This is my last blog post of the Rafiki On Safari series encompassing my adventures and life in Tanzania, Africa. This post really doesn’t have much to do with Tanzania, but about me and the person I became by studying abroad.
When people ask me how my experiences studying abroad in Tanzania went, I respond with the cliche ‘the experience of a lifetime’ and tell some other details if asked. But in all honesty, how do I sum up this experience of a lifetime in a three-minute conversation? To start off, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Tanzania. The smallest detail in my day will remind me of some memory of my experiences and suddenly I am a million miles away, racing in a land cruiser with the zebras and giraffe across the open plains of the Serengeti, or interviewing African witch doctors, or sitting on a rocky outcrop watching the sun set as Maasai go about their daily lives in their bomas. It’s incredible, really, how the tiniest detail can bring back a flood of memories. Being in Tanzania was a dream come true and I learned so much about myself and about life in general. Although I am back in the U.S., it still hasn’t hit me yet that this is my reality. I feel caught in a liminal stage - on one hand I am overjoyed to be back at Lawrence and at home with my friends, family, and the life that I know and feel comfortable with. But on the other hand, something has changed, or maybe it’s just me. For the past five months, I haven’t stayed in one place longer than four weeks and now I’m back at school taking classes, being involved in campus organizations, and living the life of the American college student. This new reality seems still so surreal. Although I have managed to take reverse culture shock in stride, sometimes in unguarded moments the concept of missing Tanzania hits me like a very real ache in my chest.
In closing, I feel so unbelievably blessed and lucky to have experienced what I did and have such an amazing base of family, friends, and faith. I would not have traded my time in Tanzania for the world - even getting malaria seems just another piece of the puzzle. I feel, somehow, that I was always meant to go to Tanzania, to live and study there and experience a life completely out of my comfort zone and to continue to develop into the person that I was meant to be. Someday, I know not when, I will return to Tanzania to reclaim to piece of myself that I left there.
This post combines with the last post about Ngorongoro to complete the summary of my last week in the field.
From Ngorongoro we drove back through the countryside and bumpy roads to another campsite in the ‘Maasai landscape’ of Lake Eyasi. After setting up our tents, we chilled and enjoyed the comfort of the shade trees and the lush greenery of our campsite. Later we went with our guide to visit a branch of the indigenous tribe known as the Datoga. This branch of the indigenous tribe supported themselves by being blacksmiths. As we all sat on benches set inside a goat corral made out of thorny trees, we watched as a brass lock was hammered, melted the lock down by putting it in a dirt pit with hot coals that was fanned by an old man with double bellows made out of cow lungs, poured the hot metal into a mold, cooled it by dousing it in water from a calabash and then formed it into a bangle and hammered designs into it with a chisel and wooden hammer. It was very neat, to say the least. After interacting with the Datoga, we went on a walking tour of the area with our guide which included seeing a natural spring, massive fields of onions (this area of Tanzania is the main region for onion production in the entire country), and a walk through the forested area back to our campsite.
The next day, we went with Dr. Mabulla to a place called Mumba Rock Shelter where we climbed up to the top of the rock shelter and he lectured us on the history of the land and its people throughout evolutionary time. After the lecture, we dug around in the dirt to find more bone fragments and looked at some of the ancient rock paintings.
After Mumba rock shelter, we went to Lake Eyasi, a soda lake that is dry at this time of the year. We walked around the area and dug in the dirt to find fragments of ancient ostrich egg shells, pieces of pottery, bone fragments, and beads made out of ostrich egg shells. Although we were only pretending to be archaeologists, it was still insanely fun being hunched over, digging in the dirt to find artifacts that we treated like pieces of buried treasure.
When we got back to the camp, we had a lecture by some Tanzanian ladies who are very familiar with the other indigenous tribe that we were to see, the Hadza, or Hadzabe The Hadza are an indigenous tribe in great danger of extinction in that there are less than 1,000 members left in Tanzania. They are the last big-game hunter-gatherers left in the entire world. In this area, they used to be a great people, free from outsiders imposition onto their land. Because so many non-hunter-gatherers have encroached upon their land and moved into their area, their prey (cape buffaloes, lions, elephants, large ungulates, and other animals) have migrated out of the area, leaving them to hunt the only prey left in the area (bush babies, baboons, small cats, etc). They have also been affected by cultural tourism: because the Hadza have no leader or government of their group, hence no system for the distribution of the funds that they get from tourism. Because of this, the Hadza have developed a propensity for alcohol and tobacco - even children as young as 10 years old are alcoholics and addicted to tobacco. The Tanzanian government is literally doing nothing, or very little, to aid the Hadza and stop people from encroaching onto their land.
