Sunday- The Village Walk

Lunch and a game of Mancala

Lunch today was another delicious meal. This time it started with a veggie soup and then Nile perch as the entre served with an assortment of local fruits. After lunch I had a game of Mancala, the African version, with Mary, one of the young women who work at the lodge. This Mancala game had about 3 times as many bead holes and was played with real stones instead of nice beads. After the game, I was visiting with Jeremiah at the front desk about other things to do in the lodge and village area. He said something about visiting the local school in the village. I thought that was a great idea. He got me set up with Vincent to take a morning tour of the school before I headed of on my safari.

The Village walk

It turns out the overnight rains were not enough to cancel the village walk. The day was very pleasant, just a bit cool and damp but very enjoyable weather for me. Vincent, who was also one of the servers at the lodge restaurant, was to be our tour guide. We were joined by an older couple from Holland on the walk. The walk would take us about 1 ½ to 2 hours. We started by going into the coffee field to see how they plant red beans under the coffee trees. This way they can get two crops in one field. Sometimes coffee trees are grown under taller banana trees as well.

We then left the plantation and walked down the muddy road of the village. It did not seem much like a real village because we were in a combination of forest and agricultural fields with houses or small shops scattered along the way. This was truly a rural community. We soon stopped at a small cluster of buildings that looked like nothing more than farm old dilapidated out buildings. There were several chickens walking around and a cow around the corner of one of the buildings. There also were several children and a woman. Soon after we stopped, an old man appeared. Vincent introduced us to him explaining that he claims to be 128 years old. He looked awfully good and healthy for 128. He talked, through Vincent’s’ interpreting, about how life was before the Germans came to the area during WW1 and about the turn of the century, 1900. He says he had 25 children and at least 200 grandchildren. He doesn’t even know them all. The picture is me and him in front of his house, which looks to be about 128 years old. After I got home, I read an article in the paper about the oldest know person in the world had just died. He was said to be 113. Either the guy I met is not that old or there is no way to prove it so it is unofficial. It makes for a good story anyway. I never thought I could meet somebody more that 1 ½ times my age (50).

The next most interesting thing on the walk was going into the local brew pub. I really like sampling different kinds of local beers. I always ask for the unique local brew when I travel. But this brew pub was unlike anything at home (or anywhere else I have ever been before). They make banana beer and wine here. The beer ferments for 4 days and then is put into an open plastic 55 gallon barrel (pictured). This is the keg! The beer is then scooped out of the barrel with a large plastic cup (like a pitcher) and then poured into a 600 or 1500ml cup. Three to five men (see picture) sit around a table and pass the cup of beer around, taking a drink before handing off to the next person. It smelled like beer but looked more like soup. It is not filtered and has a lot of fiber in it. The barrel is wide open with no way to keep out the flies and bugs. The man dipping the beer literally had beer up to his elbows on his arms. Obviously, I did not sample this brew. While at the brew pub I found this man wearing a Nova Scotia sweatshirt. I tried to ask him if he knew where Nova Scotia was, but he could not understand me. So I paid him a dollar so that I could take his picture. I thought this was a great picture since my wife is from Nova Scotia. I also took the picture of the old lady walking up the road with the basket on her head. This to me was just too classic to pass up. I paid her a dollar as well. I found that the people do not mind having their pictures taken. They understand that we are in a different world from them. It is common courtesy though to pay people if they know you are taking their picture. I had no problem with this as that one dollar would easily be a days pay for many of them.

The lodge charges $10 dollars for the village tour. The money is used in various ways in the village to help support the people, the road, school supplies and health items. I gave $20 and felt it was a bargain.

The near sleepless 2nd night

I went to bed at about what would be the normal time for me at home. So it seemed I had adjusted to the 8 hour time change pretty easily. I began to hear a gentle rain at about 10:30. This was not good news since I had set up a cultural walking tour of the village the next day, but it might not happen if we had an overnight rain. The main road would be very muddy. I guess I fell asleep around 11:00.

