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The Mountain of God0
neil posted in Travel, Tanzania on July 14th, 2007

Our second meeting with the president of Tanzania happened on a main road near the airport. A more serious police roadblock stopped the traffic on the main road as the presidential motorcade turned onto it. The motorcade was composed of fourty seven SUVs of varying quality. Press, aid agencies and plenty of security. It took awhile but soon Enough we were heading to our Mt Kilimanjaro photo oppertunity.

Frenzied photo taking in the oppressive heat followed by lunch in the shadow of the truck. I spent awhile sitting at the roadside photgraphing the brilliantly painted busses that passed. One advertised the Hesbollah on its front windscreen. I did’nt make a picture of that one.

We pass some choice establishments after lunch. The Tanzanian enthusiasm for advertising made for some entertaining signage. “Magic Con Shop” “Golden Shower Hotel” “Las Vegas Grocery” “Maximum Miracle Centre” and the amusingly named “Kill-view pub”.

Our campsite is up a hill through a village of waving kids. It has the luxury of a tiny swimming pool and a Hawian-eqsue bar. The sun sets as Kathryn books our Zanzibar accomodation (against the wishes and advice of our fixer) and we chat to Boris.

Boris is from Zimbabwe and worked for the campsite. He was a cook, truck driver and fixer for twelve years. He calls Zimbabwe “Zim”. His mother still lives there. His father designated 2/3 of the family land as a cemetary just before the government would have taken possesion of it. He is happy and articulate but seems to be having trouble keeping the bar tabs in order. We pay up and think of the sun rising over the Indian ocean into the beach bungalows we just booked.

In a nameless bar near Arusha0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on July 2nd, 2007

“Its bad for all of us, Nikon getting out of the professional game” lamented the bartender. He’d spotted me shooting the crocodile skin on the roof of the bar with my battered Nikon. I ordered a beer (Killimanjaro) we talked shop. The D3 might have been announced any time, but shows and speculation gave up nothing. Canon had just showcased the killer 1D mk3 and things looked bleak.

The bartender was a dedicated Canon man and was just about to buy some nice fast Canon glass. He’d watched the prices of lenses spike post mk3 announcement and was waiting to see if they went down. His point was that without competition Canon could release when they liked and charge what they liked. The constant battle for supremacy had produced some great cameras along the way, driven innovation and reduced costs. I drank my beer and tried not to think about the cost of switching systems.

Next time we met we chatted about the game parks outside of the reserves. Hunters paid exhorbitant fees to kill wildlife there. It turns out that this is a good thing. The hunting companies “farm” the animals by killing those beyond breeding age. They also contribute to the local villages and schools. My dog-eared rough guide agreed with him: The local villages are assigned a quota of huntable animals. The villagers could either hunt the animals themselves or sell their share to hunters. This has led to better relations between villages and the nature reserves and a decrease in poaching.
This is’nt the blog I thought I’d write today, just an interesting aside from my Tanzanian diary. There is much more still to come.

My name is Hapana Asante0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on May 23rd, 2007

The day after the safari we travelled to Arusha. Tanzania’s third largest town and main base for safari expeditions. Our arrival was delayed by judges being rushed past in police vehicles. Apparently a trial connected with the Rwandan Genocide was being conducted in the city. We drove into the centre of town in our huge green truck and stopped near a bank. The flycatchers descended rapidly. They were by and large friendly, overly so sometimes, and want us to come back later, see their shop or let them show us around. They were selling trinkets, tinga-tinga paintings and English language newspapers. They would’nt not take no for an answer in Swahili or English. The rough guide suggests “hapana” or “no” or “hapana asante” “no thankyou”. At this point the street seller may tell you his name is “Hapana Asante” or ask “why say that? That is wrong”. Once he latches on only the passage of time or a more likely customer will cause him to leave you alone. Eventually I started muttering in garbled Polish when approached and that appeared to do the trick.
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Refusing insistent offers of a guide we headed away from our goal, the central market. Sarah was hunting a particular style of African shirt for her betrothed and our fixer had told us this was the best place to go. The market was situated in a large busy square surrounded by muddy roads littered with crushed fruit. The porch and pavement of all the adjoining buildings were a hive of activity. Clattering foot powered sewing machines took up one side of the square. The market itself consisted of a series of stalls piled high with fruit under a high tin roof. The people here were too busy to bother us. However they were’nt selling shirts either.