The next day, we visited the Hadza and insisted that our director use the money to establish a fund for the Hadza youth that want to go to school. Most of the girls went with the Hadza women and girls to gather berries and fruit and dig for tubers and roots. Many of the boys went with the Hadza men to hunt game with bows and arrows. We went around the land around the campsite and gathered three types of berries, tamarind fruit, and dug with digging sticks at the roots of the ‘wait a bit’ plant. The wazungu were aptly suited for helping to gather berries as all of us were at least a head taller than all of the women. When the women were digging for roots, one found a scorpion. We gathered that it wasn’t yet poisonous, so she picked it up and chased around her family members with the scorpion. When we got back to the camp, we helped crush the berries, peel the tamarinds, and prepare a berry/tamarind sludge. When the men got back, we learned that they had killed a dove and a bushbaby. When they were out in the field, they shot the bushbaby with their arrows and then built a campfire to cook it. Unfortunately the bushbaby wasn’t yet dead from the arrow blow, so a Hadza man took the bushbaby and snapped its neck with his teeth and jaws. After the bushbaby had stopped kicking, they put it on the spit and roasted it to eat in the field. While they were eating the meat, a Hadza man took out his stone pipe and proceeded to light up some marijuana for everyone to smoke in the pipe as an offering in thanksgiving for the kill. While the men were out, those who had helped gather played with the children and helped the women bead. When the men got back, we all got lessons on how to shoot their bows and arrows and joined the Hadza in dancing.
That night, we celebrated our last night in the field by going out to a local bar for some drinks with all of the staff of our outfitter company. It was a wonderful night and full of memories and laughing.
We drove the next day to Arusha where we ate lunch at a ritzy place and went to our hotel to relax. Some of us then went to the Maasai market before we all went out to a beautiful restaurant for our last meal when we were all together. We ate by candlelight and a few ambient lights in a room resembling a giant tent. It was a lovely night that was punctuated by good drinks, tasty tapas, and wonderful company. We all said ‘kwaheri’ to the staff of our outfitter company.
The next day we departed Arusha to return to Dar es Salaam for the last three weeks of our time in Tanzania.
The photo of the Maasai woman below was taken from the National Geographic website from the excerpt on Tanzania.
This update encompasses pretty much the last of my easy-living time in Tanzania, the time without final exams and tests that ensued upon my return to Dar.
After our time spent in the Karatu area, we drove to safari in our last, and my favorite, national park - Ngorongoro. Upon arriving in Ngorongoro after driving along the crater rim, we made it to our campsite with a view overlooking the undeniably breathtaking Ngorongoro Crater.
Our ‘Simba Camp’ was the site where, two years previously, a woman had left her tent unzipped at night while she was munching on some goodies, and a hyena wandered in to join her in partaking of food. Unfortunately she panicked, the hyena bit her, and it wasn’t discovered until too late that she had full-blown rabies. The weather in and around the crater is wonderful - in the 60s and 70s - and incredibly refreshing after being in the heat of Tarangire. After we unloaded our things, we loaded into the land cruisers and went to Laetoli. For those of you not familiar with Laetoli, it is the site where three early hominin footprints were found preserved. It provides the first, and only piece of undebatable and conclusive evidence that roughly 3- 2.75 million years ago, H. sapien ancestors habitually walked bipedally. After discovery and excavation, the footprints have been covered and re-covered. They are covered up now, but they are set to be unveiled in January for the president of Tanzania and other dignitaries. Because Dr. Mabulla, our archaeology professor, worked with Louis and Mary Leakey (Mary discovered the Laetoli footprints and her and her husband were the primary archaeologists excavating at Oldupai and Laetoli), we were able to walk around near the footprint sight and were able to look at fossilized bone fragments and other fossils that were near the site.
