Tanzania, day 2

February 24, 2012

We woke up to the sweet sound of an orchestra of birds, chirping, humming, squawking. A world of undiscovered curiosities awaited me behind the closed door and drawn shades, if only I could crawl out of bed. Convincing myself that breakfast was waiting, I laboriously rolled out of bed and shuffled to the door, where I was greeted by a bright sun an a small eden of flowers, fruit trees and birds. Why wasn't I out of bed sooner?

Over the lodge we saw two black kites building a nest, and I determinedly chased a male and female sunbird with my camera, bright yellow bellies flashing in the sun. A rooster crowed obnoxiously from somewhere nearby, and we wandered, comatose, into the dinning area where our reward was breakfast. 

Scrambled eggs, sausage, toast, fruit, and fresh passion fruit juice. Annie and I sipped instant Tanzanian coffee while we took in our surroundings, and nearby some girls screamed as a rather large spider crept along the wall. 

We spent a lot of the morning waiting for the bus to arrive, but we could hardly complain. We watched hornbill fly by, and discovered a nest that the sunbirds had been building. There were pomegranate trees, avocado trees and banana trees! 

 When the bus finally arrived, we went on a drive through town to get to Mount Meru, which was in Arusha Park. The original plan was that we were going to go for a hike, but because the bus was late we ended up going on a drive through instead, which worked great because we got to cover more ground, and I think we ended up seeing more wildlife.

On the drive there, passing through the town of Arusha, I could not help but notice a definite change from the world I had seen the night before. After leaving the airport and driving through town all we had seen was dark and empty looking homes, no sign of life anywhere. The light of day brought about a hustle and bustle about town that was hard not to notice.

Some people were working, they were walking down the street with heavy items balanced mysteriously well on their heads, or vending fresh fruits and vegetables on the street. Quite a few we saw simply sitting on their front doorsteps or smoking by the road, watching us "gringos" drive by with an expression that betrayed no emotion. It made me wonder what they thought of us.   I wonder if they ever wondered or cared what we thought of them.

Something that had really caught my eye though was seeing young kids, maybe four or five, walking the busy roads all by themselves. This isn't something you see in the States, and if it does happen the parents usually get reported to DHHS.

Perhaps there is less concern over the safety of the children, or it is simply a risk they have to take. I imagine they can't send kids to daycare the way we can.

Another difference I noticed pretty quickly was the way we treat animals. Here animals that people own are not pets, but livelihoods. Dogs are not coddled and loved on here like they are in the States, and they are not let inside. This sort of treatment of animals makes me wonder if the comforts of having a stable home and income and a fancy home have lead us to be able to become more attached to our pets, while here they can simply not afford the luxury of having a pet simply to love.

That might be the harsh reality, that back home we can afford to treat our pets when they are sick, we can afford to feed them and ourselves everyday, and this relationship has been built into our culture for long enough so that even when we are poor and have nothing, some of us will still try and take care of pets before even themselves. I don't think the people in Tanzania have had that experience, they only have tools, only livelihoods.

When we got to Mount Meru, we waited to be let inside the park and we opened the top part of our jeeps. An armed guard stood waiting at the gate to let us in.

This was one of the most exciting parts of this trip, because this was the FIRST time we'd be seeing a lot of wild animals in their natural environment. Not in a zoo, not in a cage, but purely wild and free. It was like seeing each and every animal for the very first time, like somehow every giraffe and baboon I'd ever seen on t.v, in zoos or in books didn't exist before and this was the very first giraffe, the very first baboon, and each was then painted in a new and exciting perspective.

The vegetation started out sparse and flat, with yellowed grassy fields shifting in a dry hot wind. We watched a marsh eagle gawk at us from a tree, and around a corner we saw our first giraffes, posing with their strange long necks and oddly shaped bodies.

Two giraffes stood gazing at us warily, while zebra and a few warthogs meandered in the background. 

Beyond the field where the animals grazed the land rose up into forest, and further beyond that Mount Meru sat holding up the skyline. 

Along the tree line we could see a family of baboons foraging in the shade. We drove a little further on, and we saw in a tree overhead a baboon watching over the others. 

As we climbed higher and higher in altitude, the wind died down and the vegetation grew denser.

In the thicker trees we saw a small family of Columbus monkeys, which more or less look like monkeys dressed up as skunks.

Soon we came into what I might describe as a jungle, the trees were thick and tall. The forest here was cool and shaded, a welcome reprieve from the hot sun. Some trees were covered in a parasitic fig plant, a plant that grows over another tree and strangles it. The resulting look however was quite fascinating.

In this thick part of the forest we saw two blue monkeys, sitting close together on a small tree.

Right as our rumbling stomachs threatened to distract us, we stopped for lunch. This is where I had my very first boxed lunch, and though it was by no means bad, boxed lunch became something of a dreaded term by the end of the trip, simply because it always consisted of the same thing. An Orange (though the outside was green, because it does not get cold enough here for them to turn the familiar orange color..or so I am told), fried chicken, potatoes, a hard boiled egg, and mango juice. (The juice is my favorite part!)

In the middle of lunch we suddenly realized a female blue monkey had been watching us eat, hoping to scavenge from us. She had hopped down at one point and tried to steal a boxed lunch from someone, but luckily it failed in its mission.

After lunch our instructors left us (OH NO!) because they had a lot of little problems to fix. So, we finished our tour of Arusha Park without them. We saw water buffalo in the distance, and we came across a lake where we saw a hippo head sticking out of the water. By the lake we saw more birds, including a sacred ibis, and Egyptian goose, a lesser flamingo and (below) an African Crowned Crane.

We made it back to camp,  I had a swim in the pool (which was surprisingly cool), and fell asleep writing in my journal. 

Annie was allowed to pick a pomegranate of the tree. Here she is showing it off.