the end is here...

Well, I guess it actually has long since come and gone, considering my last post was more than 2 months ago and I got back in early April. Sorry 'bout not really, you know, mentioning that...

The guilt from not posting and shutting things down, however, has been building for a while, and I've actually been waiting until I could close the book with one final coup de grâce and, rather than just saying "Bye! Ya'll have fun now y'hear?", I thought I would let you know what I've been more or less doing, or at least waiting for, until this past weekend.

Throughout this past year, Ben, Paul, and I have received a lot of interest from people in the US wishing to help out with the school. At the school, there is an awful lot of helping out that could use doing. Where we finally ended up on all of this is the creation of a charity non-profit, the Students for the Advancement of Learning and Medical Aid, or SALAMA: Tanzania. This plan has been a long time coming, and its been a pretty lengthy process getting it all done, but we're coming right along. Our 501-c3 status (what lets us take tax-deductible money) with the IRS is still pending, but a couple key things have developed:

1) We can accept money. Some folks over at Bien Moyo have been gracious enough to develop an initiative to accept funds on our behalf. Awesome.

2) We have a website. That means that you can check out whats going on, what exactly we're about and trying to do, and, even better, give an address to anyone you might run into who may have an interest in helping out to improve these kids lives. Double awesome.

Without futher ado, here's the site:

www.salamatanzania.org or www.salamatanzania.com

I hope you get a chance to check it out. And lastly, thanks to everyone who read this over the past year. It really means a lot that people have shown continual interest despite my complete lack of regular posting. Thanks for everything, and I hope to hear from you soon.

break it down!

Shreya Patel is another Lombard Fellow, who, like me, is here through Dartmouth working at the clinic. She spends most of her time at the clinic, working to form connections between other organizations in Dar and our clinic so that our patients can get more comprehensive care. Once a week, however, Shreya comes to the school to teach the kids Indian dance. They love it. They go crazy, they get excited, and the'yre good at it. Here's a few photos of Shreya's class this past week at Bibi Jann's:

they love it

teacher Eva secretly watches and practices from outside

fetty prefers visual art

the little ones just watch

it wears her out though

smiling in the bright lights

the old dogs

This past weekend has been great at the school. A group of US documentary makers, Old Dog Documentaries, have come here to make a film about the Bibi to Bibi Project.

Old Dog is making a film comparing two different projects where grandmothers are raising their grandchildren: one in the south Bronx, NYC, and ours here in Mbagala. A link to their pre-footage trailer can be seen here (just click "view trailer" near the top-right).

Their time here thus far has been really good. Here's some photos of this past weekend (apparently it was national Bland And White Photo Day because thats almost all I took...):

Anne watches the bibis

filming

had to keep the color here

sound

Juma talks to Sarafina

Part II, The Longest Post in The World

Over Ngorongoro Crater

And thus began the safari. The next morning, bright and early, we set out: Matthew, Paul, Alex, and I, and our guide/driver, Levis (like the jeans) and our cook, Juma. We took the most badass car in the universe, a Toyota Land-Cruiser that was built like a tank. The best part about it, though, was the roof. No typical sunroof, this thing had big panels that just lifted off and folded over, so you could stand on the seat and have your whole upper-body out of the car wherever you went. We felt like celebrities in an African limo.

if peepers and i designed the perfect vehicle together, this would be it

Now, for convenience’s sake, I’m going to break things down into a timeline of our safari.

8:30 AM: Leave for safari

11:30 AM: Actually leave for safari

12:00-2:00 PM: Trek to Ngorongoro Crater, one of the most insane and beautiful places in the world (as if I could make that judgement). Basically a collapsed volcano from a long time ago, the place created a perfect ecosystem for all kinds of animals. Cool thing is, its tiny. So that means that, driving around, you can’t help but bump into all kinds of giant creatures: they’re just everywhere. More on that later.

Levis shows Paul the Crater

2:00 PM: Arrive at Ngorongoro Crater. Levis got out to pay our entry fees, and the rest of us walked around to see the views. We turn around after a few minutes, and Paul notices that there’s a family of baboons around a tree near our car. Now they’re on the ground near our car. Now they’re on top of our car. Now they’re inside of our car. And now, they’re leaving our car with the bananas we had bought earlier.

'lil bastards

3:00 PM: We get into our camp, named “Simba Campsite”. No fences, no walls, nothing to separate us from really big hungry animals who like to eat people, except one guy with a rifle, interestingly seated at the road entrance to the site. As if the lions would use the road.

Peepers arrives at the campsite like he thought we were going to Kansas City

3:30-7:00 PM: Walking safari. Levis dropped us off with a ranger, a fellow employed by the Crater who was wearing camouflage and carried a big gun. He informed us immediately that he had used it before, on this trek, to shoot down buffalo who had gotten it in their heads to attack. We climbed up over the ridge of the crater to see the beautiful expanses below. Our ranger promised us he did this walk at least once our twice a day, but his words of choice were “pole pole, pole pole” meaning “slow, slow” as he leaned over on his knees to catch his breath. Every 50 meters or so, this raspy “pole pole” from behind us, as we stop to wait. As we descended the other side of the ridge, we ended up at a beautiful waterfall, and took a few minutes to take it all in, before heading back.