After seeing Laetoli, Dr. Mabulla wanted to show us the museum that was at the site. He had contacted the curator and arranged for the museum to be open. However, he failed to take into account that it was market day and market day must be observed. Dr. Mabulla was seething mad and after many attempts to make contact with the curator, he decided that it was only right that we break into the museum like good students of archaeology. So he commandeered the shortest and most agile boy in our group and had him stand on our director’s shoulders and crawl through a window to get inside and open the museum doors for us. Breaking into a museum in Africa with your professor? Check.
From the museum, we went to the Maasai market in Endulen. Ngorongoro is one place where Maasai and other indigenous tribes are allowed to live inside the park’s boundaries. Maasai are not allowed inside the crater, but are allowed to live in the highland areas. Ngorongoro is unlike any other park that we’ve been to thus far in that it is lush and green, and cool, and wonderful. I think I was drawn to Ngorongoro the most because it resembled a verdant paradise shrouded in clouds and its climate resembled Fall in Wisconsin. All of the Maasai women wore white hats made out of beads. As it would have been extremely inappropriate to take pictures, I will post one that was taken by a photographer for National Geographic that is a perfect image of both the climate and people of Ngorongoro.
The Maasai market at Endulen was a very neat experience. As per usual, we were the only wazungu (white people) within twenty miles of the market. This was not some tourist market, this was a market borne out of the necessity of real Maasai people. There were no postcards or souvenirs, but instead there were cooking wares, Maasai fabric and blankets, beads, knives and lion spears, food, and livestock. It was an experience I will never forget.
From the market, we went to the Endulen health center to pick up those students were not feeling well and then headed back to our campsite for the evening. But the excitement didn’t end at the market. When we got back to simba camp, we discovered that there are a pair of bull elephants have discovered the water tank that is the lifeblood for the camp. We were able to get about 15 feet from these dangerous animals while they sucked up the water straight from the tank, since they had previously broken down the concrete barrier meant to protect the water tank. Funny story: a Spanish man thought that it would be fun to keep getting closer and closer to these bull elephants, knowing full well how dangerous they are. He finally got too close for comfort, so the bull elephant starting chasing him around the campsite, all while the wardens and other campers looked on in mirth. Snack time rolled around that night and I happened to glance out of the concrete/wire mess hall area to see a bull elephant staring back at me less than 5 feet away, only separated by a concrete wall. As I looked on, the elephant proceeded to get closer until only the half concrete wall and wire separated the elephant and I - about one foot. The bull elephant proceeded to sniff with its trunk put on the wire - legend has it that elephants never forget a scent. After that very tense moment, (I could have easily been killed if the elephant was perturbed in any way and decided to push down the cement wall) I moved back from the wall to a safer spot.
The next day we went to Oldupai Gorge. Side note: it is NOT ‘Olduvai’. The German scientist who wrote about Oldupai first had misspelled it and after it wasn’t corrected immediately, it became the accepted name. Oldupai is actually a plant that Maasai in the area use and after which they named the site. If you’re not familiar with Oldupai, many believe that it is one sites that illustrate that Africa is indeed the ‘cradle of life’. After going to the museum and listening to a lecture by a park official, we headed down to the FLK Zinj site (look this up if you’re not familiar with it!) and dug around in the dirt to find more fossilized bone fragments, including a tooth.
From Oldupai we went to one of the coolest places ever, the place of the ‘shifting sands’. It’s essentially a giant sand dune out in the middle of nowhere within the park boundaries. It’s volcanic sand and it is aptly suited for a bunch of college students who want to jump, dive, and otherwise engage in childish behavior in/around it.
After the shifting sands, we went on safari within Ngorongoro Crater. After an almost sighting of a cheetah, we drove around to see a black rhino - our final, and by far most exciting member of the ‘Big 5’. Take a look at the picture below. We also saw lots of lions, including a pride that walked two feet under our car window to lay in the middle of the road and take a nap. We also saw a hyena stalking a family of warthogs, flamingos, zebras, hippos, elephants, monkeys, waterbucks, and much more.