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The hunt continued through a good number of shops. While the girls and George rumaged through a shop the size of a cupboard, a man sat outside taught me Swahili pronounciation and a teenager wandered over to show me a special handshake. Another youth tried to show us a shop we had already seen but then convinced us to follow him to a nearby craft market. This market was anounced by a tree sprouting cheap shoes like fruit, inside permanent market stalls were stuffed with shirts, carvings and art. Sarah was offered a shirt for $40 and managed to bargain it down to $18 before giving up. Suprisingly the youth did’nt insist we paid him for his guiding service and instead wandered off. We nipped into a cafe that had the rare luxury of a sit-down loo.

No photos this time. This was my first time into a “3rd world” city and I kept my SLR stowed. In hindsight I missed a lot of good pictures. However I felt wary and paranoid enough walking around the city and decided to err on the side of discretion (and keeping the camera for later photos). Later experiences on Zanzibar and conversations with people who had been around longer told me that I would have probably been fine.

Hakuna Matata! Next stop Kilimanjaro.

Ngorogoro Crater0
neil posted in Photos, Travel, Neil, Tanzania on May 13th, 2007

Omari is under the truck with a jack and an enormous spanner. It does’nt look good. The crater rim descent, visible now from the park enterance, is steep and treacherous. Our tour company fixer, Mwangi, decides our vehicle is a lost cause.

“Grab your cameras and water and find seats in another car” he declares in accented English. Unfortunately we take him at his word and forget suncream and food. Crap. Sarah, Henry and I pile into a car with spare seats, three strangers and a driver called Godfery.

The descent is thankfully unventful. The morning makes us appreciate precisely how good a driver Omari is. We had a happy rythm of being able to take pictures from a stationary car with its engine off until we declared “Twendy!” or “Ready!”. Godfery moves on whenever he feels like it. The engine is routinely switched on just as my makeshift 400mm finally locks its focus in the morning light. Thankfully Sarah and Henry are more tolerant of my photography habit and don’t object to me diving between their legs (they were standing on the back seat) to make a picture of an animal before Godfery rolls off. Lack of sunscreen leads to desperate measures, Sarah improvises a hat and I sweat in long sleeves inside the car.

We get lucky and see three lions in a dip near the road. It is incredible how well they manage to hide in the grass. Its a shock when one surfaces much closer to us. They are panting in the sun and eyeing up their evening meal in the wildebeest herd nearby.

We seem to be avoiding elephants all morning so we ask Godfery if he can help us see one. This brings unintentional good fortune as while sitting near a lone elephant a hippo surfaces, poses for pictures and dives back into his river. We see another elephant and the girls quickly remark “Defitinely a boy!” which is evidenced by the fact it seems he has five legs.

With that our land cruiser scrambles out of the crater only to be stopped on the main road. The Tanzanian president is coming up from a cultural tour of the Serengeti. After some waiting around, two of our parties land cruisers run the one woman checkpoint and we are sent on our way. George is minorly traumatized after spending his morning with girls who put on makeup while on safari. He claims his smelly feet balance it out. Safari over, its time to move on to Zanzibar!

Sayonara Serengetti0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on April 24th, 2007

The tents are down, the submerged hippos are staying that way and we are getting our tails back to the rim of the Ngorogoro crater. (Casting our minds back to the Africa trip)

The drive is fast and dusty. A few kilometers short of the migration we meet our first lions. Not the sea lions we were promised but three females, two of whom were heavily pregnant. They sat ignoring us in the sun before slinking off into the long grass.

The wildebeest herd is still practicing its river crossing technique on the road, playing chicken with our land cruisers. We drive around the vehicle ahead and are blocked by kamikaze ‘beests. Perceiving this as cutting them up the car behind swerves violently around us and back in front, very close to the torrent of follow-the-leader animals.

We head on, opting out of seeing the Olduvai Gorge (where footprints of early hominids have been found) and declining to pay the Maasai $10 to see one of their villages (tourist trap in every sense of the word). Just short of camp we get lucky and see two bull elephants grazing. It is a welcome sight but a sobering one. We are glad to see armed rangers at the gate. No-one wants to wake up to a rampaging bull elephant.

More insidious intruders are the bush pigs. Food is banned from our tents, as is toothpaste. All the same there are loud snuffling noises outside our tents after dark. I show Omari the Leopard shot and he smiles and asks if I got the Impala porn too. “Of course….”

