Katie and Tommy: Around the World

Several months ago, I planned to spend Wednesday in Moshi at the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology, so that I could perhaps get a feel for the kind of work being done in an East African health clinic. So that morning, I parted ways with Katie around 07:00 and then hailed a taxi to get to the clinic.

I must say, I am impressed by the flagrancy and boldness of the locals in their negotiations with tourists. Prices are almost universally quoted at 4-5x above the normal price; the results is that often the amount one pays is the same if not more for how much one would pay in the States or Europe. It took me awhile to find a taxi willing to take me to the clinic for only double the normal amount ($6 instead of the normal 2 or 3).

The complex in which the clinic lies is quite impressive. It, the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, was founded by Christian missionaries about 40 years ago. It has since evolved into an entire health science center, with a teaching hospital, outpatient clinic, medical school, and other training departments and space for (mostly foreign) research groups.

When I found my ophthalmologist contact, I was a bit disappointed to learn that she had incorrectly written down my date of arrival by a day, so rather than go out with a team into the field, I would end up spending most of it at the centre. It proved to be an interesting day, nevertheless though. I spent a few hours on her grand rounds as she supervised residents and also had time to interact with her Tanzanian staff which I also thoroughly enjoyed. They nearly all had masters degrees and I found that we had quite a lot of things to talk about. During lunch I noticed that I also wasn’t the only mzungu there; I saw a few young residents from UV and a handful of other young, idealistic visionaries.

The most striking sentiment that I heard was one that has become increasingly more common for me to hear. Many of the Western doctors had also worked in Asia and they expressed a certain frustration with the work they’ve done in Tanzania. They said that Africa’s health problems are unique because of its relatively low population density as well as what they characterized as a significantly decreased sense of “work ethic,” or more broadly speaking, perhaps less driven towards the self-help route. Amazingly, each cataract surgery costs about $75 (almost all the supplies are imported from India); the clinic usually gets about $15 of payment from the patient. In spite of this, many people opt not to get the surgery. Generally speaking though the clinic was quite well stocked and the physicians sufficiently proficient.

Not wanting to pay a lot to return back to the hostel, I simply crammed in with the locals into a daladala. Interestingly, along the road from the hospital were a number of tiny shops selling coffins. It was quite eerie seeing them outside, just along the road as one left the hospital.

We were thrilled when Thursday arrived and, by midday, we finally made it to Zanzibar via a noisy dual propeller plane. What immediately struck us as soon as we arrived was the island’s Muslim population. Our guidebook suggested that perhaps around 90% of the island is Muslim and I would certainly believe it– every woman had her head covered
and some still wore a full nigab. Though we were a little disappointed in our hostel as it didn’t have quite the beachfront that their pictures online seemed to suggest, we figured that its prime location in the center of the island would be very conducive to making day-trips.

Stone Town, the largest town and capital of Zanzibar, is a fascinating city. It’s streets are unable to accommodate cars but not bicycles or scooters, so it is often necessary to hug one of the alley’s walls as someone unhesitatingly zooms by. Much of it reminds me of Venice, at least the eastern residential sections. Though a few maps exist of the city, it is unlikely one would even find one to be useful– few of the alleys are labeled and to find something in the city one must really just walk in that general direction and hope to find it. Shops are quite narrow and the owner often just peaks through a small opening in his huge wall of goods to speak with a customer.

One thing we are a bit exhausted of is the the innumerable touts that we encounter. We almost wish we could just be invisible– it is impossible to walk seemingly anywhere without some “friendly”individual offering to take us to his “favorite” shop. Worse, it makes us a bit jaded whenever we do encounter genuinely friendly people who simply want to meet and chat with foreigners.

To combat this ever growing problem, Katie and I while in the city speak to each other in Spanish and whenever a tout approaches us wanting to buy something from him, I speak to him in Polish and claim that my English fluency only extends far enough for me to be able to say, “No English,” all the while giving him an innocently huge smile. It has been fabulously successful.

