Safari

Monkeys at Lake Manyara

Hippos at Ngorongoro
Wildebeest Migration at Ngorongoro
Cheetahs at the Serengeti
Elephant in the Serengeti
I went on a 4 day, 3 night safari last weekend, with a company called Soko--I highly recommend them. Our guide, Mohammed, was very dillegent about waking us up at 5:30 am so we could get into the car by 6, drive down before everyone else woke up, and see the sunrise and early morning animal activity. He would spot things that other guides totally missed, and he'd be able to see things from very far away. We'd be driving, and then he'd stop and point at a speck in the distance, in the tall grass, and be able to identify what animal it was. When watching the big cats, he was very informative, and would be able to predict certain actions--he could tell by how the animal was sitting that it was about to get up and walk around, and he'd be able to tell whether the big cats were seriously going to make a move on their prey (as opposed to just watching them) and estimate how much time it took. He would use his radio to call other guides to ask them if they found anything cool, then he'd drive like mad to get us there on time so that we could see it. We probably massively overtipped him, since the tipping system here is different, but he did such a good job that I'm not upset about it.

Our cook was also very good. I ate better on safari than I do at home. He was very dilligent about not wasting--if we had left over food from dinner, he would use it to make something delicious for breakfast or lunch the next day.

So, actual details about the Safari:

Lake Manyara:
This is a gorgeous lake. When we were looking at safari companies, a lot of people told us to skip the lake, but I thought it was really nice. When we drove out, it really looked like a scene from the lion king, with the bright sun, the acacia trees, the reddish brown mountains, and big, white birds flying in a spiral in the sky. The actual lake had hundreds of white storks in the water, and dozens of hippos. Hippos are supposedly very aggressive in defending their territory, though they are vegetarian--essentially, they won't eat you, but they will kill you. We also saw tree climbing lions, which is somewhat rare. These lions are the same species as in the Serengeti, but in Manyara they have adapted to climbing and sleeping in trees, like leopards. It is because Manyara has so many forests as opposed to the Serengeti, which is mostly plains. Our first night of camping was quite comfortable. Mohammad told us to always buy things with him, because the locals would try to charge us absurd prices. Surprisingly, I did not get bitten much by mosquitoes--in Arusha I get about 1 or 2 bites per day, but I think I only got 1 during my entire safari.

Masai Village:
Mohammad asked us if we wanted to stop by a Masai village. It was an extra 15,000 shillings, but it was a very interesting experience. Cultural tourism however, if supposedly a great experience, but I can't help but feel bad about it. I wonder how much of the "cultural" performaces are actually a part of their culture, or something concocted to show tourists. I studied Taiwanese aborigines, and many of them complained that cultural tourism for their tribes were fake, and the performances were staged to look exotic. Anyhow, I still liked the Masai village, because we could see the houses that they lived in. They performed a welcome dance, and the men and the women dance separately. The Masai jump very high, so they had us go jump with them. Thier huts are made with cow dung, and women build the huts--one hut for one wife. The men have multiple wives, and if they want to pick a chief, they often pick the man with the most wives, the reasoning being that if he can manage that many wives, he can manage a village. The chief of that village had 22 wives. As for the women, they can only have one husband. Totally not equal. Their houses are made by hand, and quite small, so you have to duck to walk into them. Inside, they have beds made of wood and cow hide, as well as a fireplace for cooking. Three people lived in the hut that we visited, in a very small space. Someone commented to me that the Masai have cell phones and modern looking watches, and was upset by this. I of course, do not think it is anything to be upset about. After all, it is not fair for us to dictate that they reject all modern technology when we ourselves are swimming in it. I also think you can choose to retain certain traditions, while adapting to the modern world. I bet cell phones help a lot--they have to walk so much each day (children often walk 4 hours a day just to get to school), it's nice to just be able to call people (there is reception out there) as opposed to walking hours to find them. The masai did try to sell us a bunch of stuff, at exorbitant prices (one man charged us 25,000 shillings for a beaded bracelet that was actually about 2,000 shillings). From the Masai village, we went on to the Serengeti.