Well, now it is 1:30 in the morning and I am wide awake. So much for adjusting to the time difference. My body was trying to tell me it was 5:30 pm, no where near bed time. It also has been and is still raining out. So, unable to sleep, I decided to write some thoughts in the journal. I watched the people of Moivaro Village and Arusha from the car on Saturday as Jackson showed me around the area. I got a glimpse of how these people lived. My interest in them and their lives was now piqued. I desperately wanted to get out among the locals to get an up close view of what their world was really like. I just hope that the rain does not wash out the walking tour. I laid on the bed wondering just what life would be like living in a house without electricity, water, and virtually every other "luxury" that we take for granted. I just thought that with all that we have in our lives, there must be some way to give back to these, so far, seemingly wonderful people.

We saw many partially built houses on Saturday as we were driving around. When I finally asked Jackson about them, he explained that people bought building materials as they had cash to spend. There was no such thing as a home loan or a mortgage in this world. Thus, you could drive down the road and see houses in various phases of development. There would be one house with three walls and a pile of bricks near by. A few yards away there may be a house with all four walls but no roof. I saw one with a tree growing up out of the inside of the house. There was another with all of the walls that had the wood rafters in place, but needed the corregated steel for the roof. Even after a family had enough bricks purchased to build with, they may have to wait a year or so to save enough money to pay a brick layer and and tender to lay the bricks. Jackson said it could take ten years for some families to build a house. And these are only small 2 and 3 room "huts". I was told that the average income in this village was about $2.00 a day. It could take a long time to save up enough money to buy materials to build even a simple house on that kind of wages.

I think I finally got to sleep around 4:00 am. With the time change and just being too excited to see the new world around me, I really didn't care if I slept. There was just too much to see and do.

After the visit to Arusha I had a little time before dinner. So, I decided to take a little walk on the trail inside the plantation compound. The trail is about 2 k and goes up a good sized hill at the back of the compound. I had walked the trail earlier in the day on the advice of one of the Lodge workers. They had said if the clouds were clear that I could see Kilimanjaro. It had been a long running dream of mine to someday see and climb to the top of Kilimanjaro. This after all was the original intent of my trip to Tanzania. But since my doctor would not clear me to make the climb to over 19,000 feet because my minor life-long heart murmur, I had to settle for just seeing the white topped giant of Africa. Luck was with me this afternoon. The clouds had cleared exposing the only snow covered mountain peak on the equator. I guessed that we were about 50 miles away. Too far away to take a good picture. So I just sat there and enjoyed the view for a while. Even though the rainy season was coming to an end, it seemed to be cloudy most of the day. Well, time to get ready for dinner. I had already had two fabulous meals and could not wait to see what dinner would bring.

It is 6:43 now and it is completely dark out now. On June 2 at home in Kansas City, the sun would not set until nearly 9:00pm. This seemed strange to me that it would be dark before 7:00. It turns out that the sun sets and rises change only a few seconds a day at the equator. Sunrise is about 6:40 every morning and sunset about 6:20. We have just over 12 hours of visible sunlight each day here.

Before leaving for Tanzania, my wife got me well supplied with quick wash and dry clothes. Clothes that can be hand washed in the sink that will dry quickly. Last night I washed a couple shirts that I wore on the plane so that I could be sure to have enough shirts to last for several more days. However, it is so humid and cool here that the shirts I washed have not yet dried. It sounded like a good idea but so far does not seem to work.

DINNER

Another fabulous meal on the veranda of the Lodge. The salad was fresh from the plantation garden and was great. I was served a bowl of potato-leek soup that was just awesome. I have to admit that I would probably never order that at home myself. So already in two meals I have eaten pumpkin soup and potato-leek soup and spiced up my life just by being in Africa. The main entrée was an excellent spring chicken. I believe the chicken was raised right in the village. This meal was toped off with a chocolate banana brownie. I am told there are around 40 varieties of bananas grown around this are. Bananas as I am finding out are a major food staple here. Oh, and I had my first African beer with dinner. It was called Kilimanjaro Premium Lager. It is an amazingly good crisp fresh beer. I’ll have to look for it at home.

