rocket to nowhere

Slept in. Got up. Took Imodium. I’m not feeling so hot. My nose is also dry and bloody. Pretty yucky. I’m feeling so yucky, in fact, that I’m resorting to writing sentence fragments. Something.
Sara, Micah, and I had breakfast outside. Dad joined us for a bit, and then the four of us joined Mom and Shoonie and Alan, and we all went into town. The first place we went was this strange European place with lots of candles and decorative things. They had some western, plastic toys there too: an action figure that was built around the idea of really buff computer nerds who hack into the bad guys’ systems and then have to fight their way out (because access to the bad guys’ computer network can only be had locally?). I think it was called CyberMan or Ultra Cyber Corps. or something. I remember the tagline: Information is Everything! Anyway, the shop was frightening, and I didn’t like it.

Mom, Shoonie, and Alan went back up to Mwangaza; Dad, Sara, Micah, and I went to lunch at Jambo’s Café where I had a lovely bacon and avocado sandwich and bought a super cute stuffed animal elephant. Then Dad and I walked around some before walking back to Mwangaza. I spent the rest of my afternoon installing software on computers.

We went to Ilborou Safari Lodge for dinner. And I spent my evening with computers again. It was nice to be able to help. I think what they’re doing here is a good thing.

Tomorrow is a day of travel, and I doubt I’ll get much written. I will try though.

Today was a photographless, journalless day.

I was awakened by the man who brought coffee to my tent this morning. I jumped up, got dressed, went outside, watched the sun rise, and drank coffee. I was eventually joined by the rest of my family. [I can think of very few things more relaxing and envigorating at the same time.]

We went to breakfast and then out in the truck. Today was much like yesterday in that we didn’t see much. That was fine because we really were spoiled in the crater. We did get dangerously close to a mama elephant with two children (one teenager and one baby). That was super awesome, and I got some great pictures [1, 2, 3].

We had lunch at and said goodbye to the lodge. Later we found out that the staff there made a point of telling Fred how nice we were.

We drove to Arusha and Mwangaza. After seeing the baby elephant, the highlight of the day was dinner at Khan’s. By day, Khan’s BBQ is an auto parts store. By night, it’s a street side BBQ. It was a lot of fun, and the food was good too. It seemed like everyone (who was anyone) was there, but that’s probably only because a U.N. truck stopped by and picked some food up (the U.N. tribunal for war crimes in Rwanda is in Arusha). [Khan's BBQ: 1, 2, 3]

I am ready to go home. This is awesome, and I hope to go out shopping with Fred tomorrow, but I’m tired and I miss Jenny a lot. I suppose Saturday will come soon enough.

Also, will I ever be able to describe Ilborou Road?

my website, rocket2nowhere.com, which was out of commission for a while, is now back up and running. it is now hosted by laughing squid.

thanks korb for all your help!

we now return you to your regularly scheduled African Travel Journal.

I woke up with the birds and the sun this morning and then watched Vervet monkeys run by my tent and watch me watch them.

We had a wonderful, half-western breakfast (I should have written about the glories of last night’s dinner, but Sara is chronicling the food), and then left on Safari through Tarangire Park. Our incredible good luck yesterday affected us today, and we saw virtually nothing in the way of wildlife . . . several Impala, lots of birds, and we did see some baby elephants, but only from a distance because Fred says the elephants here are mean. He (Fred) then took us to the poacher’s hide, which is a hollowed out Baobab tree. It was awesome. He drove like a bat out of hell after that, but we stopped and he told us the story of how a leopard killed a child at the lodge last year. He was there, and thanks to his quick thinking, he and the father of the child were able to scare the leopard away from the child’s body before it dragged it up into a tree (as leopards do). I don’t know if Fred really wanted to tell the story, but he did.

Now I’m sitting in the lounge, looking out over the park, writing this . . .

