07.07.2011-10.07.2011 Safari!

           Thursday was a holiday so we chose that day to go on our safari this weekend so we wouldn’t miss as many school days with the wototo.  Our drivers (Richard, Chui, Kevin, and Simba) arrived at 8am and all 22 of us loaded up.  Ashlee, Angie, Matt, Katie, and I all hopped into Richard’s five person jeep.  Richard is absolutely wonderful!  He was so kind and knowledgeable about the animals we saw.  Every driver was wonderful. I got along superbly with them all! 

            Our first stop was Lake Manyara National Park .  It was a two hour drive from the house but on the way we saw many Masai villages and tribes.  It was almost as interesting as the safari itself.  Young boys would walk the cattle, donkeys, and goat to graze on the browning grass.  Some of them couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6.  They walk around with a spear or a stick to keep the animals in line and safely off the road.  It’s also their job to protect the animals from other animals (like lions).  Richard says that it doesn’t happen often, but if a lion leaves the Serengeti or Ngorogoro crater, the Masai warriors will kill it.  The most amazing thing about the drive there was that all of these Masai boys were walking right next to wild animals like giraffes, and they didn’t care!  It was normal for them.  They were more interested in who was in our jeep.  I made friends with one particular Masai boy on the side of the road.  Our tire popped and as Richard was changing it, the boy ran up to the road from his village.  He was hiding behind bushes at first but slowly made his way closer and closer to us.  He was wearing western clothes, but was carrying a spear.  I looked at him and smiled, and he quickly hid his face behind the bush.  When he looked back up, I covered my face with my hands and started playing peek-a-boo.  He laughed and came closer.  We kept playing peek-a-boo until Richard was ready to leave.  I said, “nipe tano,” we high-fived, and then our group piled back into the car to leave.  As we were driving away he asked for water.  I felt so bad that I had drank all mine.  I had none to give him.  I waved as he disappeared behind us.   Katie laughed at me and said, “Wow, you really do made friends with everyone.

            We arrived to the villages just outside of Lake Manyara and the roads were FULL of wild monkeys of three different types.  There were baboons, blue-tailed monkeys, and white tailed monkeys.  In the towns by Lake Manyara, monkeys were walking in the streets side by side with the locals.  The locals didn’t mind them, and they didn’t mind the locals.  They seemed to cohabitate magically.  It was amazing to see!  If there were monkeys walking in the street at home, everyone would stop to try to touch them or at least look at them.  I am reminded every day how truly different Tanzania is from home.

            We stopped at a camp site in Lake Manyara for lunch.  It was pretty nice.  We ate chicken, carrot cake, and fruit.  There were huge storks in the trees and flying above.  We have storks visit our creek at home but none this big or loud.  We avoided the side walks directly under their butts.  Birds that big have to have huge poop.  Being in a position in which we were unable to shower for the next four days made us very careful of what we were walking near and under. We left the cooks there to make dinner and prepare the tents for camping that night.  The drivers and the rest of us left to enter the park.  Looking back, this park of the safari reminded me of Timone and Pumba’s home in Lion King.  It was very tropical and green, and there were still creeks, even though it’s the middle of the dry season.  We spotted our first elephants (tembo) here.  There were three eating a tree, a mama and two younger tembo.  The tembo was the thing I wanted to see most, and these were so close to the jeep and so early into the safari!  After a dozen pictures or so, we drove farther.  We saw hundreds of wild monkeys. Babies were clinging to mamas, some were asleep on the side of the road, and others were crossing the street or cleaning a fellow.  I remember last weekend during the waterfall tour at the base of Mt. Meru we were stretching our necks to see monkeys and there we were at lake Manyara, bored of them because there were so many!   We wanted to see more of a variety of animals.  We leisurely drove through the winding roads, and spotted more giraffes. There were two grazing on bushes. We also saw hippos, but from a very far distance.  There was a fence to keep us safe.  We needed our binoculars to see their heads popping out of the water.  I was disappointed that they were so far away, but Richard said we would see them more closely the next couple days. 