"Pole pole, pole pole"

8:00-10:00 PM: We arrived back at Simba Camp. Juma had made us a delicious feast of mixed vegatables, bread, fruit, and tea. The sun went down over the ridge, and darkness set in. That was when we realized the problem. Here, in the middle of the wild, there were insects everywhere. When we put up a lantern to eat, they flew by the hundreds over around us, flying and landing in our food, so that, with each spoonful, we had to pick through the vegetables to pull out the bugs. When we turned out the lantern, however, no more bugs came, but we couldn’t see the bugs in the food to pick them out. Catch-22 if there ever was one. We finally settled on turning the lantern out and just pretending the bugs weren’t there. Ignorance is bliss, and insects are protein, right?

nightfall

And then there were the stars. Man oh man, it doesn’t get any better than this. No cities, no light pollution, around for miles and miles, it was beautiful. Bright as can be, Orion, Taurus, Gemini, the 7 Sisters, the whole Southern Sky opened up before us. Beautiful.

Our next day was devoted to seeing Ngorongoro Crater. While we had climbed up and over the ridge the previous day, today we descended to see all the animals…

6:30 AM: We woke up bright and early. Saw the sun rise over the Crater.

sunrise

8:00 AM: Headed into the Crater. It was a long way in, about an hour, to get all the way through the bottom. The sides and walls of the crater are covered in greenery, looks like a jungle, but there’s barely a tree on the crater floor. Just lots and lots of animals. As you’re heading down, the place looks an awful lot like an alien planet. I swear, Matthew and I both started humming the theme song to Halo at the same time.

straight Halo

all those dots in the lake are flamingos

8:01 AM: See about 5,000 zebras. The word for zebra in Swahili (it escapes me now) translates to “striped donkey”. And when you see these guys up close, that’s all they are. Big striped donkeys. Not particularly pretty, and they make awful noises. Alex wondered out loud why they were striped, and Matthew arrived at the conclusion “because they’re poisonous.” Sharp as a tack, that kid.

8:07 AM: See another Safari group. British. Asked them if they’ve seen the Grizzly bears back over to the left. They gave us a strange look as we drove away.

8:32 AM: Wildebeest. Loads of them. Just hanging out. This is the season of the wildebeest, where thousands of them are born every day. Something like 40% of them die in the next 3 months though.

8:39 AM: We saw what I think is my favorite animal on safari, the African elephant. Walking so slowly, but with such purpose, he just looked incredible. Reminds me of a very old man. A very old man that could step on you and squash out your brains.

9:00 AM- 12:00PM: Touring the crater. Gazelles, zebra, wildebeest, water buffalo, flamingoes, hippos and loads of other things, all over the place.

water buffalo

warthogs

i had no idea there were ostriches here

we overheard some guy claiming that "see! that thing is PROOF that birds came from dinosaurs."

jackal

peepers (paul) loved these birds

9:48 AM: We happened upon a lion relaxing in the tall grass. The crazy thing was, all the zebra around had no idea he was there. And the lion has no interest in them, just watched them walk by. It was eerie, how innocent and stupid these zebra seemed.

just watching

11:03 AM: Holy shit. As we’re stopped, watching some water buffalo, we suddenly heard the roar of a lion from inside some trees by a creek. We got super-quiet; all the buffalo turned their heads. Then something went down. Couldn't see anything, but we heard 2 lions going at it, just tearing at each other, inside the trees. I don’t know what it was about, I didn’t want to ask them, but it was nasty. Then, out of nowhere, a big poppa lion emerged from the grass and slowly sauntered over towards the trees to see what was going on. He went inside, the roaring and hollering eventually subsides, and no one came out.

12:17 PM: We took a break by at a rest stop in the Crater. There are other groups here, cars parked, eating lunch and relaxing. Hawks circled overhead, and swoop down and grab people’s food when they weren’t paying attention.

12:30 PM: We headed back to the campsite to eat lunch, pack up, and head out. Eventually we took off out of the Crater area to head up to Serengeti, which is about 4 hours away.

2:14 PM: We’d been on the road for about 30 min when the car broke down. I guess it wasn’t invincible after all. The smell of something burning filled the car, so the four of us decided it might be a good idea to take a walk… far away from the vehicle. There were giraffes and gazelles in the distance. Levis, ever the man, took off his shirt and started to check things out. He eventually flagged down another safari vehicle to borrow a screwdriver. The 4 of us were deep on our self-guided safari tour, but we couldn't get very close to the animals. Probably a good thing. Levis was successful, and we take off for Serengeti.

