Masai to Malawi

7/22/09-8/2/09

No internet for over a week now.  Whew, I’ve done a lot in that time.  Hope reading doesn’t wear you out.

Day 18- Masai Tribe

After a finishing our star studded safari day we head towards a Masai tribe village close to the park entrance. Masai people are nomadic and move their villages based on need to feed themselves and their cattle. This tribe has been stable for years due to it’s location next to a river. The Masai all wear bright red cloths to be able to spot each other in the distance and to spook wildlife. The community is based around the cattle which sustains them. Most of the Masai have piercings and pierced ears stretched so large you could put your fist through. Some are decorated with beads others are plain and dull. We are welcomed to the tribe with a series of local dances and chanting and all have the opportunity to join in as they show us how to jump and move in Masai style.

As we enter the village we pass a few small mud hut looking homes and come into a big open mud pasture filled with cow patties and flies everywhere. These small homes are built in a circle around the field and this is where the cattle are protected from animal attacks. In the evenings they bring the cattle into the circle and they put up stick based fencing between the homes. During the day on a rotational basis the boys and men herd the cattle through the surrounding valley allowing the cows to graze. Women of the Masai tribe are responsible for building the houses taking care of children and cooking.

The tribe has 4 important post. The elder which is usually the oldest person in the camp, the chief who is in charge of the camp, the midwife, and the doctor which uses local herbs, roots, tree bark etc as medicines to treat tribes people.

I’m invited into one of the homes and discover as I enter it’s not mud. The homes are made of sticks and cow dung. It takes about a month to build one and the expected life span is three years. As I duck to enter I have to crouch as the doorways and ceilings are all built low. It’s pitch black as I enter a small hallway and I can’t see anything I duck through a doorway and see a small fire burning producing the smallest amount of light. It’s stagnate inside and the air is stale. As my eyes adjust I see a one room home a small fire close to one wall with a pot boiling over it. The room is 5 ft x 5 ft with a small wooden bench on the opposite facing wall. On the other two walls are recessed cove like structures which are sleeping quarters. They are about double bed in size and the ground is layered in straw and covered with leather hides. The wife and kids sleep on one side and the husband sleeps in the other. There are no bathrooms or showers in the village. They use the vast open bush as their call to nature and the local river to bathe. I can now proudly say, I’ve sat in a home full of shit.

The Masai people I find rely on their cattle completely for survival and why they are so important to them. They eat once a day and their diet consist of boiled meat and they drink milk mixed with cows blood. They milk the cows by hand and on a rotational basis make a slit in the neck of cow and drain some blood, patch the cow back up and won’t use him again for several months. This mixture is stored in gourd containers. Uck how revolting it sounds and I’m grateful they didn’t offer me any as I would have solely to experience what sounds insanely disgusting. Fear Factor anyone.

The Masai practice polygamy and a man may have as many wives as he can afford. Each wife will build their own cow dung home and he will move between the homes on different nights. Women are allowed to marry at 18 and the men must wait until 25. If a man wants a wife his family will go to another tribe where there isn’t any genetic relation and pick a girl for him. In return for her hand he must remunerate her family with 10 cows. One cow cost 10,000 shillings ($1,300). Letaloi our driver wasn’t kidding when he said women are expensive when you compare what it cost in relation to their incomes. If a man has more than one wife it’s deemed he is well off and is considered successful. One of the tribes people offers to sell me a cow and tells me if I buy 9 he’ll give me the 10th and I can have his sister. As tempting an offer I decide to pass and keep my single status.

The Masai also practice circumcision of both sexes. Boys at 15 have their foreskin removed and women at around 12 have their clitoris removed. Circumcising women is an age old tradition to them that is now illegal and this tribe claims to no longer practice. Admittedly this brutal practice has moved underground and some tribes still practice it in secret. Circumcising the boys is a right of passage and a show of a boys strength. The procedure is performed with no anesthesia and while they are cutting the foreskin if the boy blinks or cries he will be banished from the tribe forever.

What a mind bending experience. A way of life so distant from my own. I find it hard anyone would want to stay when they get exposure to the outside world and know there is something better. It’s interesting to compare this remote life to that of Uganda’s remote villages. While we would consider them poor they don’t live poor, merely super basic while in Uganda they seem poor. Their healthcare isn’t modern however it works better as there are numerous elderly people in the village.. The elder in this village is 72.