On Friday morning we crowded onto a daladala to head to the northern-most point of the island, the village of Nungwi, where some of the best beaches and diving spots are supposed to be. It is interesting how comfortable we have become with our surroundings; namely, getting cramped in the back of a converted pick-up trucks ($1.10 one way, per person, 90 min drive), or seeing cows stroll alongside the road no longer surprise us.

We were thrilled when we finally arrived at the beach—the water was the clearest blue-green we had ever seen. It actually didn’t take too long to find a reputable diving center either. I ended up spending the better part of the next several hours diving off two coral reefs. What surprised me as well was the number of Slavs here. One older gentleman on my boat was from Warsaw and several of the other people my age were Slovakians living in the UK. The diving was superb except for the very strong current and choppy waves on the surface. By the time we finished, I was quite exhausted.

What has been most striking in the past few days has been how limited the “infrastructure” is. Very few receipts are ever given for financial transactions, sidewalks don’t exist, and roads are limited. Along the way to the beach, the bus was stopped at several police “checkpoints” and I saw a lot of bills being discreetly handed out by the driver. That night after we had gotten some food in Stone Town, to turn on the bus’s only light, there was no switch to flip. The daladala boy simply twisted two metal wires together. It is also quite sad to see how much trash is simply left alongside the roadway.

We had planned to spend our Saturday on a completely different side of the island, in the eastern village of Paje. We had made a mistake in not asking our hostel how much to expect to pay for the ride over there. Since hardly anything in Tanzania seems to ever run “by the book,” we learned later that we had been overcharged twice as much, though it still frankly wasn’t that much.

Pretty much all of Saturday was spent lounging on the beach and reading on some empty lounge chairs we had managed to find for ourselves. We also ran into the two Polish physicians that we had met on our safari several days prior.

Obliged to accept their offer to share a drink with them in the late afternoon, we returned to Stone Town in the later evening and made a dinner from various street-vendors by the wharf. Of particular note were these inventions they called “Zanzibar pizza” (bread filled with cheese, vegetables, and meat that was baked in a charcoal oven) as well as fresh-squeezed sugar cane juice that was also infused with spices and lemon!

On Sunday morning, we were struggling to find the Catholic church that we had passed by several days prior. When we started to get worried that it was only a minute or two before mass was scheduled to begin, I noticed that on one alley were several women who were walking with neither their heads nor their arms covered- nearly scandalous by the standards that we have seen thus far. We thought that perhaps we should follow them at a distance. Sure enough, they were Catholic and heading to mass as well. An interesting note about mass is that the church was separated by sex. We spent our final hours in Zanzibar taking pictures of all of our favorite buildings. Upon returning to the hostel, sweaty and dirty, all I could think about while showering before the flight was that Cairo would be having cool weather!

It has been an eventful few days since our last post. We caught a bus from Dar es Salaam to Arusha, the gateway town to the Serengeti. The ride was unremarkable, except that we were appalled when the attendant tossed whole plastic cups of coffee out of the window when passengers could not finish them. This kind of mindless littering seems as prevalent here as it was in South America. I think it comes from the fact that for hundreds of years the people in these places lived simple, rural lives, and all of their waste was organic and could be tossed outside without worry. Now they do the same with plastic and paper products, and they litter the roadsides. By the fish market in Dar, there were people snorkeling and fishing in the bay, and not ten feet away waste and trash was being dumped into the water that gives these people their livelihood. It is a sad situation.

Still, the constant stream of tourists who come to see the natural beauty of the Serengeti and surrounding parks ensures that they, at least, are strictly protected. We were among the many who arrived in Arusha to go on safari. Our company, Shidolya, picked us up from the bus station and put us up for the night in the hostel at the Catholic center in town. The next morning they picked us up in a heavy-duty Land Rover and drove us to the company’s offices, where we waited for everything to be finished processing. The parks are very strict about permits and payment, and they do not accept cash. Special debit cards must be purchased in order to pay at the park gate. Once we had everything we needed, we set off.

