seen of the Serengeti the last time we had visited had been the Western Corridor, so that was where we started this time around. In theory, it should have been the time for the migration to be there. In practice, the wildebeests were taking their own sweet time and were delaying their migration for some weeks this year. (We would see them later, though.) This made for quite empty planes in the Western Corridor, comparatively speaking, but there was still a lot to admire.
Marabouts, which still look to me as if they have the evil eye, with their penchant of swallowing fish whole and having it stick in their throat before it gets digested; warthogs which look incredibly cute with their tail turned straight up towards the sky like an antenna, giraffes which move like one imagines waves do if they had legs. Hyenas, which always look as if someone had just kicked them in the behind, due to the way they hold their tale between their legs, and jackals, which look like foxes and decidedly unsinister. And hippos. Lots and lots of hippos, and not just in the water, either. We saw some of them on their way back in the early morning, having come from a mud expedition, and a bunch of them rushing out of the water in the evening, quick as you wouldn't believe. The mud, incidentally, is direly necessary once they're outside. These hippos have the most tender pink underbelly, ears and lower throat you can imagine, all areas the sun usually doesn't reach when they're in the water. They also move incredibly fast once they're outside, and as opposed to elephants almost soundlessly. How that computes with their masses of fat, I don't know. But it makes for a cool effect.
Speaking of elephants, they were there as well, always in groups, flapping their ears and being their usual majestic selves. As opposed to the baboons, who are incapable of projecting any aura connected with quietness but fun to watch. Also, this time around I learned they have a thing for white flowers. Being a classically educated girl, I thought of the lotophages and also of Odysseus and Circe and the plant moly which gave him immunity, and wondered for a moment whether the baboons in all their excitement and continuous chatter were transformed humans. The plains of the Serengeti, with their high grass and the trees so defensive that every leaf got shaped into a thorn, are the kind of place where you don't doubt magic.
Our camp, Kirawira, was fabulous. Though my colonial guilt kicked in each time the staff appeared dressed in white, which they did for lunch. You feel automatically transformed into a late 19th century member of the idle classes living of exploitation and ordering the servants around. Strangely, I never felt that way with Hussein whom we actually did order around, sort of, in the sense of telling him that we wanted to do this and that, etc.
Speaking of food, the one they serve you at the lodges and camps is universally good. I also have a soft spot for the ready-made bouillon which is the alternative to tea when you're on the road (or "road" - you don't have to imagine anything but earth here) with the 4 by 4. Really, the only annoyance of this part of the trip were the tse tse flies, which for some mysterious reasons decided to attack one of my Aged Parents as if they wanted to put Alfred Hitchcock's birds to shame. My other Aged Parent counted up to 70 bites on him and then gave up counting. Me, I had only five or so in the ankles; these little lovelies bite through socks, too. They leave much bigger red marks than mosquitos do, and it itches and hurts like you wouldn't believe. My father was a complete stoic trooper about it, but we were quite worried - I mean, tse tse flies are connected with the sleeping sickness. Each time he took a nap for the rest of the trip we eyed him warily. Though Hussein assured us the sleeping sickness would not be on the menu.
When we crossed from the Western Corridor to the Seronera we finally got presented with the big, big attraction, the thing you can't see anywhere else in the world in quite this form - wildebeests and zebras on the migration move. Hordes of them, so many that they stretch across the horizon no matter in which direction you turn. This sight was familiar but had not lost any excitement since the last time. Au contraire. This time, we were lucky enough to catch them crossing a river, so instead of statically standing around for the most part, these beasties were on the move. Fast and very loudly, too. The wildebeests did their usual "oof, oof", but for the first time in my life I heard zebras neigh. It's a higher sound than when horses do it, almost yelling. There were many young animals with them, and once more we could ponder the mystery of why the wildebeests look always lean (but not mean - they have a rather vacant expression, in fact) and thin and the zebras plump enough to make you think they're on their way to a date with Rubens when they eat the same amount of food. The only vaguely slender zebras I've seen were younglings with their stripes of that somewhat brownish colour they lose in favour of black as soon as they get older. And all of these, if not drinking, were racing and jumping. Really, jumping. It was a fantastic sight.
The elephants we encountered near the Seronera river had some kids with them, too, including one so incredibly tiny and small that we wouldn't have been able to spot it at all in the grass if they hadn't crossed the road in front of us. Honestly, it was so small that it appeared to be something out of Disney, and Hussein said it must be only two days or so old.
