Kili Kids

One of the placements for volunteers here in Tanzania is a nursery school called Kili Kids. The nursery is very well run and has had a string of volunteers from CCS who love working there. All of the children there are real orphans, (meaning that both of their parents are dead, not just gone, or un-able or un-willing support them) from toddlers up to about 6 years old, or at least the ones I have met are that age. Holly is currently the only volunteer working there and she absolutely loves it, she tries her best to teach them numbers and letters and what ever it is you teach such small children. She's really wonderful with the kids. It's going to be really hard for her to leave next week when her program in Tanzania ends.

A couple days a week Holly organizes trips to the nursery in the afternoon for other volunteers to go and play with the kids, though I'm sure she would be just has happy to go back with or with out any one else. I've gone a couple times and I can see why she loves it so much. The building is clean and the staff is caring and has a good knowledge of caring for children. The children themselves area completely adorable, since Holly has to teach in the morning we mostly just play in the afternoons.

The kids call us uncle and auntie, at first we were all auntie but we have Finalay convinced them to call John and I uncle. We read to them which they love even though they don't understand almost any of the English, and almost any game is fun to them. They have their own games that they love to play as well, one of the favorites being for one to sit in the wheelbarrow while another grabs the handles and runs as fast as he can with it. Fortunately that isn't very fast. John and I are also very popular because we can pick them up and toss them in the air, some things are fun for children the world over. The kids also invented a game where by they stand on a three foot high banister, call out, "UNCLE JOHN!!!" and jump into your hopefully waiting arms.

One of the children, Parsley, is 22 months old, but because he has AIDS he hasn't grown much past the size of a 9 month old. He gets sick often and has only been healthy one day when I was there. Parsley is probably ever one's favorite kid, he is simply too adorable and we hold him for the entire visit usually. He can't walk yet, but on good days he comes close and we hold his hands while he takes steps. On his bad days though he's just too tired to hold him self up. It's so hard knowing there is nothing you can do to help such a wonderful little child. I think most of us would take him home if we could. Here's a picture of me holding Parsley, just knowing him breaks your heart a little.

Taxi

The village where I live is a couple kilometers out side of the small city of Moshi, and when we want to go into town (most days) we can either walk for an hour or take a cab. Now don't get me wrong, the walk is very nice and perfectly safe and I make the trip on foot at least once a week, but an hour in the mid day Tanzanian sun is not something to be taken lightly. A cab to town from Karanga village only costs 4,000 tsh (roughly $4) so if you get a couple other people to go your only looking at about a $1 to get to town.

Where as in America to get a cab you would either call the company or just hail one on the street depending on where you were here in Tanzania, and probably a lot of Africa, you can actually call your favorite cab driver on his cell phone. Our favorites are Regebu, Tom, and Juma who all know us well and give us fair prices. They all speak English very well and Regebu especially likes to quiz us on our Swahili. What is also nice about them is that they know all the places that we mzungu like to go, ie; the Internet cafe, various restaurants, and the better souvenir stores. Their cars are clean and run well. From time to time Regebu will let one of the volunteers, usually Nicole, drive his car for part of the way home. Over all it's always nice to get a ride from any of these guys.

Where the adventure begins however is when you get a ride in a cab you just pick up on the street. When we are in town and want to get back we sometimes just pick up a cab who is waiting on the street like you would in any city back home. We usually try to pick a cab that belongs to the cab company, they have white cars with a blue stripe and white licence plates. Then first thing to do is see if the driver knows where we want to go. Karanga village is a little out of the way (as in way down a dirt road) and not all the drivers in Moshi know how to get there. If you cant give directions, and usually you cant, you find another cab. It's not much trouble to find any number of cabs, they seem to sit around for most of the day. If they can get you where you want to go the next thing to do is agree on a price. Cab's here don't use meters and prices are negotiable like most services. In and around Moshi we know about what we should be paying, and if a driver wants to charge too much you simply walk away. The driver will either give in and take you for a fair price or another driver will jump at the chance to take you.