For our last night in the simba camp, Brittany, Caleb, and I thought that it would be a marvelous idea to take matters into our own hands to see the hyenas that were undoubtadly prowling us at night. So we went out with our headlamps and flashlights and roped Shahid, Brendan and others into coming with us. Just to be careful unless we actually stumbled upon something, we took both Caleb’s Maasai lion spear and the Maasai knife for protection. We walked around the duration of the camp and shone our lamps in the bushes. After coming up empty handed when spotting predators, we saw one very horny male zebra and two females and two male cape buffaloes. To further their mood, a group of us sang Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. When we told our cook, Innocent, that we saw two cape buffaloes in the bushes next to the camp, he replied “Yes, they are very dangerous. They cannot live with the herd because as they get older, they get more aggressive”. Unfortunately our brilliant career at shining wildlife in the bushes was cut short by our need for sleep.
Pictured on the front page is Dr. Frank, who founded FAME with his wife Susan. Really great story, so check it out!
You’ll have to scroll down a bit to get to the park about Lazaro’s clinic. This little description doesn’t do it justice. It’s one of those things that you have to experience to deeply care about.
As many of you probably already know, I arrived in Chicago this Sunday with only a few incidents. All four flights went by quickly and my last flight from Philadelphia to Chicago was the only one that had flown between the two places the entire day! Customs was a breeze except for a misunderstanding involving vanilla vodka and baobab seeds coated in raspberry flavoring. But before I get to these, I’ll start where I left off all those weeks ago, in the fourth week of our stay in the Zion campsite outside of Tarangire National Park.
This week started off very slowly as Ian and I couldn’t do any interviewing because of Daudi’s (our translator) trip to Dar to register for his university classes. We ended up not going out the next day either as Daudi was still gone and our remaining translator had a bad case of laryngitis. So Ian and I had a few days to chill, run, relax, watch “A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, and look over our data (ha!). When I picked up another bracelet at the Enyorata women’s coop on Monday, they said that they would like to teach me Kimaasai the next day and told me to come at a certain time to their store boma. Are you sensing a trend here with the Enyorata group? I commissioned so many bracelets there that some of my friends joked that I was singlehandedly supporting these women’s families. I was very excited about their offer and went the next day to learn from the wanawake wa Maasai (Maasai women). I sat without shoes on a flattened feed bag in their little boma as they beaded and made baskets. Let me tell you, learning a new language from women of an indigenous tribe when both the teachers and student have only a conversational grasp on the common language (Kiswahili) is challenging, but incredibly rewarding. I wrote down my newly acquired vocabulary in my notebook in English, Swahili, and Maa.
The next day we did three interviews before deciding that 33 interviews was enough for both of us. After our last interview, we saw bibi walking towards us. We greeted her and inquired as to her family and health. After we talked, she told us to come back and see her before we left for the US. That night as a few of us laid out to watch the stars and heat lightening race across the sky, we also watched a huge fire blaze in Tarangire National Park. We were all worried for the sake of the animals and people living inside the park and were not certain if the fire was a routine burn or was caused by poachers trying to divert the park rangers.
On Thursday, Stacey and I went into Tarangire to help Ian (the other one) and Sam with their project of running transects along the park border. Along the drive to the park’s boundaries, we saw two male lions and a female. While we were watching them, the older male lion (judging from the size of his mane) and the female copulated not ten feet from us. Ava, our graduate student helping out the Biology students in the park, said that the other lion was jealous and would have to wait 15 minutes before he could have his turn copulating with the lioness. Another highlight of the day was seeing an owl bathe in a puddle close to where we were eating lunch. We ran transects all day under the hot sun, got bit by tons of tse tse flies, and were able to get out of the vehicle to get close to wildebeests and zebras. After we got back, I prepared my presentation for our preliminary research findings open forum the next day.