(Another young elephant, who was somewhat older - about as big in height as a human teenager, I'd say - was using his trunk to suck milk from its mother, so that answered that.)
With all this prey around, we also saw some lions, and even two leopards, sitting in the trees. (One had a slain wildebeest with it.) Astonishingly enough only three cheetas when the last time we were in Africa we saw dozens. Anyway, each time I see one of these big cats in the wilderness I'm struck by what a horrible thing it must be for those in the zoos. You know, Rilke and his panther.
On that fantastic day, we also stopped by the office of the Frankfurt Zoological Society (which is in the middle of the Serengeti - this Society is basically responsible for the Serengeti having been declared as a gigantic natural preservation area) and said hello to Marcus Borner, whom we had met the last time. Mr. Borner regaled us with tea and anecdotes. He had just met a rich American named Paul Scott who was planning to produce a movie about Bernard Grzimek and his son Michael.
(B.G. was The Man Who Saved The Serengeti. A legend. His son, also into the saving animals business, died tragically and young in an air plane accident. There are monuments for the both of them around the plains.)
But it seems said American has problems with the inevitable tragic ending. "But there has to be some optimistic final twist. I hate movies which make me cry!" the fellow insisted. Mr. Borner told him that well, the Serengeti got saved, and besides, tearjerkers are a fine old movie tradition. (See also: Gone With The Wind. And of course, Out of Africa.) We snorted in collective European disdain for the American avoidance of tragedy, until my smugness in this regard was shattered by recalling several fine American works of fiction, both on paper and on screen, which did not flinch from the sad ending after all, and I repented.
Anyway. Mr. Borner also promised to come to what was our main reason for coming to Africa at this time of year anyway - the school ceremony. (More about it in a moment.) Then we took ourselves off and travelled to the Ngorongoro Crater. One long dusty and really bad road between the Serengeti and the crater, let me assure you of that - I didn't envy Hussein who had to drive one bit.
The crater is an amazing thing. Gigantic leftover of, duh, a volcano, it strikes you at once as the kind of thing Edgar Rice Burroughs and Henry Rider Haggard had in mind when inventing lost African kingdoms for their heroes to find. As befits a lost kingdom, there is a fog in the morning, and as befits a place over 2000 metres above the sea, it's freaking cold in the night which is why you have heated rooms in the lodges up on the crater heights. We always took every jacket we had with us before descending into the crater.
The highlights this time around were the rhinos. One appeared early in the morning, when there was still mist around, right out of a Dürer sketch, moving unhurriedly towards us. This completed the Big Five for this journey. (Big Five = the five animals every safari participant longs to see, the other four being lions, leopards, elephants, and buffalos.) We held our breath and it actually crossed the road not ten metres away from us. My flies-damaged father had managed to hurt his back as well on that day, but all pain was forgotten when he got to film the rhino close-up. If the hippo is all curves and fleshy mass, the rhino is one geometric animal with its two horns and the body looking as if it was wearing Japanese armour. No wonder Dürer fell for it. I felt like jumping for joy - watching a rhino is rare anyway, let alone this close - but didn't, since the AP s would never have forgiven me if I had scared it away.
Later on, we actually saw another turning up in a field of yellow flowers, which according to Hussein are firm favourites for rhinos. It looked oddly poetical and playful - the Dürerian rhino, and all these tiny yellow flowers around it. This one, too, crossed the road not too far from us, but since it was later that day, we weren't really as lucky in being alone with it - the first time around, there was just one care aside from hours, this time, there were about ten.
We also got to watch lions pretty up close, two male ones at one place, and later on an old male and two females, one of which was still busy eating the wildebeest they had killed earlier. I noticed again the sound of flesh being torn is just like the sound of grass. The old male had already eaten, but we had the distinct impression the other female had not - she tried a few times but was shushed away by the male while the first female ignored her and went on eating.