A very early morning allows us to enjoy a beautiful sunrise while Omari tinkers with the land cruiser. It transpires he has only driven safaris for three months. Before this he was a mechanic. This is very reassuring and he is a top-notch safari guide to boot. A fact we appreciate all the more as we descend into the Ngorogoro crater.

A lucky spot….0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on April 19th, 2007

The radio crackles with urgent Swahili and our driver, Omari, guns the land cruisers big engine. He throws a fast three point turn on the narrow track and we head back the way we came. Out of the sunroof, I can’t hear what he is telling everyone. I ask. “Leopard” he replies, a little excited. We turn off the main track onto rutted double track and
race several kilometers. By now we are all standing out of the roof and all cameras are ready.

The elusive leopard is a rare spot indeed and there are four or five vehicles there already. Everyone is looking into a big tree. We wait our turn to peer between the upper branches. Our audience is a mere few seconds long before our quarry drops into the long grass and dissapears. Now ten vehicles wait and stare in vain for another glimpse of this steathy predator. It is not to be. Yesterday’s lame Land Cruiser stalls out again in a muddy puddle and has to be bump started. I made four pictures as quick as I could, the teleconverter throwing my beautiful lens in and out of focus. I cross my fingers and mutter “I hope I got it”

The day had begun at twenty to seven, dreary and grey. Our drive out had afforded us glimpses of hippo, hartebeest and some full-on impala porn (of COURSE I took photos). One buck was very busy as he had a herd of a dozen does to see to before the sun made everything too hot.

Post-Leopard morning also brought baboons, gently fighting giraffe, a baby croc and the small hyrax that inhabit the visitors centre. It feels like a full days fun and we’ve not even had lunch yet.

Safari begins1
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on April 12th, 2007

It is a scene from a movie. Tents, bags and supplies for three days are loaded into a row of waiting land cruisers. Red dust swirls and excited English and Swahili mix with idling engines. The only non cinematic scene is the girls frantically rummaging for lost toothbrushes. We’re off on Safari!

Our first glimpse of the Ngorogoro crater comes from high on its rim. A cauldera that imploded around 2.5 million years ago it is 19km wide and 600m deep. A descent into the cauldera was to be the last stop on our three day safari.

We had lunch on the crater rim where a Kite caught George unawares and snagged his chicken leg at spectacular speed. After lunch, a 4×4 in our convoy broke down and our driver , Omari, stepped out into the rain to help repair it. I stepped out too and watched as two Maasai boys stare into the broken 4×4 and the mzungu inside stare out. Life from very different worlds.

Back on the road, we see African buffalo, giraffe and vultures before we ever reach the entrance to Serengetti national park. Sarah alone is dissapointed and winds Omari up by insisting that he find her a tiger. He laughed and told us we may get sea lions. Perhaps we misheard.

We posed for silly pictures with our new friends Mark and Henrietta at the entrance to the park. There is little that compares in the way of experience to blasting across the Serengetti standing out of the top of a land cruiser with your friends.

One thing that can is the sight of the great migration. Around 2.5 million wildebeest and zebras in a herd that stretches for miles. The migration is just breaking its annual calving pause. Approximately half a million wildebeest calves are birthed. Only around one in three will see adulthood.

One of the reasons for this was driven home in our tents that night. Hyenas circle our campsite and call. We slept to the soft close sound of breathing, not all of it human.

Overland: Nairobi to Arusha0
neil posted in Photos, Travel, Neil, Tanzania on April 1st, 2007

Armed with toilet roll and heavily iodinated water we charged south to leave Kenya for Tanzania. We were sat in the “fishbowl” at the front of the truck. Eight seats, four-a-side that face a long table. We are joined by the trucks tame white hunter: Frank. He was armed with at least three cameras (and has two more in the hold) and shot compulsively through the window all the time we were on the road.

Not to be outdone I screwed on my long lens to snap a 1/2000th second glimpse of rural Kenya. For a Nairobi to Cape Town overlander, it may be one of few glimpses into the lives of millions of East Africans. Travelling constantly, stopping only for set activities, is reliable but does’nt leave time to get out of the tourist area and get past the Mzungu barrier.

We sit in our greenhouse and stare out at our strange surroundings. African eyes stare in.