And I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching the view subtly change. It was quite relaxing and beautiful. There was almost no one around. I wrote 12+ postcards. I drank a Coke. I talked to Mom and Sara.

As it was getting dark, Dad and Micah returned from their afternoon/evening with Fred in the car. They did some serious off-roading since there were no (fragile) women with them. I was torn, but am confident I made the right decision after previously lambasting Americans for being both unable and unwilling to appreciate subtlety and nuance. Which is not to say our morning Safari didn’t include those things. The mama fowl with her baby chicks might have gone unnoticed by other groups. I don’t know. The last time I went down this pseudo-logical road, I was roundly criticized for being elitist.

(Oh! Today was the day of the beast, right? Well, I doubt the world ended in the U.S., and the closest we got here was Fred’s story about the leopard incident this last autumn.)

[That, of course, is a blatant, but also accidental misrepresentation of the truth. I had to deal with the leavings of several beasts: When we returned from our morning Safari, I went to my hut/tent to find that some Vervet monkeys (very likely the same Vervet monkeys with whom I had made eye contact at sunrise) had come to my tent/hut while I was out and used the bathroom and front porch. Thank goodness monkeys aren't quite agile or strong or smart (or they just haven't yet figured out) enough to unzip tents, or there could have been real trouble. Anyway, they left a present of poop and pee on my porch, and they left two presents of poop in my bathroom. They also tried to eat my soap. I went to the front desk and told the man there what had happened. He was extremely apologetic and I told him that was unnecessary as he had no control over the monkeys. He laughed and suggested that perhaps I should just think of it simply as my wild experience present from Tarangire Safari Lodge to me. I agreed that was a good idea.]

Tomorrow’s date is the number of the beast. I’m told there are a lot of elephants here in Tarangire National Park.

This morning, we left Karatu Hostel and drove up into Ngorongoro Crater. The drive up was very foggy, through steep rainforest, and we couldn’t really see anything. The drive up made both me and Micah a little nervous. For much of the way up, we followed a bus on its way from Arusha to Lake Victoria. I guess up and around the rim of the crater is the quickest route. When we got to the top of the rim, we couldn’t see down into the crater. We drove around the rim in dense fog and then began our descent. From the rim to the base of the crater is 600m down. Maybe 50m down from the rim, we drove out of the fog, and we could see the entire bowl, which has a 20km diameter. We drove around in that bowl all day. The canopy of cloud slowly dispersed, and we had extremely good luck finding and photographing animals. I doubt I’ll be able to recall everything (my photographic record, while not of the highest quality, should be complete), but we saw a number of antelope, many many zebras, lots of wildebeest, water buffalo, pink flamingos, elephants, two lionesses by a watering hole (Sara spotted them first), a lion sleeping on top of a hill (we had a small argument about whether he was a rock or not before the wind blew his mane)(he also eventually moved, and we got within 10 yards of him), a group of lionesses at a dried watering hole, three different rhinos (one exceptionally closely), lots of hippos, and two cheetahs (we watched one chase a zebra, which are usually too big for cheetahs to take down). In short, and to repeat, we had very good luck seeing animals inside of Ngorongoro Crater.

[It seems to me now, typing this out of my notebook, that I could have done a better job of journaling. The previous paragraph is little more than a list of animals we saw. I suppose I could trot out the old ìbut I was tired when it came time to write down the dayî excuse, and even though it would be true, tiredness isn't much of an excuse for laziness. I call myself a writer, but I don't actually do it. I might also be a little hard on myself from time to timeósurely a travel journal is usually just a set of quickly jotted-down notes one uses as reference when writing the full story later, right? Anyway, instead of merely refashioning the piss-poor original into something a little more compelling and then passing the more compelling version off as the original (which would be my prerogative as a writer (so-called or not)), here's a mostly fleshed-out version of our day in and around Ngorongoro Crater (which was one of the nicest days we had in a string of very nice days):

