AFRICA: AN AFRICAN BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AND OUR RETURN TO KENYA

A certain member of our group had his 50th birthday during our stay at the Serena Ngorongoro Lodge. (Don't worry, Bill. I won't say who it was.) Since it was such an important birthday, we decided a Maasai Manhood Ceremony was in order. We dressed him for the occasion in a red Maasai shuka and a Maasai necklace, and we presented him with a real true Maasai spear, purchased from a real Maasai:

We considered but decided against the "cutting ceremony" but DID go for the traditional Maasai drink: cow's blood (okay, we had to use a substitute) mixed with milk. Our victim birthday boy proved his manhood by downing the tasty beverage:

I'm sure he slept like a baby after that concoction--a baby with colic.

We got an early start the next morning because we had a long, long way to go, almost 300 miles on sketchy roads plus a border crossing on our way back to Nairobi.  As is usual in the morning, a heavy blanket of clouds was ringing the crater, making the beginning of the drive out of the Ngorongoro Crater region in thick fog on a dirt road rather treacherous.  We passed a group of Maasai herdsman on their way into the crater to find grazing land for their animals:

AFRICA: NGORONGORO CRATER, Part 2 - Lions, Lunch, and Lots More (TANZANIA)

Late in the morning we noticed a bit of a traffic jam in the Ngorongoro Crater. It was as if a magnetic force field had drawn every piece of metal from the entire caldera to this one spot:

When we finally made it to the party, we realized that the draw was two big simbas, the Kikuyu word for LIONS:

As mentioned in the previous post, the crater has one of the densest lion populations in the world. Seeing these two giants was a real thrill. I didn't realize the males sometimes hang out together. Lions are much more social than cheetahs and leopards, which we never saw in pairs or groups.

Their manes make them look about twice as big as they really are, which helps when they want "the lion's share" of the meat that the hard-working lionesses have killed while the males have been napping.

These two fellas didn't look like they were planning on doing any hunting--or anything else--anytime soon:

After a while, one of them finally decided to go for a stroll, but not in the direction of the potential lunch behind him. No, he came towards the road where lots of prey was sitting locked up in some vehicles.

AFRICA: NGORONGORO CRATER, Part 1 - The Garden of Eden (TANZANIA)

After a few very l-o-n-g drives on this trip, it was nice to have a shorter one--less than two-and-a-half hours of driving time from our Serengeti Lodge to the Ngorongoro Serena Lodge, with stops on the way at the Maasai Village and Oldupai Gorge.

The countryside was dotted with traditional round, thatch-roofed African homes. In contrast to the Maasai villages, these hamlets looked downright modern:



The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) is over 3,000 square miles of protected land bordering the Serengeti. Two hundred years ago, the Maasai moved in, and approximately 42,000 still live there, most of them herders of cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys.

The most famous feature of the NCA is the enormous Ngorongoro Crater, the world's largest intact volcanic caldera. The almost vertical walls are 2,000 feet tall, and the flat, almost perfectly circular crater floor covers 102 square miles. The original volcano, which erupted and collapsed two or three million years ago, could have been as tall as 19,000 feet--the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro. These days Ngorongoro Crater basks in the glory of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is listed in some places as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa.

Map from here

The local Maasai are allowed to graze and water their herds in the crater, but they may not live or grow crops there. In fact, they have to actually leave the crater at night.

Being in the crater is like being a microscopic amoeba in a petri dish; the surface is flat, the sides rise perpendicular to the floor, and the ground is teeming with life:

During our morning drive, whipped cream clouds sat ponderously on the caldera rim:

Later in the day, the clouds lifted, and we could see the smooth rim top, unchanging for almost the full 360 degree view.

With approximately 30,000 large animals, the crater has the highest density of big game in all of Africa, which is why it is called Africa's Garden of Eden. If there is a snake in this garden, we didn't see it during our day-long drive, but we saw just about every animal we had seen in other places, with the exception of topis, impalas, crocodiles, and giraffes, which for various reasons don't inhabit the crater.

I kept a list of what we saw, and it's pretty impressive:
     wildebeests
     water buffaloes
     warthogs
     lions
     zebras
     flamingos
     *crowned cranes
     ostriches
     warthogs
     brown plover
     hippos
     hyenas
     elephants
     hartebeests
     jackals
     Kori bustard
     white-backed vulture
     spur-winged goose
     hyrax
     *Hildebrandt's starling
     butterflies
     yellow-billed kite
     Speke's weaverbirds
     sacred ibis
     Grant's gazelles
     Thomson's gazelles
     vervet monkeys
* Only sighting on our trip

AFRICA: OLDUVAI (OR IS IT OLDUPAI?) GORGE IN TANZANIA

When we first booked our trip, my husband talked with the tour company about adding a little detour to Olduvai Gorge, which wasn't on the itinerary. They said they thought they could work something out, and when the day came, our regular driver took us there on the way home from the Maasai village. It turned out the visitors' center was just a few miles off the main road.

We paid our fee . . .

. . . and noticed a typo.

Shouldn't it be Olduvai, not Oldupai?  We learned that the correct version is the latter, the Maasai word for a wild sisal plant that grows in the area. (Not a very glamorous name origin.) Way back, someone misspelled the name, and it wasn't until 2005 that the name was officially changed to OLDUPAI. (Nevertheless, even Wikipedia has it listed as "Olduvai," as do some of the displays in the museum itself.)