The border to Tanzania is in Namanga, Maasai land. We dismount to change money and perform the obligitory passport faffing. We are met at the door by Maasai women with distended ears, close cropped hair and strings of bracelets, necklaces, beads, ankle rings and some horrid looking copper bracelets. They follow us like flies and our group remains entirely surrounded until we leave. They literally press their goods on us, and are persistent beyond any reason. Sarah has a shot at making conversation but does’nt get much beyond telling the woman she has’nt any money and does’nt want a green forearm. Its a depressing way to enter a country, feeling like a stack of dollar bills to be grabbed at.

Fortunately there are places where you can get beyond the yawning gap in wealth and meet friendly, warm and happy Tanzanians. The Maasai lands, what we saw of them, do not seem such a place. There are reasons for this, but during my time in East Africa I found little to like about this emblematic people.

No matter. On the next day we had a land cruiser of none but the finest folk for three days of safari in Serengeti national park and Ngorogoro crater.

Georges pictures of our entire trip are up here. I’ll be updating mine as I write the blog enteries for our two week trip.

Some notes on Kenya and Tanzania0
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on March 31st, 2007

I’m back from East Africa now and writing up my travel diaries to post here. These are some notes that would be useful to understand my diary and experience.

Mzungu: Got white skin? Go to the Swahili countries and you are a mzungu. What this means is ultimately dependent on who you are talking to. It can mean anything from “I am a giant stack of money, charge what you like” to “I’m a bit different, teach me a handshake and some Swahili”. The direct translation has multiple meanings from “one who wanders” to “Tiresome”. There is no hiding your Mzunguishness, deal with it.

Africa time: Short hand for the special time zone that allows a minute to become five and half an hour to become three. Another constant of our trip. We had to remind people that when we set a time we did’nt mean Africa time. There is also Africa distance where around the corner is 5km of hiking. You get used to it, most services do seem to run on Africa time. This includes ferries and service at restaurants.

Swahili countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda

Us: On this trip, us and we refers to Sarah, George, Kathryn and myself. Sarah and Kathryn are two medics just finished 3 months in a Kenyan hospital. George is a software engineer of the larger variety.

Hakuna Matata: Means “No problems” Go to the Swahili countries without hearing it, I bet you can’t. The front of the bus is on fire, your plane has left without you, you’ve just asked to see a tiger in Africa, expect to hear “Hakuna matata”. The tone of voice determines whether this means “RUN!!!!” or “everything is fine”

Fly catchers & touts: The people who believe Mzungu are a giant stack of easily available money. Just say a polite and firm no, several times. They will follow you, they will touch you, this is normal. Don’t change money or book a safari through them, thats incredibly stupid. Switch on when they are around and don’t get agressive. Don’t let them ruin your impression of a friendly and generous people.
Swahili: Technically this should be Kiswahili (the language of the Swahili people) but for an international audience, Swahili in reference to a language makes more sense.

The DVI out of my graphics card is broken at the moment, meaning all colours are “special”. I will colour correct my pictures once this is fixed. Enjoy the blogs.

Photos are up here and will be contextualized as I write.

The saga begins2
neil posted in Travel, Neil, Tanzania on March 28th, 2007

Everything had been going smoothly until the stewardess at the gate tossed our boarding cards in the bin. George and I were being moved. The airbus we had so carefully chosen our seats on (for maximum legroom and minimum airsickness) had been replaced with a 747. We were also being upgraded to “Premium Economy class”. We asked the stewardess if this was good. She looked doubtful.

Nine hours with premium legroom and economy electronics ensued. My chair featured a broken headphone jack and over enthusiastic call button. A double helping of Casino Royale with no sound.

Immigration was the most efficient I have yet experienced taking all of five minutes. Once out in the airport concourse, we could have been in Croydon on a sticky summer evening.

Next morning, re-united with Sarah and Kathryn, we met our overland group. A mixed bag of Aussies and Kiwis spiced with two giggly Danes, an Irishman and his English Girlfriend. Place in a converted mercedes truck for three days, bake at over 30C, stir daily and shake well over potholes. A recipe for good times.

Taking off through the deserted streets of Catholic Nairobi on sundy morning, we could have been in Vegas or somewhere in Florida. Dual carriageway, English signs and palm trees. It is when we turned south for the Tanzanian border that it hits us. The tarmac ends, the truck rattles and rolls and camels flee from our noisy path.

We’re not in Vegas any more Dorothy…