I woke up exceptionally early, which is pretty much what I have done every day. Instead of a seemingly crazed, barking dog or the muezzin, today I was awakened by church bells, and since I was up exceptionally early, I then tried to get the rest of my family to join me. They were having none of it. I guess I sort of paced around Karatu Hostel for a while, waiting to go to breakfast. I took a picture of one of those strangely sparse, upside-down looking trees, and was, at one point, greeted by one of the party of missionaries (Missouri Synod Lutheran?) who stared at us so brazenly at dinner last night (I guess inviting your African driver to sit down at the dinner table with you is a no-no). We invited Fred to share breakfast with us as well, and then had pretty much the same breakfast we've had every other day. After breakfast, we picked up our boxed lunches from the fine folks at Karatu (You know, I say ìfine folks at Karatu,î but the one woman who served us in the dining hall was kind of dour, and the woman with the droopy eye at the front desk never smiled and was also kind of douróbut that was just their demeanor, wasn't it? The food was good, the rooms were clean, and the hostel was really very nice (in fact, the hostels we stayed in were much more like mom-n-pop hotels than they were like hostels), so why am I complaining about a little dourness?) Hostel, and got in the car. ¶ The land around Karatu and Ngorongoro is quite a bit different than the land around Moshi, Marangu, or even lake Manyara. Yesterday, after we left Manyara, we drove up a wall, basically, on the other side of the Rift Valley, into where we are now. The earth is still a very volcanic red, but it seems to be a shade darker. Because our elevation is higher, the clouds are lower, and the sky seems to be closer. Instead of grasslands and cornfields, we've seen wheat and fields of flowers (many of which will be dried before export—these are/are not the same flowers the daily KLM flight picks up?). ¶ Yesterday we went up up up to get here. Today we went up even farther. Our ascent up the outside of the crater was through densely foggy rainforest. We couldn't see very far in front of our truck, and we couldn't see very far to the side either. Every once in a while, the view to the side would open enough for us to see that the road was very narrow and that the amount of space between the road and a precipice was nearly nil. There were definite moments when both Micah and I (in the back seats) were very nervous. Our fear was enhanced by the fact that most of our ascent was spent behind a bus from Arusha to Lake Victoria. Fred explained that despite appearances, around the rim of the crater was the most direct and fastest route between the two places. I should explain that busses both big and small are routinely overflowing with people and things. There were no young men hanging off the side of this bus, but there was at least one guy who got off and on the bus when it was in motion: At the crater's entrance gate, he jumped off and put a block behind the front wheel, and he removed it and jumped back on the bus as it began to move away again. The bus made us nervous because we've all heard stories about overflowing busses falling down mountains in developing countries (In fact, there was a bus accident on the road between Moshi and Arusha the day before Dad and I left. 54 people died in that accident.). ¶ When we got to the inside rim of the crater, the fog was so thick we could see almost nothing. We stopped and got out to use the facilities (in national parks and conservation areas (Ngorongoro Crater is a conservation area), it is not advised to just get out of the car anywhere to pee. Lord knows what might be lurking in those bushes, and Tanzanians have folk stories about mongooses, who are highly specialized snake-killers, biting the penises off of little boys), and our truck was almost immediately surrounded by young Maasai warriors who wanted to sell us things. I went to the toilet, and while there, saw my first cactus tree: bark on the bottom, cactus above. It freaked me out some. When I got back to the truck, it was no longer surrounded by Maasai warriors, Sara and Micah were. I really wish I had a picture of that scene. ¶ Before we started our descent, Fred told us that several cars full of people (mostly Americans) he was driving had refused to go any farther once they saw the road down into the crater. The road down is very narrow and very steep, and usually, once you descend below the lip of the crater, you also descend below the blanket of cloud on top of the crater, and then you can see everything. Fred said he always let the people protest as he kept on driving down. ¶ Morning in the crater was marked by the low-hanging clouds at the crater's rim. They slowly dissipated over the day, but never fully went away until about the time we drove out of the crater. . . . ¶ ¶ It could, of course, go on and on like that for a whole book. It would contain a list of all the animals we saw, the argument about whether the lump on top of the hill was a rock or a lion (it turned out to be a lion), and at least a mention of how we had to eat our boxed lunch in the car or the large, black kites in the tree by the pond would have swooped down and taken lunch right out of our hands. But instead of going on and on like that for a whole book, and particularly since I've run out of steam, I'll finish typing the rest of what I wrote in my notebook on June 5, 2006.]

