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| Some of the Baobab trees (pronounced bobo) are over 1,000 years old |
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| Elephant skull at the entrance to Tarangire |
Our guides, Joseph and Alfan, met us at our hotel and
picked us up around 9:30 for the 2-½ hour drive to Tarangire. On our way out of town we stopped at a shop
to buy some Tanzanite. I already wished
I had purchased a fancy ring for me but even better – I got 3 pieces of raw
Tanzanite and 2 pieces of green Ruby for John to put in his rock tumbler. Once one of the Tanzanite stones is tumbled
I’ll take it to a jeweler and have it made into something I can wear on a necklace
every day to remind me of my trip.
We made it to Tarangire and had a box lunch before beginning
our game drive. The landscape at Tarangire is amazing – many Baobab trees around the park some as old as 1,000 years! It's all a bit
surreal… it felt like we were just at a state park so I had to keep reminding
myself we were in AFRICA and these animals were not brought here, they live here,
migrate to and from here, this is their true home. We saw many zebra and wildebeest and got
extremely excited when we finally saw elephants. 
I have to pause as I am writing this on our way back from the game drive and we are at a road and the Masai and
crossing with their cattle – the Masai are pastoralists so they herd goats and sheep
around Tanzania and Kenya. They wear
traditional red robes and all carry a big stick to prod the animals along. Most of the Masai we passed waved but one
lady threw a rock at our bus from a distance.
All in all, they didn’t seem to mind the tourism.
We did learn that the Masai babies born with
clefts are usually killed or left in the wild, abandoned, discarded, thrown
away. How incredibly sad – Smile Train
is trying to educate and get the word out as much as possible (possible being
the key word here) so that they can see that this isn’t something that happened
by superstition but can be fixed. It is
a big hurdle to get the native folk living in their native mind set to come
into town and even more go to a hospital, and more so to have surgery.
Back to the game drive, the elephants at first were far away
and we were taking pictures through our binoculars (or just I was I guess) but
by the end of our safari we had more than one opportunity to watch them no more
than 20meters from our car. Amazing! We saw a family of baboons crossing the river
and heading up into the palm trees for the evening. Many of the babies were riding on their mamas
back and one was even taking a nap. They
reminded me of Roy. I was given a very
nice scarf/wrap by the Smile Train Africa team and can’t wait to get home and
practice wrapping Roy on my back like the women here do. The kids look so happy and I can’t think of
anything better than having him smooshed up against me all day long J
I miss my family but we are staying so busy that when I miss
them it is more in the context of “I wish they could see this for
themselves”. You never really ‘get it’
until you see this first hand. Photos
don’t do it justice.
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| Me with Eva & the bracelet she made out of cow bone |
After the game drive was over we were heading out and we saw
some warthogs but they didn’t feel social as they rooted in the mud so no good
pics of them. We left the Tarangire Park
and went to a shop that sold things by the local women and I bought a bracelet
made by Eva out of cow bone. I will be
wearing this ALL the time and when the string breaks – I’m restringing it. I specifically asked Eva to show me something
that SHE made and this is what she picked out.
Oh yeah – earlier in the day on our way into the park we stopped in a village and Adina wanted some chapati – no idea what that was – so we saw a young mom and her 2 kids and our driver, Alfani hollered out the window. She brought us a bag of hot chapatti for 500 shillings (about $0.30). It was this delicious flour-based pancake almost like a crepe cooked over a hot griddle-type thing and oh my, it was delicious.
The food here is wonderful, but I’m not eating any meat. The first day 2 people in our group came down
with stomach issues so I’ve been going vegetarian while we are here. All the food is ‘real food’ – greens, rice,
beans, chicken, goat, cow (they don’t call it beef), bananas, potatoes – you’ve
never tasted a better potato! Their
chips (fries) are ah-mazing… like nothing we have in America, anywhere.
Now we are heading to the Rotia (ro-tee-uh) Valley tented
camp for the evening. This is yet
another wonderful place – a children’s home for kids who have been orphaned.
The tented camp was created to provide financial support for the children’s
home. I’ve got 3 bags of clothes and
shoes for them too so I’m sure it will go to good use.
Another observation, there are not gender stereotypes with
clothing. Little boys run around in pink
jackets, rainbow hats, girls wear boy’s shorts, whatever fits. I saw an adult man on a motorcycle wearing a
pink sparkly puffy coat. I just love
that – clothing is only functional. So
as you have clothes you don’t want, I have an address in Tanzania where we can
send them for good use, gender doesn’t matter.
In one village there was a lady walking down the street in what was
surely someone’s prom dress with a mermaid bottom. It was just a skirt to her –
beautiful probably – but still just a skirt.
I just saw a Masai man on the side of the road talking on
the phone… cell phones are HUGE here.
Since areas are so remote and electricity isn’t easy to find you can’t
guarantee that everyone has a phone in their home and few have TVs. Radio is very big for communicating too. The cell phone stores all have cards like
lottery tickets where people can buy prepaid minutes and scratch off the card
and have a code to add minutes to their phone.
This also allows them to transfer money to people – they
call it m-pesa – and Smile Train uses this to help pay for transit costs for
patients who can’t otherwise afford the bus fare. They will send them money via SMS, the person
goes to an m-pesa shop to collect their money, and it’s so easy.
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