The cars themselves are always a gamble, you never know what you will get. With our favorite drivers we know the cars are well maintained and clean, but there are times you are surprised that some of the taxi's you get in can make it as far as Karanga. Cracked windshields are not uncommon, and if you are in the back seat the windows may or may not open. Since I have been here I have been in only one cab with working air conditioning (it was actually a random street cab) so an open window is critical. It is also not unusual for the cab to have to stop for gas on the way. I don't think I have seen any cab with more than a quarter tank of gas since I have been here, and most are on empty the entire time.

Over all though things work rather well, and we have never not gotten to our destination. We may from time to time get stuck in a herd of cows or be unable to cross a flooded road, and on the dirt roads you will almost inevitably bang your head once or twice. But we have always made it. It's always an adventure.

Mt. Meru

I decided several weeks ago that I wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, one of the volunteers here had just come down and told us all about it. Once I saw how expensive it was to climb Kili however ($1,000 - $1,500) I began to look for alternatives and discovered Mt. Meru just out side of near by Arusha. Since I had a five day weekend over the Easter break it seemed like the perfect time to go. So I borrowed some equipment from other volunteers here at Karanga (thanks to Alex and Elise for that) and took the bus to Arusha last Thursday.

Most safari companies also do mountain climbs where they provide equipment and food for around $600 per person for Mt. Meru. I discovered however that for about half the price I could climb with out a safari company and do it on my own. So my plan was basically to spend a night in Arusha and get my supplies then make my way to the park the next day (Mt. Meru is in Arusha National Park about 30km from Arusha).

My night in Arusha went well and the next morning involved various modes of transportation (I was let off at the wrong stop, an old woman stole a clip from my bag, the land rover i was on broke down, we almost crashed into oncoming cars twice, and the roof of the land rover almost took my head off once) to get me to the Momela gate at the base of Meru.

At the first park gate I had to get out and pay the fee's for climbing the mountain. these included entry fees for the park, ranger fee's for the ranger who went up with me, and a rescue fee. All together it cost me $280. The man behind the desk then asked if I had a visa, and I started to panic because my passport was one of the things I didn't think to bring. All I had was a copy of my residency permit, so i showed that to him. He looked at it confused for a moment then realized the mistake. "I mean, do you have a visa card? We cannot take cash anymore." I was enormously relived and swiped my bank card. Lucky for me I don't have American express.

My ranger was a man named Gideon who would go with me up the mountain. You are required to have a ranger with you when you climb Meru, not so much to show you the way, though they do know it very well, but mostly to protect you from wild animals if the need arises. For that purpose Gideon carried with him a rifle slung over his left shoulder. It's not very often that a ranger has to use their rifle, and even more rare for them to have to actually kill an animal, but from time to time it does happen. Mostly its the water Buffalo that cause the problems, but sometimes and elephant will take offence to people walking too bye.

The first part of the climb was over open yellow grassland, Gideon told me that often there are hundreds of buffalo in that area, but that day there were only a few off to the side in a watering hole. We quickly entered an area of scrub brush and began moving up the slope. The forest at the base of the mountain was surprisingly like a forest back home in New England, I was very much reminded of various hikes I have take in CT or NH. After about an hour of walking we stopped by a small stream so I could rest and eat. I hadn't had a chance to eat lunch that day because of all my transportation issues. Gideon told me about his family in Arusha, and I talked about America.

Most of the first day was walking up hill through open grassland and we even came upon a group of three giraffe's grazing not too far away from me. Gideon took my picture with them in the background, he has an interesting sense of composition. Actually he insisted on taking pictures of me at most of the interesting points, I have more pictures of myself from last weekend then from the last six months. Just after the giraffes we also saw a family of warthogs.

Having never done any mountain climbing or serious hiking before I think i did well over all, but the weight of the pack was something I wasn't prepared for. It wasn't terrible, but every step up was made that much harder. Each day only consisted of 1000 meters of elevation, but the heat and the weight make it seem like forever sometimes. The sweat was dripping off my nose, it ran down my arm and hand and across the back of my camera before falling to the ground. I think i drank about 3 1/2 liters of water on just the climb that day. I found it best not to think about the whole mountain at once, just to take one step up, make sure my balance was good, and take another step up.