We drove up out, stopped at a lodge built on the lip, took pictures and then headed for Tarangire Lodge. On the way there, Fred stopped at a shop with lots and lots and lots of carving. I bought an ebony walking stick. Originally, the guy asked Tsh35,000 for it, but Fred helped me talk him down to Tsh20,000 or $20.00 (approx.)

Tarangire Lodge is fabulous. There’s a lounge and a dining area, both open and both with gigantically tall ceilings. There is also a swimming pool. Outside of the lounge and dining area, there is a large terrace that looks out over Tarangire National Park. The view is expansive and fantastic, and one can sit in the lounge or on the terrace and watch the wildlife move around on the plain below.

We are staying in tents. Those tents are sheltered by wooden huts with thatched roofs. At the back of those huts is a bathroom, and while the bathroom isn’t exactly open air, it is close enough that I felt a mild breeze as I was taking the hands-down best shower I’ve taken since we got here.

If Jen and I ever come to Africa together, I will bring her here. She would love it.

We got up at the crack and went to church. With my limited knowledge of Swahili and the pastor’s use of repetition, I thought perhaps he was talking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Then, trying to remember the ecumenical calendar, I thought maybe today was Pentecost. Turns out it is. We then drove from Moshi to Arusha, and stopped in at Mwangaza, where Mom and Dad dropped some luggage and we saw Shoonie and Jim (and met JoDonna). After that, we drove through Maasai country (which looked very much like the Sandhills of Nebraska except with mountains in the distance and some weird trees) toward Lake Manyara National Park. Shortly before we got there, we stopped for lunch at some place the name of which I didn’t write down and can’t remember. It was the best meal we’ve had so far: tomato cream soup with fresh dinner rolls followed by rice with curried vegetables and some very tender and mildly curried beef (with also maybe some mint?). There was also some delicious fish. A fruit cup (banana, watermelon, and avocado) followed.

Then we drove into Manyara, which sits in the Rift Valley. Fred told us afterwards that we only saw ¼ of the park because of time constraints, however, in that ¼ of the park we saw baboons, Vervet monkeys, black (blue?) monkeys, giraffe, hippos, zebras, elephants, monitor lizards, wildebeest, water buffalo, impala, bushbuck, dik-dik, gazelle, marabou storks, some other kind of stork (yellow billed?), that sounded like mini-bikes when they landed, Egyptian geese, cormorant, pelican, pink flamingos, vultures (I don’t know what kind), and a black and white kingfisher of some kind. My camera doesn’t zoom very well, and I only took 27 pictures, but the ones I took were pretty good. We’re now at Karatu Hostel, and I’m not feeling very good. I had a touch of the diarrhea not long ago. Now I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Some water and some sleep should fix me right up. Tomorrow, we drive into Ngorongoro Crater to find more animals.

I missed Jen a lot today. When we were mostly just hanging out with people, it wasn’t so bad, but now that we’re on Safari, I really wish she were here. She would love it. (She would have loved Ndoro Falls as well, but as I was looking at some elephants today, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and I miss her terribly. I was very happy to get email from her today when we stopped at J. M. Tours’ office.)