Serengeti
The Serengeti is an expansive golden plain, with dark blue mountains in the distance and acacia trees dotting the landscape. It is amazing, because the plains seem to go on forever. During our first day in the Serengeti, we saw a Hyena by the side of the road. It was looking kind of ragedy, so I thought perhaps that it had come out there to die. After all, Hyenas are pack animals, and at least for dogs, a dying individual will separate from the group. I think that is very sad though, to die alone. So, hopefully he was just mad at his group or something, and wanted some alone time. We saw many gazelles. They hop like rabbits. Towards the end of the day, we saw a leopard in a tree, but it was quite far. We also saw lions stalking some gazelles; one had a collar for research. That night, we went back to our campsite. This site is more dangerous than the Manyara site, because it is just in the Serengeti and the animals can just come around our tents. Ashley was worried abot lions attacking us, so we asked Mohammad how often lions come into the campsite; Mohammad said "quite often, but don't worry, they will not come tonight, they will probably come tomorrow instead". After dark, it isn't even safe to walk to the bathroom, so you are supposed to just go outside the tent. We briefly contemplated just bringing a can with us into the tent, so we wouldn't have to leave it. That night, I heard growling, but I convinced myself that it was Ashley breathing funny. It turned out that lions and hyenas were indeed walking around our tents that night. Mohammad was telling us that once, they woke up and a herd of wildebeest were around the tents, and just 3 meters away the lions killed one. Anyhow, no one got attacked by lions, and we were in our car by 6:30 am to see more of the Serengeti. We saw many elephants and giraffes. One elephant almost charged our car; we had been snapping photos of this herd, and the male comes up to us, clearly pissed. Mohammad tells us all to be very quiet, because the elephant is debating whether we are a threat or not. Then, the elephant backs up, and Mohammad drives away, because when they back up while facing you, it means they are backing up to give themselves room to charge at you. As we were driving, Mohammad saw a speck, and thought it was a Hyena. Then he goes, "Shit it's a leopard!" Leopards are quite rare. This one was stalking a gazelle. It was cool to see the leopard actually moving (usually when people see them, they are sleeping in the tree). The gazelle escaped though. Supposedly the leopards are the most efficient hunters, and they prefer smaller prey, like gazelle, because they like to take it up to their tree and eat it there. We saw a pride of lions, but they were quite far away. At one point however, a lioness walked along the road, and we followed her for some time.

Olduvai Gorge
The masai said it should be called Oldupai, since it is called Olduvai because the foreigner asked the Masai the name, and then misheard them and wrote it down wrong. Oldupai is a type of plant that grows abundantly in this gorge. This gorge is famous because it is where they found a skeleton of the early humans, the austrolopithecus (probably spelled that wrong). They also found footprints preserved in the ash, proving that these early humans walked upright.

Ngorongoro Crater
The crater was my favorite part of the entire trip. It was freezing cold, but luckily my apartment mate Will, who went last week, warned me about the cold, so I brought plenty of layers and an extra blanket; I borrowed gloves as well. When we arrived at the camp, there were four elephants walking among our tents, going to our water tanks and stealing our water. Then, they went to the tree, and started breaking off branches. Mohammad had shown us another area in which the trees were completely destroyed, and he said elephants were the culprit. Surprisingly, they did not trample our tents, but walked around them. We left our camp, the next day, at 6:00 am. The sunrise over the crater was beautiful, it is amazing how the land will just change colors throughout the sunrise, from a light blue under the moon, to a lighter yellow, then orange, reddish, and then back to a yellow. During noon, the green and blues of the grass and water are more vivid. Early in the morning, we saw the most amazing cheetah hunt. The cheetah has become my new favorite animal because it is so graceful. There were two of them. One of the was approaching a group of gazelles (Cheetah 1), while the other went on the road, around our car, to the opposite side (Cheetah 2). Cheetah 2 is farther, but then suddenly takes off like a bullet. Their stride is about 23 feet, so this cheetah is just ripping through the tall grass at the gazelles. The gazelles freak out of course, and run the opposite direction, but they don't realize that Cheetah 1 is waiting in the grass there. They run directly at Cheetah 1, who makes a beeline towards them. Somehow, the gazelle manage to jump or dogde Cheetah 1, so now both Cheetahs are chasing the gazelles. The distance that they covered was amazing--I would say they covered around 100 km, but I'm not that good as estimating. Basically, they ran from one end of a mountain range to the other. The gazelles got away, even though we were all rooting for the cheetahs. After the gazelles crossed the road, the cheetahs just collapsed. They must be very exhausted. Cheetahs are supposedly the most inefficient hunters because they expend so much energy. While the lions and the leopard will wait to get very close to their prey, the Cheetah will just take off from farther away, precisely because it is so fast and can get to the prey much faster than the lions or the leopard. Supposedly the cheetah hunts are successful only 10% of the time. After running, they have to recharge, so often they will kill, relax, and then eat. The problem is however, that other big cats will steal their kill, since cheetahs are not particularly strong--they are built very slender, unlike the lions and the leopards.
In the crater, the zebra and the wildebeest walk in a single file line. The line will stretch out far into the horizon, and usually end with a huge group of them by a water source. At one point, a pride of lions was waiting by the line. We initially only saw two of the lions, but over some time we kept seeing them pop their heads out of the tall grass and move closer to the wildebeest. They were waiting, 4 lioness and 2 young male lions, to make a move, but never did. Eventually, the line ended and they missed their chance, so they reconvened, as though they were having a meeting about what went wrong :D Then they moved on to another group.