We are now on are way to the Tanzania border and will soon be leaving Kenya. Our next stop Arusha to replenish our stocks and then we’ll be be heading for a few days of safari touring in the great Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater

Day 19 – breakdown

On the way to Arusha our truck breaks down before reaching the Tanzania border. A high tinsel bolt attaching the rear axle to the frame sheared in half and the rear axle moved several inches to the left forcing the tire against the frame and in the process created a leak in the air brakes locking the brakes. Considering the rough conditions we’ve been driving in, it doesn’t surprise me and I’m actually shocked it doesn’t’ happen more frequently. While Letaloi is pretty handy, fortunately Neil, the Kiwi in our group, owns a trucking company and is quite experienced in truck repairs. The two of them spend a couple hours under the truck while the rest of us sit along the side of the road. They cannibalize parts from elsewhere on the truck to gerry rig a fix.

A drunk Masai man comes stumbling through the fields and happens upon us. He’s wielding a machete waving it around jabbering in Swahili and it’s quite apparent he doesn’t want us around and thinks we should leave. For an hour myself and a few of the other guys in the group stand a few feet away keeping an even distance as he sways back and forth swinging his machete towards us. It’s a comical yet scary scene as none of us know what he’s up to. Thank goodness a passing military vehicle pulls over to assist. They man handle him taking his machete walk him up the road yelling at him. I’m not sure what they said but I think they put the fear of God in him as he stumbles down the road not looking back.

While people think I’m adventurous for flying around the world, while waiting for the repairs to be made a British man rides up on a beat up bicycle. Andy turns out to be a character. He lost his job in London this past January and decided to go bicycling. He sold his car and bought a cheap bike and started riding across Europe in February. He made his way through France, Switzerland, Hungary, some of the eastern European countries, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and we’ve run into him in Kenya. It’s taken him almost six months to get this far and he’s heading towards Cape Town and plans on making it there by January. He has one small bag on his bike and no road maps, only a one page map of the African continent out of some Atlas. Talk about adventurous, his stories in only a few minutes dwarf anything I think I’ll encounter this year.

Truck working we make it a couple hours and shortly after crossing into Tanzania the truck breaks down again on a dirt road. Way behind schedule it doesn’t appear we’ll be able to get it fixed quickly and we play in the dirt with some local tribe kids which show up from nowhere while we wait for an alternate vehicle to come get us.

We make it to Snake Park, a camp grounds, in Arusha late in the evening. BJ and Ma the owners have a snake habitat of exotic snakes and a bar on the grounds where all proceeds go to an adjacent orphanage. Exhausted from the day of delays I’ve never had so much fun supporting a charity. One more beer please. What a fun way to support a worthy cause.

Day 20-22 Serengeti – Ngorongoro

The truck breakdown couldn’t have happened at a better time as we are now set out for a three day excursion to visit Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater. We pile into a group of Land Rovers with removable roofs and leave Letaloi to get the truck fixed as we head for more safari viewing.

To my surprise the Serengeti landscape is vastly different than Masai Mari. Serengeti is the Swahili word for endless plain and endless perfectly describes the view of the grassy flatland as it stretches farther than the eye can see. Game viewing here restricts the vehicles to dirt paths so we were not always able to get close to the wildlife. However, it’s amazing how much hangs out or crosses ones path. We encounter numerous animals with the highlight being a Leopard lounging in a roadside tree. It lays serenely in postcard perfect pose before jumping around tree limbs to lunch on a kill it had stored in the tree. While tearing it’s dinner apart the carcass drops from the limb and we get to see it expertly navigate it’s way through the limbs to the ground grab it’s dinner and make its way back up the tree.

Further along the path we encounter three baby cub lions 3-6 months old playing next to us. It’s cuter than watching kittens. They approach cautiously stopping as if posing for us. Did someone call ahead? Later in the day we encounter lions mating. Lions live in a group called a pride consisting of many females and the King male who dominates his pride. They are very territorial and fear-sly protect it. If a male lion comes along and kills the king he will immediately kill all the cubs and take over the pride. A female lion comes into heat once every two years. While in heat they mate 3 times an hour 24 hours a day for seven days each session lasting only a few minutes. And next week he moves on to the next female. Any guys wanna be a Lion King. Sounds like a fun job to me. On second thought, maybe 72 orgasms a day would get tiring.

As we approach we see a the Lion King and a female laying in the grass. Our driver parks and says, “just wait” and we’ll get to see the action. Within 15 minutes the female gets up walks around the male as if to say I’m ready. He gets up quickly mounts her with thrusting motion and a minute later flops to the ground for a snooze. I wonder when he has time to hunt and eat having to perform every 20 minutes.

