The real Safari

We spent this past week on safari in Tarangire National Park and Lake Manyara National Park. Evidence that SIT (the school for international training) has trained me to be a proper tourist in Tanzania. Stef and I being tough girls on top of the Safari truck.

We camped at the park's public campsite under incredible stars, and falling asleep to the noises of baboons, lions, warthogs and general business outside our tents. In the morning we woke up to the sound of birds. The red eyed dove saying: Pay me, I work for you, Pay me, I work for you. Another dove saying: Work Harder, work harder-- or if it suits you better: Drink Beer, Drink Beer. I became particularly fond of these bird calls because I was in the Birds Field Study Team. Five of us would wake up before the sunrise, hop in a safari car and go count birds. We saw over one hundred different species, and probably learned about 15-- which is pretty good-- considering there are hundreds in this part of Tanzania alone.

My favorite bird would have to be the Superb Starling (a shout out to my friend Christian Starling). There was also an ashy starling, endemic to Tarangire park, but it wasn't quite as pretty. For any birders out there, we also saw...

lilac breasted rollers
morning doves
laughing doves
red eyed doves
blacksmith lapwings
marshall eagles
three kinds of vultures
love birds (these bright green birds were another favorite)
common ostrich
marabout storks
ringneck doves
blacknaped raven
pelicans
flamingos
shrikes
hammerheads
namaqua doves
and more...

For an example of a day on safari, I will describe my schedule yesterday.
545: wake up
6: go look at half a million birds. try to identify them. try to count them. take note of hippo pond and other animals. laugh at giraffes trying to run or drink water.
10: back at camp for breakfast, focus on avoiding the swarming bees while eating toast with honey
11-1: prepare and give presentation on birds seen, characteristics, some calculations and what not
1: lunch
afternoon: free for reading, writing, swimming (!!!!), biking (!!!!)-- and our academic director provided us with some konyagi (spirit of the nation) to assist us with our homework
6: discussion of the sociology/anthropology side of national parks in tanzania
730: dinner
9: Out on the town to a club called "The White House" for celine dion and other hits
11: Fast asleep in my one man tent.

What a day, right? It was a rare occasion to have access to a pool- and also to be able to rent a spiderweb covered purple bike to explore town, but all in all, it wasn't too unusual. Pretty amazing this study abroad thing.

Visiting a Baobab tree known as the Poacher's Hideout because you can crawl inside of it.

Watching a lion stalk a heard of buffalo.

Hippo pool at Lake Manyara. With lots of birds.

The day before, in a nearby town we went on a cultural walking tour-- visiting carvers, banana beer makers, artists and a local gathering for the government. It was definitely a touristy experience, but it seemed like the guides, all born and raised in the town, were well-liked by the community. I'm not sure in the end how I felt about it, but I just sort of went a long with it. Things get sort of exhausting if you have to analyze every activity you do as a tourist. What is our impact, how are we viewed, are we invading, are we... a million things? Worth thinking about, but definitely draining after a while.

Drinking the banana beer out of a blue bucket.

One cool thing we saw on the walk was the gathering of government/CCM support. CCM is the political party in power here. Though it is a multi-party system, CCM has won every election by 90+ %. This particular gathering involved a flame that travels the country (think olympic torch) and brings people together in different towns/cities to support CCM. It travels all year and happened to be in Mto wa Mbu the day that we were there. It will be interesting to see how CCM changes in the future- perhaps as opposition parties emerge with more strength or internal divisions sprout from within. Potential independent study project...

On safari our academic director had a book of Rumi's poetry (my favorite poet) and I found the continuation of something I had read before. It is a really special one to me, and so I was excited to find this.

Out beyond the ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.