AFRICA: VISIT TO A MAASAI VILLAGE (TANZANIA)

Earlier in our trip, we had the opportunity to visit a Samburu village in Kenya. The Samburu people are an offshoot of the Maasai, the proud group of African warriors who were once among the most feared of the African tribes. In the mid-19th century the Maasai occupied most of the vast Rift Valley, but at the end of the century the population was decimated by diseases such as smallpox and cholera that coincided with a severe drought. More than half of the Maasai population died. Not much later, two-thirds of their land was taken away to be used by colonizers and for national parks and reserves.

In his book Hemingway in Africa, Christopher Ondaatje points out: "Until the nineteenth century, the Masai dominated the grassy plains that stretch eastwards from Lake Victoria almost to the Indian Ocean and southwards from the highlands north of Nairobi to the Masai Steppe of Tanganyika. Then, in the second half of that century, cholera and cattle diseases almost obliterated them, and the northern part of their lands were taken over by European settlers. . . . By 1953 Hemingway felt that the tribe was a sad shadow of what it had once been. . . . [He] blamed the tribe's demise largely on drugs and alcohol . . . ."

Typical Hemingway. The pot calls the kettle black.

In the last 50 years there has been a resurgence of the Maasai population, which now numbers over 850,000 (but is still only about 0.7% of Kenya's population and about the same in Tanzania), and a lot of effort is being made to help them preserve their culture and lifestyle while also providing education for their children. However, there continues to be much controversy over who owns the Maasai ancestral lands that have become part of the game reserves and are so important to the tourist industry and also highly desired by the government for other natural resources, such as geothermal energy.

Tourists are generally shielded from the many complex issues related to indigenous people, which is understandable given the fact that one of the ways the Maasai make money is giving tours of their villages to those tourists. The last thing they want is for us to be drawn into their politics. For the most part, we were ignorant of any problems.

It was on our drive to the Maasai camp that we first experienced what became a regular habit: animals running down the road in front of our Land Cruiser in a crazy game of African Chicken:

Note the endless expanse of grass. Classic Serengeti.

AFRICA: OUR SERENGETI HOBBIT LODGE (TANZANIA)

Our lodge in the Serengeti was another winner. In general, the Serena lodges we stayed in were all fantastic:

Main entry:

Beautiful Makonde carvings graced the lobby:

AFRICA: THE SERENGETI (TANZANIA)

Right on. Thank you, Pinterest

This is a very long post, but it's mostly pictures. Its length is a reflection of the unbelievable variety of wildlife that walks or runs around, flies over, climbs up, and soaks in the Serengeti. The vastness of the park is matched by the teeming life within it.

ANIMAL SIGHTINGS
*Only sighting

Giraffes

Impalas

*Caracal cat

Elephant

Baboons

Warthogs

Impalas

*White-backed vulture

Marabou stork

Vervet monkeys

Black-headed heron

Blacksmith plover
Crowned plover
Nile monitor

Hippopotami

Lions

Mongooses

*Leopard

Hyena

Thomson's gazelles

Coke's hartebeest
Secretary bird

The name "Serengeti" is a version of the Maasai word siringet, which means "the place with no end," an apt description of a place that covers 5,700 square miles. In that much space, there is a wide assortment of climate zones, each one memorable and beautiful in its own way. The scenery ranges from this:

. . . to this:

. . . and this:

. . . and this:

AFRICA: CROSSING THE BORDER INTO TANZANIA

Map from Wikipedia

Our tour included several days in Tanzania, the country directly south of Kenya that was once two British colonies: the mainland state of Tanganyika and the islands of Zanzibar. Tanganyika received its independence from Britain in 1961 and Zanzibar gained independence in 1963, and in 1964 the two countries merged their names and their land to form a single nation (although Zanzibar remains semi-autonomous). Like Kenya, Tanzania is still part of the British Commonwealth.

Bob and I have had serious discussions over the pronunciation of the name of this country. While there we heard both "tahn ZAHN yuh" and the more familiar "tahn zuh NEE yuh"  or "tan zuh NEE yuh."  We asked our various guides how to pronounce the word and even got different pronunciations from them. I guess it's a "to-mah-to / to-may-to" kind of a name.

Honestly, I knew nothing about Tanzania before this trip, but I've learned a lot in the last few months.

For example, Zanzibar, famous for its production of cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, and nutmeg, was once known as the Spice Islands. The population is almost 100% Muslim. The mainland of Tanzania, however, is predominantly Christian, but with a significant Muslim minority. Our guide told us that intermarriage is common and acceptable. Tanzania has 120 different ethnic groups and over 100 different languages, making it the most linguistically diverse country in Africa. Most Tanzanians speak both their tribal language and Swahili, and the educated sector also speaks English. Tri-lingual? That puts most Americans to shame. Unfortunately, almost half of the children don't attend school.

Sizewise, Tanzania (population 49 million) is a little bit larger than twice the size of California (population 38 million), or 1.36 times the size of Texas (population 26 million). Unlike California and Texas, Tanzania is ethnically homogenous, with 99% of the population being of native African descent.

I found a very sobering website that compares living in the United States with living in Tanzania. If you lived in Tanzania instead of the U.S., you would:

• be 10.3 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS

• have 11.1% more likelihood of dying in infancy

• have 2.4 times more babies

• die 25.75 years sooner

• use 99.39% less electricity

• make 96.98% less money

• spend 98.93% less money on health care

• experience 23.11% less of a class divide

In most of the categories, statistics are similar in Kenya. Our drive to Tanzania from Kenya gave us the best view of that poverty that we had on this trip.

The early morning skies were an incandescent blue as we crossed the Maasai Mara Reserve:

For the paltry sum of $500, we could have
taken a "balloon safari." Maybe next time.