6:00 PM: We arrived at our camp in the Serengeti. This place looked completely different from Ngorongoro— bushy and dry, kind of looks like the lawn of a house that hasn’t been taken care of in a hundred years. We were exhausted, ate dinner, and got into bed. Before we went to sleep, however, Levis warned us. He tells us that animals often come very close to the camp; lions and hyenas will roam through looking for things to eat. He tells us that the movement of our arms as we walk looks like an injury to the hyena, it will provoke him. We’re all scared shitless.

3:00 AM: We are awakened by a strange call coming from outside our tents, a “whoooop, whoooop” sound. We find out the next morning that it’s the ever-distinctive call of the hyena.

Our second day on safari was completely devoted to the Serengeti. The park itself is huge, and many would offer that even a 2-week trip spent entirely here is not enough to see everything the place has to offer. Unfortunately, we have about a day and a half. We limit ourselves to the north of the park and set out to see what we can find.

7:00 AM-1200 PM: We have a terrible morning of it. We don’t see much of anything new, and are trying desperately to see our last two remaining animals, the leopard and cheetah, but they’re elusive. We come back to the camp for lunch, sad and dejected.

1:46 PM: We stop at a riverbend to see some hippos. I never realized this, but hippos are filthy, disgusting creatures. Its no wonder they sit in the water all day; they have absolutely no hygiene. And to make matters worse, they’re dangerous as hell. Hippos kill more humans than any other wild creature in Africa, because people walk too close and the hippos feel as though their young are threatened. Now, while they’re dirty, they still have one great redeeming quality: their laughs. I have no idea what they’re actually doing, but it sounds like they’re sitting there, under water, telling jokes. Every couple minutes, 15 hippos will burst out into what sounds like laughter together. It’s great. Paul made it very clear, though, that he hates hippos. If you ever want to annoy Paul, talk about the greatness of hippos; it’ll make him livid.

gross animals

2:36 PM: I hate hyenas. We saw one, and these guys are bastards, total jerks. Remember Jafar, the bad guy from Aladdin? Yeah hyenas are like him. Back stabbing, sly, conniving; they bring nothing to the animal kingdom but bad feelings. While they’re scavengers by trade, they won’t hesitate to attack injured or weak animals. They have no redeeming qualities, none at all. Paul hate hippos, but everybody hates hyenas.

3:26 PM: Redemption. After hours of searching, we finally found him: the leopard. Leopards are scary creatures; they live in trees and, after they hunt, will drag their carcasses up into the branches with them. We could barely make him out, his camouflage was so good, but about a half-mile away, sure enough, lay a leopard relaxing. What followed was just plain creepy, and awesome. Gradually, more and more cars pulled up to see the leopard, until there were about 6 vehicles full of people bursting through their roofs with binoculars and cameras. Eventually, the leopard climbed down from the tree. Stage fright, I suppose. People followed him in the grass, followed him, followed him, and lost him. Suddenly, it seemed, no one could find the leopard. The bastard just disappeared, vanished into thin air. 20 pairs of eyes on him, all watching intensely, and he just ups and evaporates. It was terrific.

can you see him there?

7:00 PM: After a long day of straining our eyes and searching things out, we were exhausted. As we got back to camp, we practically collapsed into our tents.

Our final day of safari was a half-day of touring on our way out of the Serengeti, before we finished and headed back to Arusha.

beautiful Serengeti

thirsty monkey

6:45 AM: As we cleaned ourselves up and began to pack to head home, Juma, our cook, pulled me over near his tent. “Look at this,” he said, and pointed to the ground. There, right next to his tent and only 15 meters from our own, were a series of tracks. As I called over Levis, he looked unsurprised. “Hyenas,” he said, “Looks like they wandered through our camp last night. Good thing you didn’t have to pee, eh?”

8:13 AM: Our ride out of Serengeti proved eventful. We saw elephants, giraffes, lions, and zebra. The crown, though, was the cheetah. Paul had wanted to see the cheetah the entire safari; something about that animal really made him happy. It was a subtle disappointment to have not seen one over our trip. But there suddenly, was this 70 MPH badass. Just sauntering around in the plain, so sure of himself, he looked formidable.

badass

8:48 AM: Apparently we weren’t the only ones leaving the Serengeti. As we’re driving out, a huge caravan of wildebeest decide that its time to cross the road. We stopped and watched as hundreds of wildebeest made their way across, leaping into and across the road.

12:30 PM: On our way back, we made a final stop at Olduvai Gorge. Here many years ago were discovered some of the oldest human remains ever found. Homo habilis, homo erectus, homo sapiens, and homo sapiens sapiens, all existed here, some at the same time. This is also when it hit me: Paul loves everything old. He was so damn interested in the Gorge, and it suddenly all came together: his bad knees, his love of grandmothers, all of it. A total love of everything old.

Peepers loves old things

"homo sapiens sapiens stood upright and had a larger brain"

5:00 PM: We arrived back in Arusha. Safari had been an amazing trip, and we had gotten to see pretty much everything we wanted. We showered (‘bout time), went to eat for some amazing pizza, and readied ourselves for our plane out the next day to the island of Zanzibar.

I guess we saw God when we were there, too

good times