My Time in Africa

At the moment of this writing I am somewhere in Turkey just outside of the city of Troy. I have been through Tanzania and Egypt in the time since my last posting. We arrived in Tanzania and took a bus to our lodgings in the city of Arusha. We stayed in a hostel run by a catholic organization that also maintained a high school. One had to sleep under a mosquito net to avoid malaria and although at first they are a challenge to get situated within, after a few nights I was a certified professional mosquito net operator. The trick is to get the bottom situated around the foot of the bed then go around, fix one corner around one side of the headboard and then slip into the opening and get the last part once underneath. So know you know. The whole compound was surrounded by a ten foot cement wall topped with barbed wire. At ten the gates were shut and at a quarter after the dogs were let loose while the guards went on patrol. Turned out, the dogs were about as friendly as could be although the one was fairly stupid and spent most of his time eating plastic bags. At about ten thirty as I learned one night, this mangy junk yard dog was let out. His face was mangled on one side and when he was around all the little dogs were as mean as he was.

We left the compound to go on safari for three days. Our safari home was a few hours by car away from Arusha, and rather than dogs it was patrolled by men with bows, arrows, and clubs. We stayed in anti-mosquito tents and were served meals under a large thatched roof wall-less structure. Our first day of safari took us to the lake Manara national park where we saw a multitude of large mammal wildlife. Elephants, hippos, giraffes, lions, and wildebeests were all present. My favorite sight for the day however was the Dik Dik. The Dik Dik is the smallest member of the antelope family and is about the size of an abnormally tall wiener dog. I am partial to it because its just this tiny thing trying to make sense of life in the African wilderness surrounded by lions, cheetahs, leopards, cervals, and all manner of large animals that could crush it with one accidental step. Yet there it is, doing its thing. On the second day of Safari we visited the Ngorogoro Crater Wildlife Preserve. Easily the most stunning place I have ever been to. You drive for miles up into the rim of a dormant volcano and then down through jungle into a grassland many square miles in size yet all within the volcanic crater. The transition from tropical forest to grassland is an especially interesting one because it is driven primarily by the activities of the elephants within the crater who will actively maintain an area of grassland in an environment in which the climax vegetation is a type of forest. There were lakes and wetlands within the crater supporting a stunning variety and number of animals ranging from the warthog to the sacred ibis. Even the wildebeest within the crater, traditionally a migratory animal, never leave the confines of the crater because they are so well provided for. There were easily thousands of Wildebeest there as well as innumerable Zebras, Grants and Thompsons gazelle, Dik Dik, countless fascinating birds like the Grey Crowned Crane and the Paradise Fly Catcher. There were also many Lions, Hippopotami, and a few Rhinoceros. The third day was a visit to the Serengeti where, due to a mysterious massive migration of life to the western side of the park, we didn’t see much large mammal activity. However we were treated to close up views of many extraordinarily beautiful birds like the Kingfisher and Lilac Breasted Roller. Here we witnessed also an elephant that had not moved out of the area bathing in mud from about ten feet away.

We returned to Arusha following the safaris for three nights to hold classes, get work done, and see the city. One day I ventured out with a friend and we met two Arushan men because one, who called himself Hombre, spoke Spanish and so did my friend. I walked with the other whose name was Maganga. Hombre owned a “curios” shop selling bows, arrows, bracelets, post cards, spears, machetes and the like. Maganga was his associate and described his employment as a manager/coordinator of street vendors and their activities, deciding who sold what in which area so as to maximize profit. Neither had attended a day of school in their lives. At any rate, after I bought my lucky bracelet from Hombres shop they gave us a tour of Arusha. We visited all the important sites, monuments, government buildings and such and for the grand finale were taken through a vast, sprawling system of back alleys and warehouses that had turned into a bustling shady market where one could procure meats, vegetables, dried smelt, and monstrous bags of grains in any imaginable quantity. I was particularly pleased with our tour of the marketplace because it was not the famous market in Arusha that all of the tourists visit. Quite the opposite, if I had been there without my guide I would definitely have been robbed, probably beaten, maybe killed. Maganga was kind enough to translate the comments of the shop keepers and patrons alike as we passed through their ranks. To put it lightly, no one had much nice to say. I got some good pictures though, difficult photos to obtain due to the aversion to being photographed prevalent in this area. Also I made friends with a human rights lawyer named James. He was kind enough to take me to his favorite haunt in Arusha one night. If you’re reading, hello James and good luck with everything.