After going on safari, I cannot support zoos anymore. I think it is especially cruel to keep those big cats in cages. Even a large cage cannot compare to what they have in the wild. A cheetah could never run like that in a zoo...although I suppose perhaps the cheetah is happy, since it doesn't have to keep hunting stuff. I'm not quite sure. I guess it might be nice to have people feeding you all the time, while you lie there and get your picture taken, but seeing these animals in the wild really makes me think that they are far better off there. Especially birds--I think to keep a bird in a cage so that it can't fly is awful. Imagine being able to fly, but not being allowed to. As a child, I had many pets in cages, but I will never be able to get a pet that is kept in a cage again.

East Africa is really amazing, and I think everyone should visit it at least once in their lifetime.

Stomach Infection

I had to miss work on Wednesday, because I got a really bad stomach infection. I had been feeling funny all week, but suddenly, overnight, it got so much worse. In the morning, I couldn't even walk by myself. My apartment mate helped me get to the clinic, and they gave me rehydration salts and some antibiotics.

I'm not quite sure what made me sick, but I suspect it is this barbecue. The place, called Khan's Barbecue, is an auto repair shop by day, and a Tandoori barbecue stand at night. Their chicken is really good, and the owner, Khan, is a really nice man. The chicken is delicious, but sometimes is undercooked, and there will be raw pieces. I will probably go back, but I will check my chicken more carefully to make sure it is fully cooked.

On another note:

This weekend I stayed in Arusha, and made a new friend. I suppose for anonymity's sake I will call her Greta. Greta essentially is a gangster princess. When we met her in the office, she seemed very demure and calm. She drives a car here, so she took us to go eat lunch. On the way there, she parks wherever she wants to on the street, and throws shillings at the police who come scuttling over. Bums will approach, and she'll just give them shillings because she is "too tired" to deal with them. Later that night, we all go out together. As she's driving us, she takes a bottle of vodka from the side of her seat and chugs it while we're rolling down the road. As we exit to go into the club, some local club called AQ, she pours the rest of the vodka into a plastic water bottle and commands my room mate to stuff it into his back pocket. At the club however, they've got higher security than the UN does--not only do you have to walk in through a metal detector, they also manually run over your body with a handheld detector. I can walk in through the UN detectors with my keys and wallet, but in this one even my cell phone beeped. They searched through my purse, I guess to make sure I wasn't carrying any weapons. Of course, they discovered the hidden bottle. Greta was telling us that no one in Arusha buys drinks at the bar, they bring their own. Of course, my room mate failed, and in her opinion, at the very least should have chugged the vodka before giving the bottle to them. The club is definitely a local club, not the expat ones that we have been going to. Afterwards, Greta offers to drive us home. We worried that she was drunk, but one of our landlord's children said she's fine, so we figured it was probably okay and put on our seat belts. She drops us off safely, but then as she backs out, hits a car, then just drives away. She sends me a text message saying that her car is fine, despite the hit and run. Note also that according to Greta, 84% of the people in Arusha have guns. I wonder if Greta has a gun too. Anyhow, Greta is very cool, and definitely will take care of her friends. The next day, the driver of the car that got hit came to our apartment, because our useless security guard told him that my roommate and I had hit the car (even though we don't drive here, and were actually outside of the car when Greta hit it). Of course our other room mates were not pleased about the situation, since the guy woke us all up at 7:00 am. We worried that he'd come back with the police, so we called Greta, and she basically came, threw 40,000 shillings at the guy, and everything was okay.