It was a long drive from Arusha to the first campsite, about 2 or 3 hours. The scenery slowly began to look like the African plains one sees in pictures. We passed a great many Maasai villages and shepherds with goats and cows. The Maasai are a pastoral people who still retain many of their ancestral ways. They wear special blankets and carry sticks or spears and daggers. Both women and men wear beaded jewelry and sometimes sport large holes in their earlobes from spacers. Many of the Maasai have capitalized on the many tourists passing through the area, and when we stopped at a market to buy some food, we were bombarded with Maasai selling jewelry, t-shirts, and other souvenirs.

Now, when Tommy and I were looking for a good safari company, we read that some led camping safaris. We laughed at this and referred to it as “feeding the lions” for the remainder of our search. That is, until we found out that the only safaris that would be remotely within our budget were, in fact, camping safaris. When we arrived at our first campsite, we saw just how wrong our first impression has been. This was not out in the wilderness, but in a small town. There was a walled-off grassy area surrounded by souvenir shops where several different safari companies pitched their tents. There was also a hotel (complete with bar) and swimming pool. Our cook served up a simple lunch, and after waiting around a little longer than we would have liked, we got into the Land Rover and headed to the nearby Lake Manyara around 2:30 pm. The top of the Land Rover could be raised so that we could stand up and look out as we drove. The winding paths of the park took us through some lovely forest and savannah, and to a big lake filled with hippos and waterbirds. We also saw elephants, giraffe, buffalo, impala, baboons, and lots of birds, including two species of hornbills and African Crowned Cranes. Our guide thought it was humorous that I “liked the birds more than the animals.”

Unfortunately we only had about three hours in the park and had to head back. The next morning we began the long drive to Serengeti National Park. It is necessary to drive through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in order to reach the park. This required a transit visa. It was very foggy, and we couldn’t see down into the Crater yet. We did come upon a safari vehicle that had somehow tipped over on the muddy road, and no one could get by. Several men pushed it back upright, and we were able to continue.

Around noon we stopped at Olduvai Gorge, probably the most important site for early human fossils. There is a small museum and some shaded picnic areas overlooking the gorge. It was a very powerful feeling, to be looking down there and remembering that you were walking on the same ground on which our early ancestors most certainly walked. As proof of this, the museum had a cast of the Laetoli footprints, early hominid footprints preserved in hardened volcanic ash which were found nearby. They were immensely important to early hominid evolution, as they proved that humans were walking upright much earlier than anthropologists thought. The actual site has been re-buried to protect it.

From Olduvai, we pressed on to the Serengeti. We had pictured some massive gate that we would drive under while the theme from “Jurassic Park” played, but on the contrary, it was a very tiny wooden sign. In fact, Ngorongoro and Serengeti used to be one park, but they were divided because of the Maasai. In the fifties, they had many conflicts with park authorities. Now, the Maasai may only live in Ngorongoro, and Serengeti is only for the animals. Where there had been Maasai villages and herds dotting the plains of Ngorongoro, once we crossed into the Serengeti, we saw none at all.

We began to see wildebeest and zebras on the horizon, and they steadily increased in number until we were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of them. This was the massive migration we had heard so much about, and it was breathtaking to behold. They dotted the plains as far as we could see. The Serengeti is vast. It’s almost incomprehensibly vast for someone used to the size of National Parks in the United States. Once we crossed the entry, we drove for an hour before we saw anything besides the plains and the animals. We came to a small hill where the official park entry center is located. Again, we were quite underwhelmed by it all. The Serengeti charges foreigners 50 US dollars per day to enter the park, and yet the visitor’s center was tiny. The bathrooms were run-down, and there was one small souvenir shop selling barely anything.