            After the full day, we returned to camp to eat dinner. It was nice to have a change from what we usually get fed at the volunteer house.  We also had dancers and music for entertainment.  There were many families with children from Europe and the USA.  The children all got a kick out of the dancers and were giggling so hard.  I was exhausted and went to bed early.  Ashlee, Matt, Angela, and I shared a four person tent. I didn’t get much sleep because Matt snored very loudly.  Finally after two hours of no sleep, Angela and I woke him up.  She kept picking his arm and dropping it on his face, to no avail.  We finally punched his arm.  He startled awake, and we told him to turn onto his side.  He didn’t so Angela threatened him that we would write on his face and drag him out of the tent to feed to the wild animals if he didn’t stop snoring.  He giggled, turned over, and so we all tried to get a bit of sleep. 

            Morning came too early but I was excited to wake and go to Serengeti National Park.  We ate breakfast, and then drove on.  We drove past Ngorongoro crater and stopped to look at the view.  It was so huge and beautiful! There was even a rather large salt lake within the crater.   We were going to go down into the crater in a couple days, after the Serengeti.  We just stopped here at this time for the breathtaking view.  At this point we were given the opportunity to visit the Olduvai Gorge or continue on to eat at the gate.  Half of us visited Olduvai Gorge while the other half continued to drive to the gate to eat lunch.  I chose the Gorge, and am very glad I did.  It only cost 3000TZS and I learned so much.  This is where the oldest bipedal footprint fossils were found.  They have been reburied since for protection, but there was an exact replica that we could look at and touch.  Also, the view I had as I was eating my cheese and butter sandwich (surprisingly tasty…) was absolutely gorgeous. 

            Arriving to the Serengeti was quite a relief because the Masai tribes were not there to try to sell stuff to us.  They were moved from the Serengeti to Ngorongoro by the Tanzanian government to protect the wildlife. Seeing them is always amazing, learning about them is very interesting, but being asked for water, food, and to buy stuff from them is both heartbreaking and rather annoying.  We couldn’t stop for any reason without them running up to us.  I want to give them all a waterfall to drink from, but I can’t.  I wish I had more to give. I couldn’t imagine spending all day grazing my cattle in the beating sun, with no water to drink.  I can’t imagine having to work so hard at age four, and with so little food.  I asked Richard why I never see Masai women, only young men and children.  He said that it is because the women are responsible for all of the work at home.  They cook, they clean, they collect water for the cattle and family, and they even build and maintain the houses.  They also believe in polygamy so each village chief has several wives and many children.  One particularly large tribe chief that we passed had 42 wives and hundreds of children.  I wouldn’t even be able to remember every one of my child’s names! 

            The Serengeti looked so dead at first.  A thin layer of dust covered everything in the jeep from driving on the gravel road for hours, and the grass was yellow and browning.  The dry season became apparent to me for the first time since first arriving in Tanzania.  I didn’t see anything out in the grass besides antelope at first.  Soon though, we came across more giraffes (twiga), elephants (tembo), hyenas (fece), and hippos (these ones we were VERY close to).  We also saw buffalo, the Wildebeest migration (AMAZING!), many birds, and hundreds of grazing zebras (pumbamelia).  None of them seemed to be bothered or even notice our jeeps.  After many hours of driving around, we were ready to see a simba!  We told Richard to find us a lion, and he found us MANY.  We even saw a female and male mating off in the distance, and baby cubs playing.  We ended the night by watching the sun set over the Serengeti.  Red, purple, orange, and yellow all bled together to form quite a magnificent sight.  Never have a seen such a beautiful sunset in all my life, nor do I think I’ll see one as beautiful as that again. 

            After the sunset we drove back to camp to set up our tents.  We camped in the middle of the Serengeti!  How cool is that!? We were cautioned to not stray from camp, and also to not have any sort of food in the tents with us.  I slept in between Cameron and Katie.  Katie woke me up in the middle of the night because she heard a noise and was convinced it was a lion.  When I shined a flashlight out into the grass outside the camp, you could clearly see the reflection of dozens of pairs of eyes.  Who knew what was out there watching us.  I fell right back asleep, but woke up to find her cuddled up near to me.  Here was this 6’4” woman, curled in a ball, cuddling with me.  I couldn’t help but giggle before falling back asleep. 