The Weekend (and Thursday)

Thursday

A friend of mine from work was nice enough to drive us to another intern's birthday party. On the way back home, we pass a hotel, and he goes, "oh, a concert!" Apparently he had just heard music and thought it was a concert, so we all go there. It turned out to be a private party for the World Bank, but the people were really nice and let us stay.

Friday

I almost died. Well, realistically I suppose the actual chances of me dying were not as high, but it is the second time in my life in which I really thought that I would die. We were going to a farewell party for Sylvie, and she had a friend who was willing to drive us. I didn't realize this at the time, but he was really drunk. Apparantly he and his friends got into a fight with some other guys because his friend hit their car and completely dented in the door. They were arguing, and then Sylvie tells us to get out of the car because she heard some very alarming words in Swahili and was worried that they would start fighting with weapons. We tried to get out, but then the driver got offended and yelled at us. Then he starts driving recklessly, at 100 km/hr on the dirt roads in Arusha, flying over speed bumps, driving on the wrong side of the road, trying to pass and cut people off on a one lane dirt road, turning without slowing down...the car had no seat belts, so I really thought this was it, and I was thinking what a stupid way to die this was. Luckily, I didn't die, and we went to karaoke.

Saturday

We watched the East African South Rugby Championship at the stadium in Arusha. I used to think football was a rough sport, but it is nothing compared to Rugby. The players would get up and wipe blood off of their legs and then keep playing. Mauritius won, and a helicopter came and carried the MVPs away, then back. The trophy was surprisingly small.

Sunday

We went to a sport bar to watch the game, and had an interesting conversation with a Tanzanian guy. Apparently he doesn't pay taxes, and can park his car anywhere, anytime, because the police like him. Also, he can leave his valuables in his car and it won't get robbed because the street kids will guard it for him. His friend meanwhile, shakes his head and goes, "this is corruption, you see how corrupt our country is?" They were a very funny group. The first guy then says that Arusha is a very dangerous place, which is why he always carries a gun--then he shows us his gun. He said that Arusha is the only city in which you can shoot someone in the face in a bar and be back on the streets the next day. He then offered to take us on road trips to his village and etc. I went back to work on Monday, and one of my Tanzanian coworkers said never travel anywhere with anyone who has a gun, since if they have a gun, they either stole it, are really rich, or they are a bandit, or some combination of the three. My Tanzanian coworker is very sweet, I think she does worry about us. O_O

Central Market

While staying in Arusha, we buy our produce at this huge outside market, called Central Market. Since we cannot speak swahili, and we obviously are foreigners, people will charge us different prices, often double, sometimes even quadruple what they would charge the locals. One woman tried to sell us an avocado for 1000 shillings, when the fair price is about 300 shillings--of course, 1500 shillings is a dollar, so either way it is quite cheap. The avocadoes are enormous here, and one avocado, one tomato, an onion, salt, and a bag of rolls can feed 3 people for dinner.

A woman from my office who is Tanzanian went with us to the market so that we could get an idea of what prices should be. The people here are really kind (unless they are trying to sell you something). Before coming to Arusha, I had read many things about the city. I read that it was one of the 10 worst cities in the world from the lonely planet forum (or at least, one of the 10 cities that really failed to meet people's expectations). In that sense, yes, Arusha is small, there are lots of people who will heckle you in the street--we will have people follow us for blocks just to pester us to buy a painting. For me, it was quite frightening at first, because they would not stop following you until you got into a cab and drove away. Now that I have been here longer, people seldom do that to me, since they know by now that I am not actually a tourist. Although, a few will still approach me, and make me promise that when I do buy (they assume that we will all buy at least one painting before we leave), I will buy from them.