The permit and payment process took about an hour. We’re still not quite clear on whether this is normal or if something was wrong. Every time we crossed a park gate, it seemed there was an entire ordeal to undergo. Every park official looked at our documents with great suspicion and scrutiny. Our cook and driver seemed unconcerned. It was here that we learned a very popular phrase: “No hurry in Africa.” Believe it or not, “Hakuna matata” (“no problem”) is also very popular. While we waited, we climbed to a vantage point where we had a 360-degree view of the plains, dotted liberally with wildebeest and zebras. Again, the sheer number of animals and size of the park were breathtaking. As we drove on, the animals only grew thicker, and the sheer biomass of the mammals was overwhelming. I have never been surrounded by so many large animals before.

We drove for another hour and a half before arriving at our campsite, on the way spotting many animals such as elephants, gazelles, hyenas, hartebeest, buffalo, and topi. This campsite was far less tame than the first. It was positioned on a slight hill, and there was nothing protecting it from the vast and wild Serengeti. There were many other tents, some primitive restrooms, and enclosures for the cooks to prepare meals. We watched the sunset over the plain, and enjoyed another delicious dinner. Our cook turned out to be fantastically skilled, especially considering the facilities he had to work with. We thoroughly enjoyed each of our meals.

We survived the night without any lion attacks, and set out early the next morning. We watched the sunrise from out in the park, and then continued our game drive. First we took a lonely road that didn’t yield much by way of large mammals, but showed us a great diversity of birds. I was especially excited to spot secretary birds, lovebirds, and an African hoopoe. We ate breakfast on the hood of the Land Rover in view of a vast herd of buffalo.

We took a new road which appeared busier than the first. We began to pass more safari vehicles. Our guide would ask the other drivers what they had seen, and so he knew where to take us. We could usually spot something good from a ways away, because there would be at least four or five other safari vehicles stopped on the road, and all of the tourists in goofy hats and vests were peeking their heads and immense cameras out. We pulled up behind the first such group and looked in earnest into the tall grass, trying to figure out what was causing so much excitement.

“Lion,” our guide said. Squinting, we saw it. It was a foot. The lion was resting on its back, one foot propped up against the tree. Everyone was frantically snapping pictures. Our guide ensured us we would see more. We took a couple of pictures of the foot just in case.

We drove until we came upon another group of cars, this one much larger. There, we saw a beautiful male lion resting under some palm trees. Driving a little farther, we managed to get a back view. He was resting on a riverbank, and below him was another male devouring a baby hippo carcass. Across the way, a group of tourists who had paid for balloon rides that morning was having a fancy champagne brunch.

Before the day was out, we saw several more female lions and a leopard lounging in a tree, as well as many more of the animals we had seen the day before. We had to return to camp around noon for lunch and to pack up. Our Serengeti permits lasted 24 hours, so we had to reach the entrance of the park by 3:00. Once we exited (with much more waiting and scrutiny of our permits), our 24 hour Ngorongoro permit began. We drove to our campsite in the Conservation Area, and this one was the wildest of all. It was positioned at the edge of the crater with an amazing view down into it. There were Marabou Storks wandering aimlessly around the tents, and guards with AK-47’s patrolled around to keep animals away. A few minutes after our arrival, an elephant strolled up and took a long drink out of our water tank. We realized that Jonathan had not been joking when he asked us if we wanted to set up our tent with a view, or with the elephants.

The next morning we drove down into the crater. It was, if possible, an even more breathtaking landscape than the Serengeti. Where the Serengeti had been flat, the crater was enclosed by steep sloping mountain walls. There were many lakes, one which was filled with thousands of flamingos. We drove through thick forest and had to drive behind a slow-moving elephant for a time. We came upon a group of female lions and cubs devouring some kind of animal carcass. And we saw the last two African mammals we had been missing from the day before: rhinos and cheetahs. The rhinos were somewhat far away, but the cheetahs strolled right by us and across the road. No less than 13 safari cars stopped to watch them, hoping to see them chase down something. All of the zebras and impala watched them warily. But they merely paused to poop and then walked on.

We again only had time for half a day, and so we returned to camp at noon, ate lunch, and then drove back to Arusha. We caught a bus to Moshi, a town at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Our hotel has a perfect view of the mountain. Today I am going through our hundreds of photos, while Tommy visits the Kilimanjaro Center for Community Ophthalmology.