The presentations on Friday were delayed in starting because we were waiting for various village chairmen to arrive. The forum took an unnecessarily long time, but the presentations were interesting none the less. During Noah’s presentation on languages, he was asked if he knew any Kimaasai. He replied that he did not, but that Neema does. When the crowd looked at me, I greeted the mzee (old man) who asked the question in Maa. He was very shocked, too shocked to respond, and when he was silent, the crowd started to laugh. My presentation went well and I was asked several questions such as: what are the medicine/treatment options in the US and what medical option - traditional or modern - is better for treatment. I answered about healthcare in the US and told the man that both traditional and modern medicine have their merits and their difficulties and the decision of better treatment should be based upon several factors such as: age, illness, past illness experiences, tribe, gender, etc. The man asking the questions greeted me in Maa, to which I responded and asked him a question of my own back in the language. I’ll attach my final research report if you want to read it. I should warn you though, it’s long and by far my best work as I only had a total of two days to crank it out. But if you’re looking for a quick overview, the abstract of the paper should be just what you’re looking for. Although many of the presentations were on topics that could easily have ignited conflict in the village, everyone handled things very diplomatically and all were pleased. After lunch and cards, Caleb and I printed out pictures that were taken at bibi’s house and at the Enyorata boma.
We then walked to bibi’s boma with Peter. She was very grateful for the pictures and asked when we would come and see her again. We told her that we would try to return soon and she said that she hoped we will return while she is still living. She said that if ever we wanted something badly enough - to return to see her, for example - that God would have no choice but to give it to us. We left her then and walked back to camp. On the way, Peter said that the crowd was impressed with my Maa skills - the ultimate compliment from a native Kimaasai speaker.
After returning to camp and Ian, Shahid, Bruce, Katie, and I loading our bags into the vehicle for our trip to Karatu that night, I walked to Olasiti to say my goodbyes to the Enyorata Maasai women. The reality that I will probably never see them again has hit me acutely. Although this is a harsh reality, I am grateful for the time that we did have together. We then all left for Karatu. Bruce took the four of us early, instead of with the big group coming the next day, because we had done research concerning medicine and health practices and he wanted to take us to the FAME clinic. I won’t go into the story of the clinic’s beginnings and their mission, but I encourage you all to take a look at the link that I’m posting! Our trip to Karatu brought me back to reality: the lights of the city, reliable running water, and beds! I can’t yet imagine going back to Dar because even the city atmosphere in Karatu was a bit overwhelming.
The next day, we went to FAME Medical Clinic and spoke with their special projects and volunteer coordinator and the founders, along with other volunteers at the facility. The clinic and it’s location and absolutely beautiful. We got a tour of the place and learned about their mobile medical clinics and their mission for the future. It was a really sweet place and if and when I return to Tanzania, I would like to volunteer there. We met up with the group later and walked around Karatu and watched soccer games on the tv (what a treat!).
Several of the wanafunzi (students) were not feeling well today, so Bruce and I took them back to FAME to get checked out. When we were waiting for the test results, I talked to Dr. Frank about my research and he told me of a program that he’s doing in conjunction with Gibb’s Farm to integrate traditional and modern medicine. Really cool stuff. Later today we went to Gibb’s Farm to eat a delicious lunch. I’m also going to post the link for Gibb’s Farm. Also don’t pass up the opportunity to check this out - especially for those of you interested in sustainable farming or you’re just interested in cool organic farming. After eating lunch, Ian and I met the resident traditional healer at Gibb’s. He is part of a project and movement, the first of its kind in East Africa, to integrate traditional and modern medicine, to find out the chemical and medicinal properties in traditional ethnomedicine, and to encourage both traditional healers and modern healthcare providers to be open to each other’s medical practices as to be able to dispense traditional and modern medicine at the same facility. At Gibb’s, they have this facility and Lazoro, the traditional Maasai healer, told us how he had learned to be a healer from his grandfather and father and how he eventually hoped to go to medical school. He gave us a tour of his clinic where we met his modern medical counterpart, saw the traditional medicine, saw how he prepared it, and learned about the validity of his traditional medical practices. He has already opened several legitimate traditional medical clinics around Tanzania and is working with an agency to discover the chemical properties in his medicine and exactly how they affect the body. Needless to say, both Ian and I were geeking out about the future of traditional and modern medicine in East Africa and imagining the possibilities.
After our time spent in Karatu, we packed up the safari vehicles and drove to Ngorongoro Crater National Park.
A black rhino that we saw in Ngorongoro! This rhino was the last member of the ‘top 5’ that we saw and by far the most exciting. Black rhinos are very rare - roughly only 2,500 left in sub-Saharan Africa today. The young are easy prey for predators and poachers because, unlike elephants or the white rhino, black rhino young trail behind when they follow the mother, making them easy targets.