Once we were up higher we entered a part of forest that seemed almost like a rain forest. I asked Gideon about it and he confirmed my thoughts, saying that because of the clouds that hang on the side of the mountain and the rich earth from the volcano the eco-system there was a cool rain forest. Up in the trees we saw monkeys that were colored like skunks. Many of the trees in this area were enormous and covered in moss that hung down to the ground in places.

We came to the first group of bunk houses at about 5:30, and I had just enough time to take a cold shower and eat before night fell. The view was wonderful, I could see across the planes between Meru and Kilimanjaro and as it got dark there was a lightning storm down below us. I slept very well that night.

After a quick breakfast of carrots, oranges, dried fruits, and peanuts Gideon and I were off. We left around 8:30 and it was much cooler walking in the morning than in the full afternoon sun like the day before. It was another 1000 meters in elevation and even though I had eaten a full day's worth of supplies my bag seemed at least as heavy as it did the day before.

Along the trail we came across buffalo tracks only about 300 feet from the bunk houses we slept in the night before, sometimes the buffalo wonder into the camp at night Gideon told me. You have to be careful when you go out to the bathroom at night. Later we saw elephant tracks on the side of the trail as well, Gideon believes they were the tracks of a mother and her baby. I had no idea that animals that big came so far up the mountain, but Gideon told me it's not uncommon.

A bit more than half way to the next bunk house the trees changed from large hardwood's to scrubby pine trees and tall grasses. The air was getting cooler as well, but the strain of climbing kept me more than warm and the cool breezes we got from time to time were very nice. We got to the second bunk house at about noon, and I fell asleep almost as soon as I put my bag down. I wanted to eat first, but I was just too tired.

I got up around 1:30 and ate. While I was eating it began to rain outside, then it began to hail. It must have rained and hailed until 4:00. It was much colder at this point, I don't know how cold, but I could not yet see my breath. To keep warm I was wearing most of my clothes and my rain jacket. Gideon suggested that I go to bed early because we would begin our assent to the top at around 2:00am in the morning, so after eating as much as I could of peanuts and crackers dried fruit I went to bed around 8:00pm.

Everything after this point seems kind of like a bad dream. Gideon woke me up at 1:30 and we left the camp at 2:00am as planed. I had emptied my bag and only took water and a little food and my med kit so walking wasn't nearly so bad. The weather had also improved and by the time we were really climbing I was quite warm.

We quickly got past the point where plants of any size grow, and were on bare mountain. mostly at the start of the climb that night the ground was rock, but as we went up there would be more and more sections that were pure volcanic ash. We entered the a cloud layer and my visibility was very low. I could only see for about 100 meters in any direction, and what I could see was just the mountainside before and behind me. For the most part it was just Gideon and me, him leading and following the trail, and me following him. There were places where we walked along the ridge lines, some rock and some ash, where the mountain sloped down away from us on either side into the fog disappeared into the darkness. In other places we climbed up ash slopes that I could not see the top of in the fog, only the dark shape of the mountain seeming to go on forever. Like on the other sections of the mountain I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and on we went.


What kept me from getting to the top was the rain. Maybe about an hour and a half into the climb (I didn't bring my watch) the rain began to come down and the wind picked up. The wind blew the rain into my right side and the mountain was always on the wrong side to shelter us. I walked on hoping the rain would stop, but after half an hour my legs were soaked and the wind was not slowing down. I asked Gideon how much farther we had to go to the summit and he told me that it was only 300 meters higher, but it would still be about two hours because the last part was very steep. I decided to turn around.


We were back in the bunk house before dawn, so I would guess it was around 5:30 or so. I took off my wet clothes and crawled back into my sleeping bag and tried to sleep. With the exception of my feet I was able to get warm again, though the best I could do for clothes was my shirt and a only slightly damp pair of boxers.

Gideon woke me up around 10:00 and asked me what I wanted to do, to go back down or stay there for the night. I decided to head back down, if not to the entrance than to the first bunk house where the weather would be warmer. I put on the dryer clothing I and packed the wet clothes away, a couple pairs of socks were beyond hope and were left there, and we set out back down the mountain in a light rain.