Pictures are taking a while to upload, and video even longer, but check back–they’re good ones!

Last night, after dark, we arrived in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. While the terminals were indoors, once we left security with our baggage we were in a vast open-air building in the nighttime heat. We were avidly pursued by a taxi driver as we withdrew Tanzanian shillings and purchased tickets to Zanzibar for next week. He said his name was John, and he took us to our hostel. It’s run by an Italian NGO called CEFA, somewhat outside of town. It’s a lovely white building of tile and plaster, with airy verandas, a gorgeous rooftop view of the water, mosquito netting over all of the beds, and (our personal favorite, we must admit) air conditioning!

This morning, a delicious breakfast of bread and guava jam, we caught a daladala to Kariakoo market in the city proper. Daladala is the Swahili name for a phenomenon we have noticed in many a foreign city, a minibuses that go from place to place, cramming as many locals into their seats as possible while a barker hangs out the sliding side door shouting the name of their destination. We rode the half hour into town shoulder-to-shoulder with several locals.

Kariakoo market is a large collection of shops and stands selling just about anything you could want or need. It was not the beautifully organized display our guidebook implied, but instead a fantastic chaos of people, sights, and smells. I must admit, we felt more than a little out of place. We were definitely the only mzungu there, and while many people encouraged us to look at their wares, others gave us uncomfortable stares. We passed over most of the practical items, but we were quite excited to buy a kanga, a cloth worn by East African women with a Swahili proverb written on it. We still aren’t sure what ours says, except that the first word is “wife.”

We walked from the market to the Scandinavian bus terminal to purchase our tickets to Arusha for tomorrow. Then we walked along the coast the entire length of the city, from the bus terminal to the Kivukoni Fish Market. The looks and stares we got on the way were much friendlier than those we encountered at the market. Many people smiled and told us “Hello!” or “Jambo!” We paused along the way to step into the Catholic Cathedral, and also to buy some fried plantain and roasted meat from street vendors. We asked one of them what his name was, and he said, “John.” The day was very, very hot. We were dripping with sweat after walking for only a few minutes.

Finally, we came to the Kivukoni Fish Market, a collection of large open-air structures filled with interesting sights and sounds. As we walked through, people called to us, offering us all manner of seafoods, from fish and prawns to squid and lobster. Everything was freshly caught, and some of it was still alive. We had not gone far when we were cornered by an eager man who brought us out near the water to show us his catch. “Very fresh,” he kept insisting, pointing out the clear, moist eye of a large silver fish. He told us he “had fire,” and we gathered that if we purchased the fish, he would cook it for us. As it seems we often do before our best travel experiences, Tommy and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Okay!” we said.

We followed the man to a table where he gutted the fish right in front of us. People all around him were doing the same. There were many large pink fish on the table, along with some raw squid. One man came up and tried to get us to buy his prawns, while another offered us two live crabs, which he said he would kill immediately if we asked for them. Most of them spoke at least a little English.

Once our fish was gutted, it got a thorough wash and then the man beckoned us to follow him across the street. We passed some more large stands selling beautiful seashells and assorted fruits and vegetables. The seashells were amazing, but we regretfully shook our heads at the vendors, since we have read that gathering them is endangering coral reefs. We came to another open structure where lots of seafood was being cooked. It was dark and filled with smoke and heat. We could see brightly-dressed women sorting and frying tiny anchovies. Our fish was liberally salted and then tossed into an immense pan of oil fed by a wood fire. When it was done, the man doused it in limon and wrapped it up for us in a bag. He told us his name was John. Three Tanzanians, three Johns… Tommy and I were beginning to suspect at that point that we were not receiving real names when we asked. We took it back to the waterfront to eat with our fingers. The salt and limon had fried the skin crispy and delicious, and we picked every bit of meat off that we could. It was absolutely wonderful.

Walking in the heat had been draining, and there was not much left of Dar that we were eager to see, so we headed back to CEFA early that afternoon.