What did we do today? We had a late-ish breakfast, during which I scratched a kitty’s head. I found out that dogs and cats are generally not petted in Tanzania—they’re kept for pest and security purposes, but are not, generally, regarded as members of the family as they are in the U.S. Then we went into town (Moshi) to shop a little. I bought some postcards. Around noon, Mom and Dad left Micah and me at the Coffee Shop (Sara was out at Shaeli and Humphrey’s most of the day). He and I had lunch, and I wrote his postcard to Peter. I bought half a kilo of coffee beans at the Coffee Shop, and if they’re the same as what we drank, then they’re really good [they were and they are]. Micah and I then walked back to Umoja Lutheran Hostel, and were not approached by street vendors or beggars once. Earlier, while we were shopping, we talked to a guy about American hip-hop artists, and when we left (after Mom had to tell one very persistent young man to go away), he told us to “Keep it jiggy!”

At 3:00 p.m., Frank Nyunge (sp?) came and picked us up and took us out to Honey Badger Cultural Center. Frank was Mom’s exchange partner the first time she came in 1996 (and he stayed with my parents when he went to the U.S.). There, we met his children: Walter (11), Mary Jo (8), and Faith (2). Mary Jo was born nearly nine months after Frank returned to Tanzania from Nebraska. We had dinner, and then watched some traditional Chagga dancing and drumming. There was some filthily dressed, poorly coordinated buy who danced with the women, despite the fact that usually only the women dance. Micah and I were dragged on stage, and I have never felt quite so arrhythmic in my whole life. After the dinner and dancing, we played ball with the children. Then we came back here (Umoja Lutheran Hostel), sat outside for a bit, then came back in and played cards.

I suppose I could write something about why Frank’s wife wasn’t there and how I couldn’t tell if he or his children were sad about that. I definitely need to calm down about trying to decipher the social dynamic. I am not familiar enough with the culture to do it properly, but I won’t stop trying—I’ll just “calm down” about it, whatever that means.

I slept better and am doing a better job of quieting my busy mind. I was awakened by a dream wherein Micah and I went to a lecture by Gertrude Stein. I got up, got dressed, had breakfast (one piece of white bread w/peanut butter, one small banana, and a cup of weak coffee). We went to Bishop Moshi and gave seed caps to the faculty and staff, then drove back to Umoja Hostel in Moshi.

Right this very instant [as I was writing this at the end of the day], I wish I still smoked. It would be so nice to stand outside here or sit in the courtyard and have one cigarette before going to bed. But alas.

This morning, after we got here, I took a shower and shaved. Then we went to lunch at the Coffee Shop. The menu there was very similar to that of a European-style café, and I am quite sure my toasted bacon, tomato, and cheese sandwich was grilled on a George Foreman Grill.

After lunch, we walked around some and looked into a shop or two, but it started to get hot, so Mom and I came back to the hostel. We sat in the courtyard and read and talked. I came to my room and hand washed my undergarments. Then there was more sitting and reading in the courtyard. Later, I kind of wished I had continued to walk around with Sara, Micah, and Dad, but when was the last time I was able to sit outside and read? There was a church service while I was sitting and I got to hear, among other songs, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” sung in Swahili. Manifest Destiny took on new and twisted meanings. The singing was beautiful, unaccompanied, four-part harmony.

Tonight we went to visit Sara’s friend Shaeli. . . .

They were volunteer partners when Sara came here the first time. We went out to the suburb of Soweto to Shaeli and her husband Humphrey’s house. So . . . so . . . so . . . I’m not sure how to talk about wealth in Tanzania. Nor am I sure how to talk about how Humphrey showed us around. Let me just say that the obvious opulence (comparatively) of their home, mixed with the way Humphrey acted toward both his home and his wife (or my perception thereof) mixed with what appears to be—earlier today, I asked if an apt description of Tanzania would be “19th Century rural America with cars and mobile phones,” and Mom said she thought more like 1950s rural America—a very patriarchal gender-relations situation, mixed with the fact that Humphrey would sometimes stop paying attention to the conversation (whether because he was bored or couldn’t understand our sloppy and idiom-riddled English, I don’t know), gave me the impression that Humphrey was somewhat disingenuous. He seemed, at first, to me to be the slick, frat boy businessman type (which probably doesn’t even exist in Tanzania, at least the frat boy part). At the end though . . . I don’t know, he then seemed very genuine. I’ll admit I know very little about Tanzanian culture in general, or about Chagga (Humphrey’s tribe) culture in specific, so I can’t really comment on my observations without sounding at least somewhat Victorian and imperialist. So.

