We have officially made it a week. This is by far, the most amazing and challenging week that I've had in my life in a long time now. Not really sure I have anything to compare it to.....let me try to describe all the crazy thoughts in my head right now. It is Sunday, and we returned to Arusha, Tanzania today from our safari.
A few facts first. We had two quick days in Uganda and then on Wednesday flew into Mt. Kilimanjaro airport. A driver picked us up and drove us into Arusha where we stayed in a lovely hotel Mount Meru the first evening and met our safari guide. We drove out on Thursday morning in our Toyota land cruiser to begin our adventure. We visited three different national parks during the next three days, spending basically a day in each. First, we drove about an hour to Lake Manyara for our first day of safari. It was the smallest of all the parks, and an "appetizer" safari according to our guide. It had a lot of lush vegetation, so was fun to try and spot all the animals within the trees and different areas. It felt almost like a dream to see giraffes, elephants, monkeys and more right in front of us! The excitement on the kids face was priceless, and to be honest I felt like a kid, wondering if we were actually seeing this stuff! Each day we would safari for about five to six hours, breaking for lunch at a spot inside the park, with a lunchbox that the hotel had packed for us. The kids thought the lunch boxes were great fun and were always curious to see what was inside for the day that was a new adventure in food for them to try. I have decided I have quite a bit of things I could learn from my kids, as by today, I was really just hoping to open that lunchbox and see a bag of Doritos and a chocolate chip cookie!
Anyway, our accommodations for the first two evenings of our safari days was a tented camp. It was a bit scary each day as our guide turned off the road towards wherever we were staying. Keep in mind we had just stayed at a luxury hotel the night before and now the next evening we are turning onto a typical African dirt road that looks like slums along the way. But, it turned out okay. Not 5 star by any means, but very rustic and a unique experience to have monkeys and mongoose right outside your tent door. One thing we have discovered is that people must not travel in Africa very often with their children, as each place we stayed they had to put us in two separate rooms as the rooms only had one large king or two twins. So, the kids and I opted to "get cozy" and talk dad into us all cramming into one of our tented rooms with the king bed. We just felt a bit safer. As we were staying in a local area called Mosquito River, it also made at least me a bit more nervous about the potential for mosquito issues. So, since we kind of feel continually unclean here anyway, we coated ourselves with Deet that evening on our way to dinner. But, a pleasant surprise was more hot water in our shower later to be able to get rid of the Deet smell before climbing into our mosquito netted bed for the night.
Day 2 safari took us to Tarrangarie National Park. It was about another hour drive. The most amazing thing to process on that drive was how the Maasai tribe lives. I will now have to read more about them, but this is a main area where they live. They are a wandering people known for their way of life with nature and for herding livestock. All along the highway you would look out onto the plains and see a herd of goats or cattle just grazing. You then knew to look closer and you would see typically two Maasai children that were watching the herd. These children often looked as young or younger than Henry, with either
then one older child or adult. They are easy to spot as they wear colorful tribal cloth for clothing. It just made me wander what this life is like and how they endure it. How many miles they walk in their lifetimes and how they know when to go home. What do they do if something happens and they are miles away from their hut village? I cannot even imagine. The boys go to school I guess, although I saw no schools in sight, and the government is trying to encourage the girls to go also, but there is resistance, as a family receives a certain
number of head of livestock when they offer their daughter to marry around age 15. Their
prestige is judged by the total number in their herd.
Anyway, it was another amazing day of animals. Incredible elephants and zebras. This park was more open and plains like, not as much vegetation. The highlight of the day was after lunch (at which a monkey stole Avery's mango juice box right from the picnic table) when our guide started racing in the jeep somewhere after talking on the radio. We knew it must be something exciting, and it was. We saw a cheetah and her baby.
That night we returned to the same tented camp and then headed. Out the next morning for our final safari day. We were headed to the Ngorongoro Crater. Can't even really explain it. You might just be better off googling it. Our guide John had warned us it was going to be much colder as we drove up into the mountains to e rim of the crater, which I think he said was about 7,000 feet. It is hard to keep all these conversions straight between shillings, kilometers, kilograms, Celsius, etc. It was was an hour drive up to the rim of the crater, and then another hour drive down into the crater floor. These drives are definitely not for the weak in stomach. It was basically like an hour long roller coaster ride. I am still amazed none of us got sick throughout these days, especially considering our changes in diet that were going on simultaneously.
