Tanzania

I tagged along on yet another of Aram and Debbi's trips: this time to Tanzania.

The purpose of the trip was to visit various Mennonite establishments in Tanzania. Our destinations were Shirati- the first Mennonite mission post in East Africa- Musoma, and Mwanza.

The first day we drove about four hours and spent the night with some people who have an orphanage. They found one of their kids at the bottom of a pile of dirty laundry, several have showed up on their doorstep, and many have been given into their care by the family members of an abusive parent. They currently have twenty-five kids; the oldest is 15 and the youngest was three days old at the time of our visit. Most of the kids are under five.

On day two we drove four hours and spent two hours at the border. The first part of the two hours at the border were greatly enjoyed by Priska and Shadrach; some random truckers let them hang out in the cab of their truck...

The Tanzanian visas were twice as expensive as was expected, so we did not have enough dollars to pay for the visas and customs would not take Kenya shillings. And there was no place to change money at the border. Aram eventually had to cross back into Kenya to buy dollars.
After what seemed like an eternity, with two kids becoming more tired and manic by the minute, we were finally on our way.

Tanzania is quite different from Kenya; for one thing, there are actually road signs, and people obey the traffic laws. Also, the landscape differs greatly from just across the border; on the Kenya side it is semi arid and mostly flat, in Tanzania it is green, and all around are large, steep hills, strewn with enormous, granite boulders.

Six queries for directions later we arrived in Shirati, which is just a few kilometers from Lake Victoria.

We spent two days there visiting the church leaders and whatnot.

Shirati is a relatively small village, but there is a large hospital and medical college that the Mennonites started in the 1930s.

We went down to the beach one evening and Priska and Shadrach played in the sand for awhile. Much to my dismay, it is not advisable to swim because of the presence of bilharzia in the water.

We were the main entertainment of the evening for the local kids, Priska and Shadrach especially.

This girl stood and watched us for half an hour, the whole time holding this five-gallon bucket of water on her head.

There were many egrets eating stuff at the water's edge.

And sitting on rocks...

A fishing boat

Next we drove three hours to Musoma, the location of a sizable bible college, also established by the Mennonites.

While Aram talked with the teachers and sat in on classes, I climbed one of the many hills in the area; I succeeded in getting some very nice panoramas but my panorama stitching program has ceased to function, so I will post them later.

A somewhat distorted view of the lake.

While in Musoma we stayed at a Catholic guest house that is right on the lake. We found out that the bilharzia parasites can be killed with a cheap, effective medicine, so we went swimming.

The kids really liked playing in the water and sand, and would do so happily for hours. 

Shadrach's favorite activity was throwing handfuls of sand in the water.

Reloading....

Fishing dhows went out around sunset.

The waves gave me the opportunity to take some pictures that are pretty sweet and were rather dangerous to the life of my camera.

In Mwanza we just hung out with A&D's friends for two days. They have two kids almost the same ages as Priska and Shadrach, so the kids were really happy and crazy. 

I read a bunch of random books: The Silmarillion, Origin of the Species, some stuff by Netzsche, a couple of papers on the the Sukuma Medicine Men and their magic stuff, et al. It was quite interesting...

On Sunday morning I decided to climb a boulder laden hill instead of going to a church service that I would understand none of. I saw all manner of amazing wild life: awesome birds...North America really got a bad deal when it comes to birds...Either that or we killed them all... 

enormous butterflies

 a troup of Vervet monkeys,

and brilliantly colored lizards that change color according to the temperature, 

I spent over an hour trying to get a good picture of the crazy lizards, but they are really sensitive to nearby movement and move incredibly fast. And having only a 4x zoom does not help...

The females were not nearly as spectacular...

We took the bus back to Musoma, and while we were waiting at the bus stop, this guy without a shirt, wearing a motorcycle helmet and carrying an eighteen inch, evil looking knife starts walking around making motions as though he is chopping things into pieces. He stood directly behind me for a couple of minutes, slicing up invisible things...And that was somewhat disturbing...

Then he jammed the knife in his pants and started wandering around dancing. He continued this until another guy walked up behind him and tried to pull the knife out of his pants; unfortunately the serrations on the back of the knife got stuck on his pants. They struggled a bit and the protagonist got the crazy guy on the ground and confiscated the knife. By this time quite a crowd had gathered, but no one tried to help the guy get the knife or anything, they just watched...

The rest of the trip was uneventful, except at the border they gave us all manner of trouble...

I took 1223 pictures...Below are a few of the more interesting ones.

A flower of unknown species.