             When we woke and had breakfast the next morning I found out that everyone had trouble sleeping.  We talked about all the noises that were heard and how everyone was too scared to go to the bathroom until morning.  The bathrooms during this trip, by the way, were mostly holes in the ground.  I wouldn’t even label most of them as squatters.  They were literally holes in the ground within separate stalls.  I got used to squatting days ago, because you have to squat over even the toilets because of the lack of seat covers.  What I can’t get used to is the strong smell of hot human waste. 

            We left to see the sunrise over the Serengeti and to find more animals.  We had yet to see a cheetah, leopard, and rhino.  The sunrise was magnificent but the weather was much colder than I would have expected.  I stuck my head out of the top of the jeep as Richard was driving so that the wind would help wake me.  We saw a crowd of jeeps in the distance and rushed to see what they were looking at.  It was a leopard up in the tree, right by the jeep.  It was just dangling on a branch, sleeping.  It rolled over, got up a couple times, but didn’t do much more. 

            The next thing we saw was a cheetah!  It would have been nice if it was in action or at least gnawing on a bone, but it was asleep also.  It was as if everything in the Serengeti sleeps constantly!  (The closest thing we saw to a hunt was a lioness crouching in the grass, waiting for a pumba to get closer.  The pumba smelled the lioness though, and turned away.  There was no chase.)  Back to the cheetah! There was a woman doing research, watching the cheetah also.  I wonder if she thinks her job is magnificent or not.  I mean, she studies wild cheetahs.  That sounds awesome, right?  But as we were there, she was just sitting in her jeep, waiting for the cheetah to do something.  She looked so bored!  We got some good pictures, and moved along to see more. 

            The only thing left on my “animals to see list” was a wild black rhino.  Richard said we probably wouldn’t see it in the Serengeti, but when we go down the Ngorongoro crater, we would have a much better chance.  We left the Serengeti that afternoon to make it to our Ngorongoro camp sight before dark to set up our tents and have dinner.  It was freezing!  Kevin told me that it gets as low at 0 degrees Celsius during the night.  As he was helping us to set up our tent, he gave me his kanga to keep warm.  I also had a hoodie, two pairs of pants, and my new, knit Bob Marley hat on.  After I was wrapping myself up in Kevin’s kanga, he spun me around and pointed to our water tank.  There was this huge bull elephant, stealing water from our tank!  Kevin said that it comes several times every day to drink the water.  I ran up to the jeep it was across from and stood there to watch it.  It was humungous!  A little girl ran up to it from the other side of the jeep, without realizing how dangerous this wild animal can be.  A man ran up and snatched her away.  I wonder what would happen if the bull did hurt or kill somebody.  Would they kill the bull to ensure the safety of the tourists? 

           After dinner, the group of us huddled around a fire to stay warm and we were also drinking whiskey and tea.  Kevin and I were in a really great conversation about the Masai people and their way of life.  Kevin grew up Masai.  I asked him about his circumcision (Masai boys are circumcised at age 15…ouch), female circumcisions, polygamy, female work expectations, and life in general.  He said that some tribes have been educated and no longer do the female circumcisions.  Other tribes, however, still do.  The purpose of it is to prevent the women from enjoying sex so they maintain their fidelity to their husband.  The less they cry, the more they are rewarded.  We also talked about his education and how he got to be where he is now.  He went to college to study wildlife and tourism.  To pay for college, he was a porter for Mt. Kili.  He said that he would easily climb Mt. Kili in three days, carrying tents and food for the paying climbers.  As we were talking about this, Ashlee came up to Kevin and said she couldn’t walk to the bathroom.  I asked why and she said there was a herd of zebra in between camp and the bathroom.  My mouth dropped and Kevin must have seen the excitement on my face so he picked me up and we went in that direction.  Neither of us had a torch so we allowed our eyes to adjust to the moonlight.  I slowly walked towards the zebra, with Kevin standing close behind me as to make us look less intimidating.  Every time I would step closer, the zebra would gallop away.  I got about 10 feet from them.  I was giggling like a school girl, and Kevin was giggling at me.  It couldn’t have been more magical if it were unicorns grazing next to us.  Kevin said, “No, no. You are doing it wrong.  If you want to walk closer, you must do it like this.”  He put his hands on my shoulders and guided me to slowly walk parallel to the direction in which the zebras were facing.  We kept walking, and the grazing zebras followed. Eventually we were walking side by side with the zebras and they weren’t five feet from me.  I can’t believe my laughing didn’t scare them away.  We walked with the zebras for at least a half an hour.  Every direction I looked, there were these magnificent, horse-like creatures.  They hardly minded us being in the middle of the herd at all.  When we were finished and ready to go back to camp, Kevin lifted my arms up.  I was still wrapped in the kanga so it made me look much larger.  The herd of zebra ran away and I jumped up and down in excitement. It was the most amazing part of the safari by far.  I was dancing with zebra!