Since I am Chinese, I think they do charge me somewhat lower prices than they would charge a white person. Also, I think I have an easier time haggling, maybe because they think Chinese people are also poor? They do however, call everyone a mzungu, regardless of race (I will get called China as well). Mzungu just means foreigner, and some people get very offended that people keep calling them that. It doesn't really bother me, I mean, that is what I am, right? I think I'd get offended if I was a native Tanzanian, and people still called me mzungu. If anything, it's kind of nice that all foreigners are mzungus, regardless of skin color. Some people ask me if I get annoyed that people point at me and say China! China! or Konnichiwa or Ni Hao or Anyung, etc. It really depends on my mood. I do not get angry, because I do think the people have good intentions--many of them didn't have a very good education, so I don't think we can blame them for not realizing that China, Korea and Japan are 3 different countries. Most people do not have access to the internet, newspapers, etc. I don't think you can get offended at people for things they cannot control, and for many of these people, a good education is simply not in their range of opportunities. So no, I do not get angry, but depending on how tired I am, I will try to explain to people, etc., so in the future they can keep in mind that there is more than one country in East Asia. While the majority of the population is quite poor, there are also many very educated Tanzanians, who have finished university (and know that China, Korea and Japan are different, among other things); many work at the UN. I have had some very interesting discussions with those people, one about China's increasng presence in Africa. A Tanzanian man was telling me that the Chinese are taking over Tanzania (economically), controlling it, and getting rich while the locals still remain poor. It is a topic that I plan to look into, in more detail.

Coffee Plantation

Mural by the secondary school
Orphanage outside of Arusha
Coffee plants
I don't drink coffee, but I might change my mind now. My reasons for not drinking coffee before were mainly that I didn't like the taste, and also the caffeine would make me jittery while upsetting my stomach.

When I found out one of my apartment mates was going on a coffee tour, but that there was no more space for extra people, I got super excited when this other girl told me that there was extra space. I suppose it's reverse psychology, because when I actually thought about it, I'm not super interested in coffee, and I really just wanted to go because I thought I wouldn't be able to go. Anyhow, the tour turned out to be awesome, mainly because of the food.

First, we visited an orphanage, in which I wanted to adopt a bunch of babies. It is sad though, because so many women die in child labor that there are tiny infants in these orphanages. While the volunteers care for the babies, there are too many babies, and not enough volunteers. The baby that I was holding was sick actually, so I ended up getting sick the next day. My apartment mate held the same baby, and also got sick. Note also, that this happened before we went to Arusha National Park, even though I am posting about it later, so we ended up giving our cold to this other kid who was stuck in the vehicle with us for 6 hours.

Anyhow, after buying some rice and produce for the orphans we went to the coffee plantation. Granted, this was the part of the tour that I did not like, I found it kind of boring. Coffee grows on trees, and they look like berries. Inside the berry there is a white pit, which it the coffee bean. The wild coffee trees have a lot of slippery goo between the flesh of the berry and the pit, while the planted trees have less. The farmers grow organically because it is actually cheaper for them to do so--it is more time intensive, but they save money and get a larger yield. To keep bugs away, they plant something that smells very strong (like sage) around the plantation.

After the plantation, we ate an amazing lunch. The women who ran the tour is Norweigian, she moved to Tanzania because she came on a safari here and fell in love with her safari cook. Beate and Frank have two really pretty children, and they live in a very nice house, kind of like a mansion, close to the plantation. 90% of their buyers are from Norway, and they sell out of their coffee each year. At their house, we ate goat stew and Norweigian pancakes with the brown cheese that I love. Apparently she doesn't give everyone the cheese, she just brought it out for us because I told her that I visited Norway last year and I loved the cheese.

The factory, if you can actually call it a factory, is part of their house. It is actually just one machine. They roast the coffee, and then seal it in airtight plastic bags, and then put it in a cloth package to ship out. The coffee that they gave us to drink was roasted the day before, and it was the best coffee I have ever had. I normally would never drink coffee black, but this coffee was so aromatic and not bitter. It also didn't make me jittery or iritate my stomach. Beate says that real coffee connosoirs will throw out their beaks 2 weeks after they have been roasted, but most people can just drink the coffee within a year of the roasting date. I brought some beans back with me (we got a free bag of coffee beans with the tour), and plan to drink it. Although, that means I'd have to get a bean grinder and a coffee machine, so perhaps I'll just give it away as a gift. Alternatively, I could just get the grinder and the machine, and then just purchase more coffee.