We bush camp for the evening in the middle of Serengeti another mystical experience. We sit around the campfire and can hear bushes rustling in the background and can only see glowing eyes as we shine our lights hoping to get a glimpse of the wildlife curious enough to seek us out.

In the morning a few in our group go hot air ballooning where Dave proposes to Emma his girlfriend of three years. Funny just a couple nights earlier she was complaining at the bar while drinking that they weren’t yet married.

We spend another day game driving before moving on to Ngorongoro crater a few miles southeast of Serengeti where we bush camp on the crater rim for the night. As we setup in our campsite two enormous elephants unexpectedly stomp through the camp as we scramble to get our cameras. The scenery is stunning here. The crater was created by a volcano thousands of years ago with a rim a thousand feet or so above a flat floor. The crater is home to all the wildlife seen throughout Africa. A dazzle (group) of zebras grazes a couple feet from where we’ve pitched our tents and bush pigs roam around the campgrounds as we cook out for the evening. It seems like every day wherever we turn there is some sort of wildlife.

We drive into the crater for a day of game viewing before heading back to the truck hoping it is fixed. We immediately encounter a couple cheetah and wait excitedly ending in disappointment to see another kill. Further along a zebra crossing as a dazzle of a dozen or more zebra gallop across the road single file inches in front of us. Around the corner another sex scene. Hippo humping as one of these enormous fat beast mounts another.

We made it back to Snake Park where the truck is fixed for another night of supporting orphans with one more drink. Boy I like this charity. It’s the only one I’ve experienced which gives back.

We’re now on our way to Dar Es Salam with an evening stop in Tembo so we can make the crossing to Zanzibar.

Day 23-24  Zanzibar

After two days of driving we arrive in Dar es Salam and I get the first view and swim of my life in the Indian ocean. The salinity is significantly higher than elsewhere in the world. I wonder what causes it. I can float on my back and get my hands and feet out of the water at the same time without sinking.

The weather has become tropical and it appears more like Florida with Palm tree lined beaches. We pitch our tents on the beach to enjoy cool evening breezes in a tropical setting.

Day 25-27

Our group changes once again. Ten people are leaving us six that began with me in the start and we gain nine new folks. There are only four of us left from the original group. The changes are fun to have the chance to meet new people, yet at the same time sad as I’m saying goodbye to some people that are becoming friends. I still remain the token American amongst a mix of other nationalities with the most being Aussies.

We leave the truck once again and catch a ferry to Zanzibar a self governed Tanzanian island in the Indian Ocean for a few days of R&R. Zanzibar is one of the main bases of slave trading throughout history. Being an American I discover a history of slavery I was oblivious to. In the western world slavery consisted mostly of men taken from the western part of Africa and they were primarily used for labor. Slavery for the rest of the world was run through Zanzibar. Here slaves where captured mostly from Eastern African countries and brought to Zanzibar. Most of the 3 plus million slaves auctioned off here where women and they where sold as concubines to mostly Arabs. The men slaves here where castrated and also sold to Arabs. Interesting in the Arab world they had no problem with genetically mixing with blacks as long as it was Arab men but under no conditions did they want a black man being with an Arab woman.

In the auction process men where chained by the neck and put in pits. Prospect buyers picked a man from the pit and they where then chained to a whipping post and whipped with the barbed tail of a stingray. If a man didn’t cry or make noise he was strong and it inflated his price. How could humankind be so barbaric? Today there is a church built upon the whipping post auction stand and a small museum to honor those who passed through this terrible post.

We make our way the northern shore of Zanzibar for two days at a small beach resort. The area is exceptionally remote but has little hotels like we are staying at to a couple high end 5 star hotels. It doesn’t seem like Africa at all. We are in a lush tropical resort setting.

I take a day to go dive the Indian and discover a half dozen new fish I’ve never seen and I’m looking forward to looking them up. Cruising along the bottom I come across hundreds of star fish, a dozen or more Lion fish, a few stone fish, a couple moray eels, and even a frog fish. The current was mild and created a fair amount of turbidity. I’d love to spend a few more days diving here and see what it’s like in clearer conditions.

Day two I rent a hobie cat (small catamaran sailboat) and in 14 knot winds cruise the Indian Ocean. What a wonderful yet exhausting day.

Day 28-29

Boorrinngg…………. We’ve spent the last two days on the truck making our way across Tanzania to Malawi. I’ve had a tummy ache all day and feel under the weather. We just arrived at a camp site on lake Malawi for the night and will be moving on again tomorrow to have three days in one spot. Thank goodness.