Once we were moving again I felt much better, and we stopped not long into our walk to take off our jackets. Going down hill is much faster, but it isn't really any easier. I was very glad when we reached the first bunk house just after 1:00 and stopped for lunch. I ate more peanuts and my last two oranges. I threw away what food I could do without and which had gone bad, and emptied my water bottle's into my nelgene. With my much lighter bag I felt like continuing on and going home that day. Also, I had no dry clothes to sleep in so going down the mountain seemed like all the better idea.

On the second half of the trip down, from the first bunk house to the gate, my knee's began to hurt. It's a lot of stress to put on your legs at one time, even with the lighter bag. But the sun was warm and the animals were our and we came across several groups of people going up who were breathing heavily while we almost ran down. I was in a good mood as I anticipated a warm shower and clean clothing only a few hours away.

Just before getting to the gate we were walking through the open grass field at the base of the mountain and came upon a group of giraffes eating small low to the ground plants. We walked by less than 100 feet away and they looked up at us, then went back to eating. There were adults as well as children, And it was a wonderful way to leave the park.

On my way out I hitched a ride with a group of German tourists who had also climbed the mountain (and made it to the top), and then caught the Arusha-Moshi bus back to Moshi. Walking the last kilometer back to the home base I was picked up by a fellow volunteer Nicole who was driving a taxi. Rigabe, a local taxi driver who we like, sometimes lets her drive the last mile back to CCS, and that day just happened to be one of those days.

It's taken me at least three trips to the Internet cafe to get this all written down, and after almost a week my legs still hurt a little when I go down stairs. I hope the length of this post makes up for a week with out any, and I'd like to send a special thank you to Alex and Elise with out whom my climb would not have happened.

Letters to America

Since the semester testing is done there isn't much for the children to do for this week. So today I was able to turn the standard three and four children's English lesson into a letter writing lesson. My aunt Beth had given me a bunch of letters written by her class to my students, and I have been waiting for an opportunity to give them to my kids. They were very excited.

Because my students are at a range of levels some were able to write a very well composed letter by themselves, while other's needed constant help in the process. Over all though I am very happy with how well the letters came out. Tonight I will go through them and add periods and comma's where needed, not to change what the kids said, just to make it a little clearer.

This morning was rainy, and because of that there were a few extra students from higher grades at the school. I'm not sure exactly why the rain caused that, but I believe it has to do with the distance children walk to school combined with muddy roads. Our head master's own daughter came today even though she is in standard five and our school only go's to standard four. The older students of course wrote some of the best responses. Because there are only about 13 students in the three and four classes combined, and I had about thirty letters to respond to, I let several of the students write a second letter. When they were done I gave them all stickers (these children love stickers) and most of them put the stickers on the letters.

All and all, it was a good day.

A quick post

I have a little time so I am going to do a quick post about various things I happen to have pictures of.

***

At TCC (the Tanzania Children's Concern) the end of the semester is coming up soon and the children have just finished taking their tests. The testing took about a day and a half and covered subjects from math and English to art and Swahili. Once graded the tests go into a folder for each student that has all their tests and report cards. In standard 1 the children all wanted to show me their file's.

Once the tests were done there wasn't much planed for the students to learn as the teachers had to spend their time correcting all the tests. So, as a reward, I took the standard 3 class out to play for an hour instead of giving busy work. We went out behind the small school to a small dusty field where the children play soccer, jump rope and swing on a couple swing sets. I have discovered that my level of soccer is in fact third grade or there abouts. Once the kids grow past my shoulder I'm done, but for now I am awesome.

***

One of our favorite places to hang out is a coffee shop in downtown Moshi called, aptly enough, The Coffee Shope (it's fancy because of the extra e). It's mostly a mzungu hang out and you can find people from all over the world there on any given day. They serve a great ice coffee with ice cream on top that on hot days (ie: every day) is absolutely wonderful. Whenever I am in Moshi by myself and want to run into some fellow CCS volunteers I go sit at The Coffee Shope, order an ice coffee and what ever cake they have that day (banana cake is the best) and wait. In less than half an hour there is almost a guarantee that a CCS volunteer will walk in.