The crater was amazing. More animals yet that we hadn't seen. Started off with some lions that were just absolutely majestic. Then, the other highlight of the day, even though it was from afar, was to see a black rhino. Supposedly this is very rare as 80% of people coming to the crater are coming to try and see a black rhino, which is one of the big 5, but only about 20% do, so we were in that lucky 20% I guess. Kids were very psyched, as was our guide. The animal that eluded us was the leopard, which our guide had told us we only had about a 1% chance of seeing as they hide in all the vegetation. And during the three days, Henry got his bird fix seeing an amazing number of species of birds which our guide could always tell us what they were so we could look them up in his field book. Overall, for 3 days of safari, when many people do 14 days, we saw an incredible amount of animals and felt like it was definitely one of those once in a lifetime experiences, that will unfortunately make going to the zoo never the same for us again.
After our last safari day, we stayed at Rhino Lodge outside the rim of the crater. It was more like a hotel with actual rooms, but very rustic and we again all crammed into one of our two rooms. The electricity is only on ther from 6 - 9 am and 5 - 9 pm, so we had a wood stove in our room for heat. It was also very unique to have at least 50 water buffalo just grazing on the property after dusk off the deck by the restaurant. The kids did not get to experience elephants just walking by our back patio though, as they warned us may happen.
That brings us to today, which was really just travel back to Arusha where we are spending tomorrow also as there are no flights from Tanzania back to Entebbe on Mondays, so we will fly back on Tuesday. For tonight, we just said goodbye to our guide, skyped family and enjoyed a luxury hotel again and didn't venture out on our own for dinner, and instead just opted for a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was definitely what I needed, as it was the most American like meal I've had to this point. My stomach has been trying to adjust and I haven't been willing to make many risky eating choices. The whole family has been enjoying some Pepto tabs these last few days which thank goodness seem to do the trick.
Okay, I mentioned just starting with some facts and now I have gotten very carried away rambling about them and even probably left out about half. Now going to just briefly comment on where my thoughts are. Luckily I ended the day a much different place than I started. I had a lot of downtime on the drive to just think and that can get me into trouble. I was having a day when the worry was trying to consume me. Worry that I am going to get sick from the food because the standard of cooking and general hygiene here is so minimal, worrying that I am going to get malaria because I got a few mosquito bites in the last couple of days, and just general worry about what we have gotten ourselves into. But, then I think God answered some prayers and brought me a nice bed and meal tonight just when I needed just a bit of normalcy to face tomorrow with.
These past few days I have just been struggling with the incredible juxtaposition of images I have been experiencing. We have spent an amazing week seeing some of the most beautiful landscape and animals that God has created, but then I am really struggling with the dirtiness and despair that seems all around such beauty. The constant smell of burning, either to cook, or to burn huge piles of trash. Trash just everywhere you look, and people living amongst it. Visiting local markets with food just out in the open in such filthy conditions that people are buying to feed their families. I have yet to see a normal house (other than the one we live in) that is more than a hut either built out of sticks, grass or crumbling cement blocks. I know that my perspective is not by any means complete after just one short week, but it just makes me question how we all live in the same world, yet are living such completely unequal lives. I know there is poverty all over the world, it just seems so commonplace here. I need to research more on what percent of the local population is living like this, because it is absolutely heartbreaking to me. Troy and I were talking tonight about how it seems like there should be a middle ground somewhere. So many of us have so much excess in our lives and these people have so little. So many people in the world are working towards equal access to basic human needs like food, clean water and shelter, but then I see what I have witnessed these past few days and I wonder if we are making any progress?
Way too big of questions to tackle this late, but will continue to process, and trust that God will provide a renewed sense of spirit when it is needed, just like he did for me today. I believe that is how many of these people endure their daily lives.