Arusha town

Before Jackson came to pick me up in the afternoon for a trip into Arusha, I had a fabulous lunch at the lodge. It started with a pumpkin soup. This is not something that I would normally order or even attempt at home most likely. But I figured what the heck, I'm on a grand adventure so why not try it anyway. It turned out to be one of the best soups I have ever eaten. It was so rich and creamy, I could have had two or three bowls of it. The rest of the meal was just as good. The main dish was pork chops in a flavorful sauce that I think had curry in it. There were baby potatoes and fresh green beans from the plantation garden. Now I have had two wonderful meals, a nice room, and absolutely beautiful environment, wonderful people at the lodge, and now it was time to leave and see some more of what Tanzania has to offer.

Jackson said he would pick me up at 2:00 to go into Arusha. I was at the front of the lodge at 1:55 (didn't dare want to be late for my first adventure out into Africa. At five after, no Jackson. At ten after, still no Jackson. I am getting nervous now. Did he forget me? Or did I misunderstand him last night in the whirlwind of the evening. Finally, at 2:17, Jackson shows up (Africa time at work). I clearly was not yet adjusted to the way things work in Africa. I would quickly learn that the most important thing about a trip like this to Africa is to remember the line from the Lion King: "Hakuna Matata". Just relax, it will all work out.

As we drove into town, the people were everywhere. I know that many if not most of the houses and shops we drove past had no electricity and running water. And then it seemed that about one in 5 houses was only partially built. More on this later. The village looked different in the day light. We were truly in the jungle. The plant life was so lush and thick. What was not forested was planted in some kind of crop. Food around here could not be in short supply. I was completely enthralled with what I was seeing. It was just like being live in a National Geographic show. I was thinking, "This must be the classic image of what Africa is." The people were walking along the road carrying bags and bundles of items of who knows what. Sometimes carrying them on top of their heads. This was the scene all the way into town, a drive that took less than half an hour.

As we got closer to town, the numbers of people out along the road only increased. There was clearly more traffic along the sides of the roads than there was on the roads. In town there were people (always men) pushing or pulling two wheeled cars sometimes heavily loaded with a variety of different things. Before arriving here, I had done a lot of reading about the area. I knew that Arusha was a commercial and government center for northern Tanzania. From what I could gather, the population was about 100,00 in town and about 500,000 in the Arusha area.
I think I expected Arusha to look more like a city with a city center. The city center w very run down, dirty and crowded. Only a few buildings looked new and in good repair. One of those the big multistory white building that housed the Rawandan Tribunal where they were still trying people for the genocide in Rawanda many years ago. You would think for all of the important government and business meetings that go on here and the fact that this is one of the major starting points for safaris that it would be a lot nicer. Welcome to Africa!

There was at this time not one traffic signal in all of Arusha. The first traffic light was installed about two months after I left. That light caused so much havoc that it all but shut down the traffic at a very busy intersection. Progress comes slowly to Tanzania. They do not even have streetlights. Although there is a plan in the process to change that now. You can read about these developments in the Arusha Times. It is linked on the side. I did see a few street names but that was rare. The U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name" was alive and well in Arusha. That song was written about conditions in Ethiopia but it seemed appropriate for here as well. Inspite of all of these third world conditions, Arusha actually is a thriving and growing community. There is a lot of progress going on here. I would learn much more about this as the trip went on and even more after I got home.

Before we left the town, Jackson said he needed to stop at the Hoopoe Safari office for a few minutes. He was gone less than ten minutes, sitting on the street in the car by myself was a very interesting experience. Across the street from the car were several street vendors and other people "just hanging out". I felt like I was being watched by everyone. And of course, I was watching and looking at them like they were some kind of novel sight, which to me this is exactly what it was. For a few minutes, I was all alone in a strange world and really not sure what to expect next. I have to admit that there was a little bit of nervousness for this short wait. Jackson soon returned with another Hoopoe worker who he introduced as Innocence. He would be the store clerk and cook for the nights we spent camping out in the bush later in the week. Oh wow, this safari adventure is really going to happen. But still two days away.