Upon our arrival in Cairo we went to the Cairo museum which was spectacular. I got to see all of King Tut’s remaining effects as well as a wealth of other amazing ancient Egyptian artifacts. After two days in Cairo we departed for an oasis. The ride to the oasis took us around seven hours away from any major cities and I watched, transfixed as the civilization turned to vast expanse of nothingness. Eventually the nothingness began to have a few sparsely vegetated hummocks here and there and then all of a sudden there were houses and palm trees and lush vegetation as we passed into the town that has grown around the oasis. The state of the oasis town is a precarious one. The population of Egypt is ever expanding. Because the majority of land within the country is desert, every populated area is virtually exploding including the oasis towns. The problem is that as the population expands the natural flow of water to the wells is insufficient to support all the people. Each year they pump faster and faster. When this isn’t enough, and as our guide told us it never is, the government sends more and more advanced machinery to dig deeper and extract faster. One day the springs will cease to flow and the wells will run dry. When this happens there will be an entire city seven hours by car away from any available water source, many of them too poor to afford motorized transport. I have encountered several societal systems in which the limiting factor is forecasted to be depleted in the foreseeable future, yet nothing is done. This is happening on a much larger scale in India as well. Having spent the night in a comfortable motel we arose early in the morning and departed for the black desert. We toured the black desert all day seeing the stunning mountains of basalt and blackened desert crust as far as the eye could see. We also scaled an enormous sand dune that has been working its way across the black desert for some time now. Standing on top of a sand dune in the middle of the desert is utterly serene, even if just for the few moments when my group was miraculously silent. Driving around the desert listening to utterly foreign Arabic music was quite a memorable experience. I got along well with our driver Yaser too, he dubbed me habib which I was told means we’re friends in Arabic. We moved from the Black Desert through to the White desert the next day. The transition was mind blowing. The charred mountains gave way to a vast expanse once again and out of it began to rise stark white limestone structures some over twenty or thirty feet tall, eroded by the wind into fantastic shapes. We saw a small mountain made entirely of crystals that oozed oil part of which was looked uncannily like a dogs head. Following this we ventured into the national park portion of the desert where the highest concentration of the white structures was. The White Desert was almost too much to absorb. In the absolute silence amidst the mineral towers I felt as if I was on another planet. I was a bit uneasy about our time in the sticks when I learned that we had hired an armed guard with a sub-machine gun due to the number of people who like killing tourists to stop western influence from entering Egypt, but he was very friendly and all was fine. We stayed the night in the desert in a camp set up by our Bedouin guides. We ate delicious food cooked over the fire and in kettles and danced around a fire all night to a drum beat and a man singing traditional Bedouin songs. The group then slept under the incredible stars on mats. I didn’t bring a sleeping bag so I was lent three blankets by our guides. Each weighing about ten pounds and smelling strongly of some part of a camel, but I’ve never slept better in my life. It does get quite cold in the desert at night though. Apparently a fox came and pooped quite close to where I was sleeping in the night. We drove all around the White Desert the next day and witnessed a stunning view of a huge portion of the desert from on top of a mountain of the limestone making up the structures around us. We then made the eight or nine hour trek from the desert back through to Cairo.

Ill be writing about Turkey soon. Im excited to be here and get to check out the environment in an area that has been inhabited for around four thousand years.Hi mom and dad and thanks everyone for reading. I really appreciate it.