Allow me to say this: Shaeli and Humphrey have a beautiful house and two beautiful and exceptionally intelligent children. The 2-year-old, Helen, possesses a sophisticated command of her language (I’m assuming Swahili), and Ian’s (the seven-year-old) English is superb. Conversation at one point was about how Helen will tell her father, “I do not want to be closed up in here (their home compound) today! I want to go to work where the other children are.” Then, and I don’t know how we got on the topic, we were talking about how children in Tanzania are more intelligent now than they used to be. We (the Americans) countered with the fact that American children are probably less intelligent than they were a generation ago, and we blamed TV, video games, the internet, a glut of information and no means or ability to use it—the usual suspects. And then Fred (whom I have always liked, but whom I like more and more every day) started talking about his childhood and how he hung out with all of the children of the neighborhood, and how they all shared parents (essentially) and how they made their own toys and invented their own games, because (and he said this in front of Shaeli and Humphrey) they didn’t have compound walls, and their parents didn’t buy them toys, etc. It seemed to me (and again, my perception here could very easily be skewed) that he (Fred) was scolding Shaeli and Humphrey for living the way they do. Did I mention their TV was on the entire time we were there?

So . . . so . . . so . . . the meal at their house was incredibly delicious (yet another feast (At one point, Shaeli said to Sara, “I know how to cook,” but did she cook it? There were at least two helper women there.)), and I had my first Tanzanian beer: Tusker lager. It was just okay. The Castle Milk Stout Mom and Dad had was much better.

[Some days later, Mom told me how unusual it was that we were offered beer at Shaeli and Humphrey’s. It would seem that most Tanzanians (mostly for religious reasons) don’t drink. Certainly, alcohol was never mentioned at Stephen and Midlasta’s. I ran some of my fragmented thoughts from above past Mom, and she seemed to think that there may have been a fair amount of “trying to appear Western” going on that night, but whether those attempts are a regular, ongoing thing or were mostly for our benefit is anyone’s (Sara, “anyone” in this case means you.) guess.]

I did not come all the way to Africa to be kept awake half the night by something as pedestrian as a barking dog. The lowing of the cow, the bleating of the goat, and the crying of the bush babies was a more acceptable reason to be kept awake. And then every other sound. Every other sound. Every other goddamn sound. I have no idea how much I slept, but it wasn’t much.

We had a long, physical day. We ate a late breakfast, and then took a trip to Ahira church, which was founded by Father Althaus in 1894, and was the first Lutheran church in Tanzania (or just this region?). Stephen’s grandfather was among the first converts. The pastor showed us around, and we went up the new bell tower staircase. I went back down immediately, as I was very, very, very uncomfortable—which was strange since I had no trouble with natural (as opposed to man-made) heights.

We spent the middle part of the day at Bishop Moshi Secondary School, where Stephen is headmaster. We looked around, ate/drank tea, looked around, ate lunch. Then we drove up to the gate to the path up the mountain. We walked down and up and down. Mary Jo thought she wouldn’t made it. We were followed by a group of small children who, after we photographed them, called “chocolate?!?” after us. Then we drove to Ndoro Falls, and M.J., who had thought she wouldn’t make it on our little up and down and up walk, went all the way down the narrow, steep, slippery trail to the falls, and all the way back up. This time we were followed by four young boys who provided us with walking sticks. I tipped them $1.00 each. The vertical was about the same as Scottsbluff National Monument. Perhaps I’ll be able to sleep better tonight.