Now, our main purpose wasn't watching all these animals at all. That was just a side benefit. The last time we had made the acquaintance of Joe Ole Kuwai, a Masai who worked for the Frankfurt Zoological Society (having been the apprentice of the legendary Bernhard G.), and who was campaigning to get a school built for the Masai tribes in the area around the crater. (There was already one but not only was it overcrowded but at a place where a lot of the children needed three hours or so to go to, if they went at all, so they really needed another.) In the two years in between, "Bread and Books", our charity company, had worked with Joe to get the school going, which proved quite difficult at first because as opposed to our Indian projects, we couldn't get much outside funding. Anyway, it did get started once money to get it started had finally been collected, and we were here to participate in the official opening ceremony and have a look at the result.
Though the ceremony was yet to come, the school had already been put into use. The original plan had been to start with 80 children and move up to 120. Instead, Joe had told us via emails, there were already around 200 there. As it turned out once we arrived, there were ca. 360. (Which meant the presents we had brought along, which were about 300, were still not enough, but hey.) Only a few months and with a building only half-complete, the overwhelming acceptance and need for the school was stunning.
We had been on the hill where it stands before, for the initial blessing ceremony. Back then, there had been nothing there, just grass higher than a human being, a great view, and at a distance the house of an archaelogist, because in this area they found the first recorded footsteps of a human being. Now, the grass was gone (i.e. was only as high as in an English park), and there was this building with eight class rooms, more than half of which weren't finished yet but in full use. There was also a smaller building for the staff which had only four rooms, though, and with a headmaster and three female teachers, two of which had to share a room, that meant it was already overcrowded. (Also, they need more teachers.) In front of the school, there were was an improvised kind of tribune so the guests of honour would sit in the shade. It was decorated with blue, pink and white toilet paper wrapped around the wooden stakes. The children and many Masai were already there when we arrived, but many more would come during the day. About a third of them wore Western-style clothes, the rest were dressed in traditional Masai garments, with red being a favourite colour. Many of them had earrings or the ears that showed a lifetime of earring wearing, with big, big holes, or only rudimentary fragments of the ears left altogether. Their faces are mostly lengthy (with long teeth, too), though there are exceptions like Joe who is an embullient, stocky man. The children were in school uniform, the necessity of which is a leftover from the Brits, like in India. Everyone was incredibly friendly.
We were far from the only guests of honour; aside from Marcus Borner and Sarah the Vet, also working for the Frankfurt Zoological Society, there was a Member of Parliament who presented the Masai of the area in same, and various representatives of Tanzanian organisations. And of course all the elders of the Masai tribes.
About four hours passed with presentations and orations. The children played a little dramolet about education, a story where two fathers wanted their kids to marry instead and the mothers wanted them to go to school, and there were a lot of dances, including one where several of the people standing around were challenged to join, including the MP, who did just that among much laughter and applause. Two of the dances were songs of gratitude, so we were told, with the women singing to the lead of one male singer. The orations were about the school in various angles, and I memorized the approving yells from the crowd which were "oyé!", "safi!" or "ju!" (Transcribed phonetically by me - I have no idea about the spelling.)
The orations that struck me most were the ones by Joe, telling about the story of the project, and the MP's, who used the opportunity to not just say nice and celebratory things but to challenge everyone to send more of their daughters to school. For it had turned out that while the first standard had about half-half in boy and girl ratio and the second something not that dissimilar, though already favouring the boys, by standard 3 (age 10) there were less than 30% girls, and so forth. "You send your sons," the MP said, "so why not more of your daughters? When your sons grow up, you don't want them to marry outside of their people. But do you really believe they'll want to marry girls who know nothing? We are the fourth largest people in the country, but in education, we are last!"
Marriage as the big argument for female education is less than thrilling but ought to be more effective at this point than female equality. Mama Tinan who leads various groups fighting for women's rights told me that they have incredible difficulties fighting against female circumcision, which is still practiced widely in Tanzania in general and almost 100% with the Masai. (She herself is also circumcised.) "It's the women more than the men," she said, "convincing them that they shouldn't do this to their daughters. A girl who is not circumcised will not be married, is thought of as impure and unable to birth good children, and as wild in the sexual sense. Now we're trying to convince them not to remove the entire clitoris; if they accept a modified version of circumcision, it would a first step, and we can move on to more from there."
Back to the speeches: I was also proud of my Aged Parent who did the final one. At that point, we had already received our presents (he got the traditional Masai wear plus a chief's staff and a cowskin shield, Mum got a cowskin cape and some great raffles made of tiny little pearls, and yours truly got a head wear and a beautiful belt also made of leather and tiny little (plastic or glass) pearls which looked as if they had been individually assembled - so much work. Anyway, so my father took his cue from Martin Luther King.