***

Here in the Moshi area we dont see all that many wild animals. It's kind of disopointing that I don't walk down the road and see giraffes eating from trees everyday. We do however have some smaller wild animals at the Karanga base, including todes, various birds, a copule bats from time to time, and our newest addition, a 4lb tourtouse named Kobe Bryant. It seems that John and Joe were given the tourtouse at their placement a couple days ago and brought it home. It's been wondering the grounds for a few days now and we see it every so often. when I asked why it's name is Kobe I was told that the swahili word for tourtouse is kobi, so it was only logical.

***

Another intresting thing about Tanzania is the rainy season. Now, comming from Connecticut I really had no idea what a "rainy season" truly entailed. Well, yesterday I found out first hand. As Alex and I left the internet cafe we decided we would walk the four blocks or so to the coffee shope and have an ice coffee. Fairly standard. The day had been overcast and cool, and after about one block of walking a little rain began to fall. As people around us scrambled to get to dry places Alex and I just kept walking, we thought that since we would be inside soon we would only get a little wet and could wait out the rain. The flaw in that plan came a moment later when the little rain turned into a downpour. With no rain coats or umbrellas we had no choice but to continue. By the time we got to the Coffee Shope we were very wet, but not soaked yet. We steped under the Coffee Shope porch only to realize that on sundays the Coffee Shope is closed.

We waited for several minutes in the hope that the rain would stop, but it only came down harder. With no better plan we decided to walk three blocks further to the Coffee Lounge, known to be open on Sundays, and finaly get our ice coffee's. As we ran under what cover we could, jumping yard wide muddy streams in the roads, we got soaked. The Double road (more or less main street) was compleatly covered in water, it was more river than road. Car's were stuck with people inside them. We got to the Coffee Lounge and finaly had our ice coffee's. With all the rain we were actually a little cold, but it was the principal of the thing. In the time we sat and drank our coffee the rain cleared up and we were able to walk and get a cab with out drowning.

Well, I'm just about out of time, and I am going to head over to The Coffee Shoppe now, have an ice coffee, and see who show's up.

Graduate School!

Today's post has very little to do with Tanzania, but for me is one of the most exciting days in quite a while. Yesterday I was informed by my dad that I have been accepted into the graduate photography program at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn! I couldn't be more excited! I have been waiting to hear back from the school for months, at this point I cant even remember what i wrote in my essay or what I put in my portfolio that I sent with my application. Whatever it was it must have worked.

For months I have been getting e-mails from the school, but always they have been about information sessions or the application process. Every time I opened them was a huge let down. Until finally yesterday I go to check my mail before bed (roughly 9:00, Friday night was a bit over the top so every one was turning early on Saturday) and see one new e-mail from dad with the tag "Pratt your in." Of course I tried to open it immediately and the home base computer took an eternity of 45 seconds to bring it up.

It's so nice to finally know what I will be doing next in life. I have applied a couple times to grad school since completing my undergrad and been rejected both times. If this hadn't worked I may not have applied again for a while, but now I don't have to worry about that. Now I can worry about loans and subway schedules. All things being even, I'll take the loans and subways.

No, Sleep, Till Brooklyn!

Tarangire Naional Park

I know it's about two weeks late, but here is the last of the parks I visited on safari.

Tarangire was the biggest of the parks that we visited, and the animals there tend to be a bit more afraid of humans than in the first couple parks. The way Eric explained it was that, "the animals are... ashamed." which of course brought on a good laugh. He went on to explain that, unlike the crater and the lake, Tarangire had a history of hunting until relatively recent times. Later, as we drove through the park Eric pointed out baobab trees with large holes in them and said that hunters used to carve out the trees and wait for the elephants to come up and eat. Hunting has of course been outlawed in the park for a long time, but the animals seem to have a long memory.

At first we saw very few animals, warthogs and impala's and exactly 4 zebras who once they spotted us promptly walked away in a line. Since these were all animals we had seen many times in the past couple days Eric drove on looking for more interesting game. Not long there after we were rewarded when he spotted a cheetah in the shade of a baobab tree about 50 yards off the road.

At first we could only see it's head above the grass, Tarangire has much more of the classic looking tall grass Savannah look to it, but as we waited and watched through binoculars it moved around behind the tree. We drove down the road a little more and saw the cheetah eating something it must have killed that morning. "Cheetah's mostly kill in the morning, just after dawn." Erick said. The cheetah was limping a little as it moved around, we guessed that it must have hurt itself a little making it's kill that morning.

