the elusive dung beetle

another day, another adventure. our plan was simply this: arusha national park for the day. we’ve been here three plus weeks and, aside from the occasional monkey, have yet to see cool animals. we needed some safari animals in our lives so we set out to find them. three dala dala rides and 1,500 tzs later we were waiting a few kilometers from the park gate as the driver of our third dala dala attempted to fix the broken tire. your odds here are about one in three dala dalas will break down and/or crash, so taking three dala dalas in one day pretty much guaranteed us some mechanical issues.

we make it to the park gate where a handful of armed guards are standing, taking papers from safari vehicles then raising the gate so they can pass. we climb out of our dala dala and notice a mzungu staring into the bush. I immediately follow his gaze and do not believe my eyes. there, his huge head over the tops of the bushes, is a massive giraffe, and he’s extremely close. it was pretty much the coolest thing I’ve ever seen (note: I say this about most things I see that I find cool)… I stand on one of the parking posts to get a better look and realize that this giraffe is not alone, there are probably a dozen others of varying heights just feeding in the area near the small gravel parking lot. there were few people around and when the guy who had first seen the giraffes took off on the small trail leading between the bushes you can bet I followed. we emerged into a small opening and stood at the feet of these beautiful animals. a few of the ones near by startled a little and the sound of their massive hooves as they galloped to distance themselves from us was booming. (kelli, you should be soooo excited, get ready to decorate your room with giraffe pics galore!) I probably took about 50 shots of these incredible giants feeding there so close to me. right then and there my day was pretty much complete, but we decided we’d come this far and should try to see more animals. also, I was pretty hung up on seeing a dung beetle, so that was reason enough to pay to enter the park :)

we went to pay our park admission, $35 usd, and also the $20 per client fee to have a walking guided tour (apparently you need a guy with a gun to lead you around). unfortunately, no one had informed us that you cannot do walking tours from the ngongongare gate so we’re standing at that gate with no idea what to do. take the dala dala that’s already gone back down to where we started and take another to the other main gate of the park? no thanks. we are debating our options when this local comes up to us and says he’ll take us to the other gate for free. now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in arusha, it’s that nothing is free (except the garlic bread at blue heron of course). is this guy trying to get us to tour with him so he can charge us later? maybe. is he going to steal us and sell us into the sex trade? most likely. so what do we do? we climb in his car!! duh. sorry mom :) but fear not, this was far from a lapse in judgment…

before getting in the car we were definitely thinking, ‘there has to be a catch’ as we run worse case scenarios through our heads. but it doesn’t take us long to figure out that this guy, frederick, overheard us just get jected by the park and, by a good stroke of luck for us, he has come to the park with his mother on this day to see the animals and is offering for us to go along with them. he’s dressed all suave in some nice denim and a brown vest over a white dress shirt. how convenient that he has his non-threatening mother along and that they have three empty seats in the back of their suzuki. sounds like a pretty good start to some traveler horror film, am I right? or at least, this is wayyy too good to be true… we’re thinking the same thing as we wait to enter the park, having only paid our individual entry fees (he didn’t even ask us to pitch in to help pay the car entry fee). we hand over our papers to the gate to prove we’ve been admitted and we’re so close to entering, I can practically smell the animals!! and then, and then… he’s turning the car around…? we have to what? go get batteries for their camera? Riiiiggghhhttttt… is what I’m thinking at this point, this is the part where he drives us to some brothel and gets us hooked on drugs… you’ve all seen the movie Taken, you get the idea. we ask him if we can get out and photograph the giraffes while they run to get a battery, who knows how long that’ll take, or if they’ll ever come back. he’s cool with it and lets us out. we’re watching as the car drives away, our hopes of a day in the park are disintegrating before our eyes. we go to take more photos of the giraffes, debating our next move… but then, not three minutes and a dozen giraffe photos later, that suzuki is back and frederick is calling us over. is this f’real?! we climb back in the car, they had no luck finding batters, would we be able to email them the photos we take? of course! hakuna matata rafiki!! and believe it or not we are through that gate and the adventure begins. luck luck luck.

zebras, giraffes, water buffalo, oh my! yes, we were seeing the african clichés immediately upon entering and it was awesome. frederick served as a tour guide for the four of us, the three mzungus and mama. he would cruise down the dirt roads, through forests and past fields with more zebras and pumbas and gazelle with crazy horns. we’d stop every now and again to photograph the animals, get out at the designated places to see little momella lake, then big momella lake. we cruised around that park for a good four hours, better than any safari we could have paid for. it’s funny because the park is such a maze and you totally get trapped inside, forced to tour all of the roads and destinations, which was fine by us, I was having the time of my life! we’d turn a corner and there in the distance you’d see a huge giraffe, his head sticking up over the trees. round bird nests hung in the thorned trees beside the road (thought despite hunting high and low for a sausage tree we never found one). birds with poofs of feathers atop their heads. any time we used swahili words it cracked frederick and mama up, people here love it when you can speak the language, and with a handful of words and phrases you can convince pretty much any local that you’re fluent (they definitely give you the benefit of the doubt). mama wanted to have her picture taken in the forest, but she didn’t want to get out because of the “dangerous animals”. their english was great and it was really cute to hear them talk back and fourth, she kept telling him polle polle which means slowly.