The brand is called Wild Tracks, and they ship anywhere in the world. The price is 4500 shillings per bag, which is about 3 USD. I would highly recommend it.

Arusha National Park

Before I left for Tanzania, the guy who gives international interns advice told us not to blog because 1.) it's nerdy and 2.) it could get you in trouble if you badmouth people. Oh well, what can I say, I guess I'm a nerd?

Anyhow, we went to Arusha National Park, sort of as a teaser safari. I would not recommend that company, but unfortunately I don't remember the name, so I cannot warn people not to use it. I enjoyed the park, it is very beautiful, and we saw lots of giraffes and zebras. After some time, we got kind of jaded--we'd see giraffes, and it would be like seeing a horse. Baboons would just sit in the road, with their babies on their backs. During this time of year, there are a lot of baby animals; I think February is a season in which a lot of animals are born, and during these months they are big enough to wander around more independently, but still so cute! Unfortunately it was kind of cloudy, so we did not get a great view of the small ngorongoro (a crater within Arusha National park). I was hoping to see elephants, but we did not manage to find one. Rather, we just saw huge piles of elephant poop, and the guide remarked that we must have just missed them.

We saw many colobus monkeys, which I found really cute. I normally don't like monkeys, but these were pretty black and white monkeys with longer, silkier looking hair. They looked kind of like skunks actually. In the lake, there were a lot of flamingos. There are so many of them, that it can be hard to tell what there are. It really does look like some pink plant, because they stand so close together. I made our group get together for group photos, and gave our driver detailed instructions as to where to take them from. I had to get pictures from other people, since my camera broke the night before.

I haven't posted in a while, so I will divide these posts by subjects.

In Tanzania!

So, I haven't written for a very long time. This summer, I will be interning at the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania, so I figured to start writing again. So far, I have been here for about a week.

Day 1: I was fortunate to run into a bunch of other interns on the same flight, so I was less worried about transportation from the airport to Arusha. When we got there, the UN did send a van to pick us up; there were three men with machine guns to escort us. I was dropped off last, at this hostel, which sucks. If you ever go to Arusha, do not stay at Arusha Backpacker's Hotel. Other people seemed to think it was okay, but I was mad because they ripped me off. I reserved a single room, but they gave away my room. Of course, while the UN guy with the gun was still there they were like, "Oh, single room, yes", but as soon as he drove away, they said, "sorry, we have no more single rooms, you have to stay in a double". Which I would have been okay with, except they made me pay for the double price. At that point, it was 10:30 pm at night, my driver with the gun just left, so I didn't have a lot of choices. The next day, when I tried to take a cab to my workplace, which is supposed to be 2000 shillings, they told me it was 5000. Since I knew better, I decided to just hop onto the shuttle with the other interns (I hadn't reserved the shuttle, but fortunately there was enough room for more people), and then they tried to convince me that "those people" were not going to the same ICTR as I was...

To be honest, I have stayed in worse hostels in Europe (louder, dirtier), but when you are traveling it is not too bad. If you have to get up at 7:30 am to work, it just sucks.

Anyhow, that day I found some people to live with, so I moved out of that awful hostel and into an apartment. My apartment is really cute, it is in a yellow building and a 20 minute walk to the ICTR.

At work, I initially got assigned to a team in which the supervisor was on vacation, but then got transferred to work on a really interesting case. Right now, I think I have the perfect amount of work--I am doing interesting things, but it is not too overwhelming. I am really glad that we have internet in our office, so I feel somewhat connected to people back home.

During this first week, I went to the central market to buy produce with the people that I live with. It is a huge market, and you have to haggle for everything, which can be fun. Apparently they call everyone who is foreigner a mzungu, although they also shout China at me every now and then. The fruit here is really sweet, especially the pineapple. As for restaurants, they are quite affordable; there is a lunch place that I have gone to almost everyday called immigration cafe, which is 2000 shillings for a meal, about $1.33 US. Last weekend, I went to a really good Chinese restaurant, called Dragon Pearl, and a pretty good Indian restaurant called Big Bite. More later!