Later, as we drove along for a while through the baobab studded grassland, Eric said, almost to himself, "There are a very many elephants down there," and pointed down to a dry river bed. We of course all looked, but didn't see anything that looked like even one elephant. Eric drove for several minutes in the described direction and we didn't see anything that resembled one elephant let alone a "very many elephants." We started to think that for the first time Eric had slipped up, when almost before we knew it we were in the middle of an elephant herd.

There was a group of elephants moving down to the dry river bed ahead of us, and two of the younger one's were play fighting maybe only 200ft. in front of us. They would stand facing each other from a couple body lengths away for a minute or so then charge. The sound of their tusks banging together was awesome.

The elephants were together in small groups of 10 to 15 as they headed to the riverbed. there were all types of elephants, young ones play fighting in the open space between groups, old males leading the way, and baby elephants following close to their mothers. We saw one baby who Eric said was only about three weeks old, it was tiny by elephant standards, and very cute. The mothers didn't seem to like us there very much and moved toward us in a way that got Eric driving faster. As we left the herd we crossed path's with a large bull elephant walking toward the river, he got within a couple feet of the back corner of our land rover and gave Elise a good scare. I tried to take a picture of him but with the bouncing car and the speed of it all I don't think the picture was in focus.

The other very cool animal sighting that day came not too long later when we saw four cheetah's all at once. They were all sitting on a dead tree that gave them a view of the surrounding grassland. At first we just saw two of them, but then a third and a fourth jumped up, to see so many at once is very rare.

after that we saw the herd of elephants again from across the riverbed, lots of impalas in the shade of trees, and whole family's of warthogs that were not at all afraid of us. There were also lots of birds who's names I have no idea of, and on our way out we saw the same cheetah under the baobab tree. We didn't get to see any lions that day, but the cheetah's more than made up for it.

I hope someday I can do another safari, a longer one even. All of the parks we visited were so different from each other which was a real surprise to me, since they are all in within only a couple hour's drive from each other. I wonder what the parks in the south of Tanzania are like, and of course there is the Serengeti to our west. Maybe someday.

Ngorongoro Crater

To drive from Lake Manyara to Ngorongoro you enter the great rift valley. I always find it interesting to suddenly be presented with the things and places that you studied in school but thought were were so far away that they may as well not exist. Once up in the valley the landscape was green with rolling hills, filled with farms and temperate forests so that it could almost have been Europe.

The Ngorongoro Crater is actually the collapsed caldera of an old volcano, and there is still an active volcano on the rim. From the rim to the crater floor is almost 700 meters, and the crater is just under 20 kilometers across at its widest point, it's the largest unbroken caldera in the world. I'm sure everyone is very interested in all this, but it falls under the vast category of safari information that Eric knows, and I wouldn't want it to go to waste. Perhaps a better way to describe the crater is that it is epic. It's the kind of thing that you look at in disbelief for several minutes then try to take a picture of it only to find that it simply wont fit in a picture.

Immediately on our decent into the crater we found ourselves in what seemed like the Lion King come to life. There were vast herds of animals all mixed together; zebra's, wildebeests, impala's and antelopes of various kinds. Unlike the few zebra's we saw yesterday these were up close and not really that worried about us. There were baby zebra's following their mothers and zebras rolling in the dirt, and many of the zebras were pregnant as well.

In among the herds we saw several hyenas sleeping and some trying to hunt, and there were even a few little jackals wondering around looking for something to scavenge. As we drove toward the far side of the crater we saw several ostrich's in a group and off in some bushes to our right were a couple of lions. They were too far away to get a good look at, one we could only see the face of through the bush, and only with binoculars. They must not have been hungry just then.

There were elephants in the crater as well, but not in herds. we saw several standing by themselves, and in some way they were more impressive than the one's we saw up close yesterday. "These were full grown bull elephants," Eric told us, "they don't live with the herd except for the mating season." There was something incredibly impressive about these elephants, the way the almost casually strolled along the vast openness of the crater floor. They, more than anything else we saw, matched the grander of the Ngorongoro.