we drove up on a family of monkeys… they looked like baboons to me but I’m not sure. they were in the road and had no fear of the car. they walked casually along the road in front of the car, the babies clinging to the backs of the mothers. freddy started singing ludacris “move, get out the way” song and we all died laughing. or maybe he sang that when we encountered more massive giraffes that refused to move out from in front of the car. they just stood there, not 10 feet from the bumper, analyzing the little suzuki. also, probably the most unusual and unexpected animal sighting was the lake of flamingos. who knew that flamingos live in tanzania?! and I’m not just talking a couple. I’m talking this lake was pink around the edges with the birds packed together!! it was wild. we also had a tsetse fly come in the window, mama identified it, and as they were trying to shoe it out of the car it literally landed between freddy’s eyes, on the bridge of his nose! it was a creepy looking fly and I was happy to leave it behind with our dust. so much dust! but I wanted my window down so I could see everything clearly and with my head hanging practically half out the window, by the time I got home and removed my sunglasses you could actually see the dust line caked on my face around where my sunglasses had been. don’t worry, I have photo evidence. more zebras and giraffes and lakes of flamingos later we were finally headed home. and get this, freddy and mama were headed back to arusha so they dropped us at our dala dala stop on their way. that’s right. and we offered to pay them, to help with gas or whatever, and they refused. it was a full day tour of arusha national park that cost us only the entrance fee, and we got out of the car thanking them and promising to post pictures, feeling like we were possibly the luckiest three travelers in arusha. my only complaint was that we didn’t see a dung beetle, I was pretty hung up on that, but there’s always our next safari.

some of local kids joined us for our walk back to the hostel. one of the little boys just walks up to me and takes my hand and starts speaking to me in english and we walked hand in hand back to the hostel at which point they split off to go play futbol. we chatted the whole way, his english very impressive, my swahili pretty spotty, but the combo makes for a smooth, and very entertaining, conversation. he told me chelsea was his favorite futbol team, and he plays goalie here. the kids here are adorable and it cracks me up that they’re comfortable just coming up and taking your hand and walking with you. I love it!

back at the hostel and still in a bit of shock about our good fortune for the day, we quickly realized there was a party going on out back, a wedding to be precise. and it was in full swing. singing and dancing and lots of eating and drinking and music, these people know how to party. even with the electricity out for the day (and we would soon find, most of the night as well) they had a generator they were using to play music and had cooked the massive amounts of rice and strange plantine banana-type things with the gas stove. vene came up to invite us to celebrate with them. I threw on a skirt and headed down to the party. samuel made me try this disgusting banana beer they make. it’s all chunky and bitter and he was drinking it out of this massive glass and he kept making me take sips so people could laugh at my face, they were extremely entertained, it was foul, but I humored them. got some food and enjoyed the wedding traditions, which include the women each taking one of the wedding gifts and dancing around and circling the bride and groom with the gifts and setting them at their feet. then they do this all over again with khangas and khatangas and things for the kitchen and so on… it’s quite the procession. lots of hooting and hollering and singing and crazy dancing that went well on into dusk, at which point the mosquitoes were out and we retreated to our dark room.

it was hanging out adorned with headlamps for the rest of the night. we’ve met some new friends who are living next door and they are in the stanford graduate engineering program right now. the girl did her undergrad at stanford as well and knows one of our classmates. the two guys I was discussing bay to breakers with (a costumed race in SF) and realized I saw their costumes and in fact could pull up photos on my camera of them during the race. how’s that for small world?! we couldn’t believe it! then again, being a potato peeler is a pretty distinctive costume. we got a real kick out of the fact that I actually had photos of them on my camera. the three of them are all in their late 20’s and working on a project involving solar fridges, it sounds really cool, and is kinda top secret, so no telling anyone :) hostels are the BEST best place to make new friends, and tanzania in general is a great place to make new friends but I’m glad my facebook profile can’t be searched because everyone here wants to find you on facebook or get your cell number (which we don’t mind giving out so much b/c they’re local phones here… except that amy lost her cell last night and the one thu brought never worked so now we’re just down to mine).. last event of the night, sister rose had to come hush us around 10pm because with 8 of us in our tiny room we were being wayyy too noisy. I’ve not been scolded by a sister before but it can’t be a good thing. we must’ve polle sana-ed (sorry a lot) her 30 times in the 5 seconds she was in our room asking us to keep it down. oops. sorry centre house!

the inspirational quote for the day comes from one of the taxi drivers here. he was driving us to massai camp last night, it’s a local bar and fun hangout… we were laughing pretty uncontrollably in the car as we rattled off pretty much every swahili word we knew between the four of us in an attempt to carry on a conversation with the local and our driver stops and says “laughing much makes the years of living greater” and then he pauses and enlightens us further “and everyone wants to extend the years of living”. words to live by.