Guess.

Debbi and Priska in a fishing boat.

Sunset on Lake Victoria

The Lake reflected in some broken glass atop a wall.

In Maasailand (The black smudge is a person)

The Lake

Shadrach likes bananas

The main tourist attraction of Mwanza

Some fishermen. They spent about two hours pulling their net into an ever-small enclosure, and caught a grand total of seven fish...

Dung Beetle

This is an awesome beetle; he rolls a ball of manure that is about five times as big as he is at amazing speeds. While standing on his "hands"...

Sometimes he gets a bit carried away. Literally.

The ball kept going out of control; several times it ran over him.

Western Kenya

When I travel in Kenya, I am always amazed at how quickly and drastically the landscape can change.

Aram, Debbi, the kids and I went to western Kenya to distribute some relief food that someone had donated. The climate, tribe, and crops changed dramatically many times on the nine hour drive. We would be driving through semi-arid land, nothing but sand and acacia trees to the horizon, then come over a ridge and suddenly we'd be in green farmland, or tea fields, or an evergreen forest.

The tea fields are my favorite. The tea bushes grow very close together, and the fields stretch for miles. The top leaves of the tea bushes are chartreuse, so for miles we were driving through a sea of neon green.

People picking tea.

Then the tea ends. Abruptly. The rolling, neon green fields, suddenly become steep hills, covered in a patchwork of red plowed soil and green crops. We also changed from Kalenjin territory to Luo land. 

We spent the first night in a hotel on Lake Victoria. At one point the hotel had been very nice; it now has an aura of decomposing luxury. There was a lovely pool, and I was broiling hot. The kids swam for a couple minutes until we were informed in a very indirect, African way that the pool was closed; “We just put in chlorine so you might not want to swim right now.” (The water was barely chlorinated.) I was very annoyed, the water would have felt SO good after sitting in a hot car all day. 

We ordered supper, and waited, and waited, and waited. It was nearly an hour and a half before our food arrived. I should not have been surprised, but I was.

Priska was rather sick during the night, and we were awakened every few hours by her vomiting. Dehydration, we decided, was the culprit.

We rose early, having been told that we were going to start the food distribution at 0900, and our destination was still two hours away. We arrived at 1000; the area chief, who was supposed to be administrating the distribution, had gone somewhere. It was unknown when he would return.

So we chilled (or rather, baked) for a few hours, waiting for him to return. We talked to people, ate sugar cane, Aram and I played a game of chess. Finally, around 1330, someone took charge and we started handing out the food. The chief was still absent when we finished.

About halfway home we stopped for the night at a small lodge on a hill above a creek. They served really tasty Indian food, and it only took them forty-five minutes to prepare it.

I was awakened at 0530 by what sounded like someone shoveling gravel into a metal wheelbarrow outside my window, so I got up and wandered around. A locked gate blocked my way to the creek, but that was not much of a problem since it was missing a hinge. There was a six-foot, man-made waterfall, a waterwheel (Installed backwards so it scooped water, and it did not have a race of any kind so it turned quite slowly.) and a bunch of pipes.

 Apparently water had been pumped from this creek and piped to somewhere that needed it. But it was no longer in use, the waterwheel was disconnected. 

I took Shadrack down to the waterfall and he was entranced; I think he would have stood and stared at it for ever. Priska thought it was great fun to jump around at the edge of the falls. I am sort of surprised that she did not fall in...

The rest of the trip home was uneventful, except that Shadrack was sick and vomited at intervals most of the way.

I took 643 pictures on the three day trip; 487 of them are of the many different landscapes that I drove through.

Some of the people to whom we gave food.

Safari ants. These guys are about 3/4 of an inch long.

A six foot tall termite mound

A tendril from some sort of vine.

More tea

Lake Elementaita

A mountain was reflected in the lake, it was AMAZING. Unfortunately the auto-focus on my camera malfunctioned, so it is out of focus.

Sunset

Sugar High

I told Debbi that it was a bad idea. At least a very messy one. Did she listen? Noooo...

The cause was cookies, and the chocolate they were dipped in.

This was the result.

Their clothes had to be removed when it was time to clean up. 

Aram's comment was, "Wow. They are naked, dancing and yelling nonsense."

It seems that most Kenyans are chameleophobic. I caught a chameleon yesterday, Priska and Shadrack thought it was pretty cool, as did I. Lena, our house help, did not like it at all. I was told by another Kenyan that chameleons are not good things to have around...

I think they are pretty awesome; when I caught it, it was greenish; by the time I let it go it was more of a yellow.