After lunch we saw another lion, a male with a huge mane, laying by the side of the road. Because of the high grass we couldn't really see his face, but he was so close I could hear him breath. We watched for a while, hoping he would sit up, and eventually he did, but he turned to face the other direction. We have lots of pictures of the back of his head. Soon after he walked directly away from us, again not showing his face to us. It was almost like he was playing with us.

Eric, our drive, was excellent the whole time. As we would be driving along, bumping down the dirt roads, he would be watching out for animals. Every so often he would stop the car and stare off into the distance. We would look in the same direction but not see anything. Then Eric would look through binoculars and either point out some animal the rest of us had completely missed or drive on. Once he spotted a rhino and her baby from so far away that even with the binoculars we could only just make out the horn on the mother. Eric knew about all the animals, when they come out, what they eat, how many rhino's are in the crater (23), and when volcano on the rim last erupted (the day before).

So far I had come to believe that this safari was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen, and I still do. It sounds cool, to see all these animals in the wild, but you really cant imagine what it is like until you see it first hand. The power of an elephant just does not come across in a picture or on the discovery channel.

the bus to Arusha

I know I have not finished my safari parks, and they only get better; but today I am in Arusha for the day, and want to talk a little about what a trip to Arusha entails.

From Moshi buses depart for Arusha all day from the bus station down town. For about $2 US you can travel in comfort (ie: with out two people on your lap and possibly with a seat of your own!) for the one and a half hours to the Arusha bus station. The buses here are mostly smaller than buses back home, they have three row seats with a fold out seat for when the regular seats fill up (and they always do), so there are about 40 seats on the bus. It is however, not unusual for there to be anywhere from 45 to 55 people on the bus. How you ask? By fitting people five or, depending on the bone structure of the people in question, six to a row and with a few people standing by the door it can be done.

Our bus this morning was early, just after 9am, so there were just exactly enough seats for the number of people on the bus. Alex, who is with me on this adventure, got a seat in the back row, and I got the fold out seat for the last row. Today has not been as hot as usual for the past couple weeks and even with most of the windows closed the bus was not overly hot. I only sweat a little, and the Tanzanians didn't sweat at all.

Once you get past the tight spaces and being the only white people on the bus, it is in many ways an enjoyable ride. Between Moshi and Arusha the landscape changes several times and often quite suddenly. Just past the outskirts of Moshi where we live the country is mostly open soft hills where farms are being tilled and seeded now in preparation for the rainy season that is about to hit. There are Shepperd's with flocks of sheep and herds of cows going here and there, and the dirt is a deep red that looks about as rich as soil can. Off to the right, depending on the cloud cover at any given moment you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro hovering over the landscape.

Soon though you find yourself in what could almost be a desert. The dirt is so dry that it blows around like sand, and small dirt twisters are always moving back and forth in the distance. I've taken a few good pictures of them and will put them up some time in the future. There are tree's but they are small and so spaced out that you would never think of them as a forest. I have no idea what the goats and sheep and cows here eat, not much by the looks of it. Still, the landscape has a vastness to it that makes it enjoyable to watch pass by. In the distance are hills and the sky is huge and blue, and often filled with sculpted clouds. You pass through small towns of mud-brick and concrete houses with rusted tin roof's, it could almost be a strange western film.

As you approach Arusha the land turns green again, the hills rise around you, and towns and villages grow bigger and busier. Soon the fields give way to banana plantations and jungle. There are several stops between the outskirts of Arusha and the bus depot in the center of town. At every one a few people get off, requiring people in the fold out seats to stand awkwardly to the side and fold down their seat backs so the person behind them can get out. At the same time street vendors come up to the windows and offer snacks and drinks for a few hundred shillings (which isn't expensive). I would probably buy some if I wasn't afraid of getting sick from the food, there is no way of knowing where it's been.

The Arusha bus depot is one of the craziest places I have ever seen. It's an open air parking lot of sorts where buses enter and exit and in between they are refueled and maintained (or so they say). All kinds of people wait around the bus station for all kinds of reasons; cab drivers stand around hoping for fare's, news paper sellers stand around hoping for sale's, old men stand around mostly for the sake of standing around. Basically, there is a lot of standing around. But once they see you (a foreigner) they all want you to use their services, what ever they may be.