"One of the greatest orators I had the privilege to hear," he said, "was a black man, and he started with "I have a dream". Of what did he dream? Of all men being equal. Why is that still not so? The key, in my opinion, is education and the chances developing from it. Through our education we had so much of the luck of this world, and we want to share it with you. I, too, have a dream - of one of these children standing here in twenty years, being a doctor, or another Joe Ole Kuwai, or a member of parliament, or, why not, President."
After presents had been given and received, there was also a call for everyone to contribute so the school could continue - as I said, it isn't even finished yet. And so many of the people present came and gave one of the chiefs and the MP, who acted as collectors, a donation - mostly money though three people donated cows and goats. Even our driver Hussein gave 5000 shillings, which was lovely of him. All in all, there were about 600 000 shillings collected, plus Dad's promise to double whichever sum would be collected from his end, and we left in the certainty that the project had a great start and will continue, and that there is still much to do. The teaching schedule looks good - containing English and Swaheli (the Masai have their own language) from day 1 - for example - but there really have to be more girls. All in all, it was one of the most moving days I experienced this year.
Next, and much shorter: Mauritius. Now, I'll try and see The Prisoner of Azkaban so I can finally read the reviews and write my own...
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 04:13 am (UTC)Thank you.
Welcome Home :-)
Date: 2004-06-17 07:03 am (UTC)Dürerian rhinos, lost Henry Rider Haggard kingdoms... wow, this sounds absolutely amazing! If I should dream of getting kidnapped and being pushed over a crater's cliff by a bunch of African rhino-worshipping magicians tonight, this will be your fault entirely *g*
Enjoy HP III! I already watched it last week (accompanied by aged father) and liked it immensely. Atmospherically intense, fast-paced but with very nice and poignant "character scenes", absolutely adorable actors, lots of lovely details.
David Thewlis, while far from being the Lupin I imagined when I was reading the book, is very convincing. Watching his performance, I totally forgot how much I originally had wanted a certain lightsaber-swinging Scotsman to play the part...
Re: Welcome Home :-)
Date: 2004-06-17 09:08 pm (UTC)Enthusiastic HP review to follow, btw.
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Date: 2004-06-17 07:10 am (UTC)giraffes which move like one imagines waves do if they had legs
This, for example. I can simply see this.
Your descriptions of the school are wonderful. It makes me yearn to go somewhere like that, to fulfill all my teenage dreams of travelling the world, doing useful things.
If everyone could imagine or see what incredible differences separate us all over the world, and what commonalities unite us, perhaps we'd pay a little more attention to the world outside our backyards. In one of my posts about talking to college students in Mississippi, who had never been further than a few miles from home, and to whom New York was as remote as Tokyo, I said that it was hard for them to believe that there are people who travel the world like it's small, part of some greater, global society of people who are citizens of Earth. I find it easier to believe when I read your writing. Thank you.
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Date: 2004-06-17 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-17 01:41 pm (UTC)When I was broke (the most recent time, or perhaps two times ago) I sold all my movie DVDs except for three: Out of Africa, The Abyss, and Starship Troopers. That there's my power triple-play.
And this was a marvelous travelogue; Joe's just like I imagined him. And they need more teachers indeed! Though from what I know of the Masai, it's an amazing step that they've even begun to educate their children to Western standards. Your dad's speech was so right on. Because I mean really, (though my history could be way off), wasn't it just like ten years ago most of the Masai didn't want anything to do with ANYONE non-Masai? They just hid out there in the bush doing their thing?
Anyway, you folks are doing amazing work. I wish to god I was out there.
Thank you!
Date: 2004-06-17 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 12:24 am (UTC)And any time you can use this phrase:
the wildebeests were taking their own sweet time
you definitely should.
Would it be OK to link this from my LJ? I know some folks who would certainly be interested. (I'm already plugging the hell out of your "Buffy" stories, might as well bring in some RL material as well. :))
Re:
Date: 2004-06-19 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-19 11:02 am (UTC)The building of schools is a wholly worthy endeavor, and whatever the stated reason, letting girls be educated as well as boys is a good thing.
Thank you!
Date: 2004-06-19 02:49 pm (UTC)That's what I thought as well.