            The coldness of the night woke me several times that night.  I also heard animals right outside our tent.  I am not sure what type, and I didn’t want to unzip the tent to find out.  When morning came, I crawled out of the warmth of my sleeping bag and joined the others for breakfast.  We were going down into the crater that day so find more animals.  Ngorongoro crater has the highest population density of simba in the entire world, and also many black rhino.  Richard said the prides within the crater are as sometimes have as many as 25 members.  While in the crater, we saw two black rhinos (amazing, as there are very few left in the wild), a pride of at least 8, more tembo, buffalo, and wildebeest.  We had lunch by a herd of hippos, and were warned to eat lunch inside the car or the birds of prey would snatch our food from us.  There were so many circling above us!  I wanted to feed them my chicken but everyone else said no because they would disturb the peace.  How cool of a picture would that have been though?! The time spent in Ngorongoro was amazing, but very cold.  I wish I had a warm shower, clean clothes, and a good night’s rest.  I appreciated the beauty of the area and the magnificence of the animals, but feel as if I would have done so more if I had at least slept well.  I think a four day safari is the perfect amount of days to enjoy the safari (if camping).  After that, you begin to get so exhausted that the animals almost become uninteresting.  I was distracted too by the state of my hair.  I hadn’t washed or brushed my hair in four days, but it didn’t feel oily at all.  The oil was being soaked up by the dust in the air and causing it to matte.  I felt like I had a main of buffalo hair on my head.

            By the end, I was terribly homesick for the volunteer house! Pulling up to the gate of our house, enjoying dinner with the other volunteers, and finally taking a shower (luke warm as well!!) felt amazing.  Now that I’m clean and have had a good night’s rest, I wish to go back! 

            Things I’ve learned for my next safari:

1. Bring and wear lots of bug repellent. Also, bring a book to identify different types of bites.

2. Always carry hand sanitizer and more toilet paper than you would believe necessary. You’ll have to share it with everyone who forgot to bring their own.

3.  Go to bed early.

4.  Bring anti-diarrheals AND laxatives.  Bring enough for everyone, because everyone will ask you for them when they discover you’re a nurse.

We got so close!

My Masai friend

The Bull drinking from our water tank.

Ngorogoro

            I had another nursing emergency that I had forgotten to write about!  During one of the bathroom breaks on the Serengeti, a woman came running up to the group of us in a panic screaming for a nurse or doctor.  Everyone turned around a pointed at me.  I first thought, “SHIT!  She is panicking, I’m a new nurse and don’t know what I’m doing, and I hope to God she is exaggerating the seriousness of the situation.”  She started running down to her car and I followed her.  As we were running, she told me her friend was having severe abdominal pains and thought he may have appendicitis.  I went down there, and saw him lying flat in his jeep.  I started to ask him questions about his signs and symptoms and trying to figure out what to do.  It sounded like he had a bowel obstruction. Thankfully, just then, another friend found a doctor from England.  He came, did a make-shift assessment, and also said it sounded like it may be a bowel obstruction but he should go get an ultrasound right away to be sure.  I hope he is okay now!