Now that we are here, we'll be off trying to find what ever odd things we can buy to bring home for all those lovely people back in the good old USA. Wooden bowls, animal carvings, jewelry, illegal DVDs, t-shirts, and who knows what else. We'll get some lunch, hopefully from a reputable establishment for our stomach's sake. Then be on our way home, which of course means another trip in the bus, this time from Arusha to Moshi. The buses tend to be fuller later in the day, so it could be a long ride. It's ok though, dinner tonight is vegi-burgers, and Alex and I would not miss that for the world.

Lake Manyara

Last Friday our safari began. We booked through a local company called Bushman Safari's who we have heard good things about and we were not disappointed. They picked us up in a beastly safari land rover like the one's you see on discovery channel specials. We were driven first to our campsite by a man called Godwind, and our cook's name, in all seriousness, was Good Luck.

The first animal we saw was a giraffe on the side of the highway. Godwind stopped so we could look and told us is was a Massi Giraffe. Megan asked if it was a boy or girl and Godwind said it was a male. Megan then asked how he knew, to which Godwind replied "because I can see his balls." Poor Megan turned a nice shade of red and the rest of us cracked up for about two solid minutes.

Once at the campsite, which was behind a very nice hotel lodge with a pool, we met our park driver Eric who has been driving safari's for seven years since he graduated Safari College. From what I can tell Safari College is like a trade school or two year degree. There have been several CCS volunteers at a safari college in Moshi actually.

Our first Park was Lake Manyara, with the entrance just a mile or so down the road from our campsite. Almost before we were in the park we came across a group of baboons on the side of the road. They were on both sides of us and in the tree above us; they were small and grey and seemed completely not bothered by us. Eric pointed out the alpha male on our left side who was chasing a female who was in heat. When we asked Eric why the animals were not afraid of the cars he said that the vehicles don't scare most animals, but if we were to get out they would go running.

The next animal we saw I almost missed at first. While we were all looking around at the African wilderness Eric was able to spot a pair of Dik Dik on the side of the road. If you don't know what a Dik Dik is, imagine a small deer, like baby small, with huge black eye's. They pair off for life and if you see one the other is probably not far behind, and the male has tiny little horns. Basically, imagine the cutest animal you can think of and put it in the African bush. How they survive in a land full of lions and cheetahs I have no idea.

Next up was something a bit more dramatic, as we turned a corner in the corner around some bushes and Joe said, "there's elephants in the road!" I didn't really think we would just run smack into elephants like that but in fact that is almost exactly what happened. A small group with a couple kids as big as horses, their mothers and a large bull elephant were casually munching on leafs and grass on the roadside. We watched them from no more than thirty feet for several minutes before they wondered off into the bush.

As we got closer to the lake the jungle thinned out until the landscape became a flat grassland for maybe a mile or two. Out in the fields of yellow grass was a group of 6 giraffes, spaced out, and just standing facing the lowering sun behind us. I must say, even though I have seen pictures of giraffes many times before, they are amazingly odd looking creatures. They seem almost alien. Off in the distance behind the giraffes we also saw a small heard of zebras, but they were too far away to get a good look.

Later, in a small pond we found a group hippo's lounging and surrounded by several large flocks of birds of various colors. They splashed and yawned their huge mouth's wide open, and though we were not extremely close it was easy to see that this was an animal you don't want to mess with.

The sun was starting to set and we headed back toward the park entrance, but on the way we still saw a family of warthogs and crossed path's with the group of giraffes again as they moved into the jungle.

Really the only thing we didn't get a look at at the Lake were any big cats. They are rare to see in Lake Manyara park, but we did see a kill that a leopard had left up in a tree, and Eric was able to spot the tracks of a large cat in the dirt road. We followed them for a short distance, but lost them in the jungle. The big cats are more common in other parks, so it wasn't a big deal.

When we got back we had a big dinner that Good Luck had prepared for us and then quickly went to bed, our day in Ngorongoro the next day was starting at 7am and we needed sleep. It's amazing just how tiring it is to stand up through a hole in a moving land rover for several hours. But even though it is easier to sit, standing is way more fun. You feel the wind on your face and have to be careful your hat doesn't blow away, and you really feel like your in the environment.