A robbery, a rainstorm – hedgehogs: how not to climb Mt. Meru

Our new friend Max in the foreground, our tent in the background keeping out the rain like a champ.

MESERANI, Tanzania – It’s neither difficult nor terribly expensive to set up a guided, outfitted trek up Tanzania’s second-highest peak, Mt. Meru, but I didn’t let that stop me from doing it the hard way to avoid the tour companies (in part to stick it to their touts – some of the worst people in Africa) and save a few bucks.

Being in a national park with cape buffalo, a species with the temperament of Archie Bunker and much bigger horns, you are required to hire an armed park ranger to fend off angry bovines and show you the way up the 15,000-foot peak. First I had to get to the park gate with no car, which meant two rides on the dalla-dalla (the over-stuffed, crash-happy minibuses) totaling nearly two hours, which brought me to a dirt road the driver assured me went to Arusha National Park. Now, some locally-based ex-pats I had talked to were pretty sure there were taxis to take me the last stretch, but all I saw was some guys on aging motorcycles at the junction yelling something in Swahili, so I started walking down the dirt road to get my bearings.

After about half a mile seeing only the rickety motorcycles going by, I stopped at a local store to inquire the distance (maybe I could walk) and grab a water. The woman behind the counter spoke almost no English, so I pantomimed: “Arusha Park gate, far?” (I put my hands far apart) “Or close?” (I put my hands together). To answer she put her hands as far apart as possible. So I walked back to the junction and asked the motorcycle guys if there taxis to the park. They smiled and pointed at their bikes.

Fortunately the road was so shitty, the motorcycle driver couldn’t go very fast and my first back-of-a-motorcycle taxi ride went very smoothly. He dropped me at the gate where a ranger named Oswald sat down with me to talk about climbing the mountain. He said my plan to climb with just a ranger was no problem and also mentioned that he happened to run a taxi service and would I like a ride from the junction at three times the going rate? (“My friend, I don’t do this to make money, only as a service.”)

Everything was set, I was almost back to the campground and, as I was switching minibuses for the last time, a passenger in front of me stopped, and stooped down pretending his bag was stuck in the seat, blocking my way. I quickly (but not quickly enough) figured out the scam looked over my shoulder and saw his buddy leaning into me, elbowed his buddy hard in the chest and pushed my way off the van, which took off before I could shout “Thief.” I checked my money and my pockets and everything seemed to be there.

It wasn’t until I was on the last dalla-dalla home that I realized my ATM card was missing. It was a grim, helpless-feeling 40-minute ride back. Thanks to Jonathan  (previous post), a Maasai warrior and one of the kindest people I’ve met on this trip, I was able to get in touch with my bank despite having no cell phone and being in a village with no internet. In the end the dalla-dalla dirtbags got nothing more than a piece of plastic and a good chunk of my pride.

Predictably, a rumble of thunder accompanied my hangdog walk back to the tent to tell Connie what happened. I hate clichés. So it was time for a Safari Lager. As we drank the rain intensified, building to monsoon status. The bar was dry, but surely the trail to the top of Meru was a mess. Our hike was off, my mood was grim.

Then, something dark and oblong caught my eye. I looked down and there, in the middle of the bar was a hedgehog, sniffing around with its slightly elephantine nose. The bar was crowded, tippling patrons loudly talking, but the little guy showed no fear. He pressed on, searching for insects amidst the clamor, leisurely skittering by the bar, through the lounge and back out into the darkness of the garden.

It’s a scientifically proven fact that you cannot be upset in the presence of hedgehogs, so I came to peace with the events of the day and the non-starter of a climb, and looked forward to Malawi.

The boma

Jonathan and his mother at the family boma.

MESERANI, Tanzania – There was no jumping ceremony when we arrived at Jonathan’s village. That’s reserved for weddings and, nowadays, tourists.

His brother greeted us wearing a baseball cap and t-shirt. The family boma, or compound, is still made up of mud and dung-walled houses, but drought and overgrazing means thatch is hard to come by, so a new house for Jonathan’s mother has a tin roof. It radiates heat in the afternoon swelter.

Jonathan, carries a traditional dagger on one hip and an oft-used cell phone on the other, both of which lie beneath the flowing red robes that are the mark of a Maasai warrior. Fluent in English and Swahili, as well as the Maasai language, he works a 9 to 5 job as a museum guide but goes home to a village with no running water or electricity (he’s thinking of getting some solar panels). He must spear the occasional hyena to protect his livestock. Jonathan’s father had three wives, but Jonathan, a born-again Christian, says his current wife will be his one and only.

He is a Maasai warrior with one tire-tread sandal in tradition and another in the modern world.

Just 25, he remembers when lions used to roam the land around his village, about 25 km from the city of Arusha, basecamp for safaris into the Serengetti. Now most of the wild animals have been moved into the National Parks. When he was a child the land used to be mainly Maasai territory and they had ample land to graze their livestock and material to build their homes. They also had little access to education and practiced female circumcision, a ritual Jonathan says has largely died out (it’s outlawed in Tanzania).

Despite his modern beliefs and gadgets, his education and desire to continue his education to lead safaris and tours, he pines for the old days.

“Some people think it’s good (now) because there’s more education. But the people now don’t have a lot of cows because there’s no place to feed them.”

I met Jonathan in the village of Meserani, where he took Connie and I on a tour of a small Maasai museum. We chatted afterwards and I asked him if I could come with him to visit his boma – not as a tour, just to meet his family.

We walked an uneven dirt track in the midst of the Rift Valley surrounded by sweeping scrub-land and the freestanding, rolling eruptions of earth that speak to the area’s volcanic history, all in the shadow of 15,000-foot Mt. Meru.

A circular fence of cactus-like plants surrounds Jonathan’s boma, a series of round huts and small corrals of thorny plants. Cattle have traditionally been the lifeblood, quite literally of the Maasai, who drink cow’s blood as a staple of their diet (Jonathan says his religious beliefs now prevent him from the practice). But the days of free roaming herds are coming to an end, with non-Maasai moving in over the past twenty years and crowding out the pastureland, dwindling the herds.

“The Swahili people don’t have cattle and get mad when Maasai cows eat their trees.”

The outside world has crept into the boma, too. Pages from old Cosmopolitans and Vogues adorn the walls of Jonathan’s brother’s hut.

Over the course of several days, we got to know Jonathan well. He’s quick-witted, generous, and resourceful (saved my ass when I got pickpocketed, but that’s another post). On the day we left he said goodbye and told us that next time we come to Tanzania, we should set up our tent in his boma. By the  time we return, I hope someday soon, he will be a father – his wife is due to give birth to their first child in August. He hopes his child treads the same tricky path he is taking: one of education and worldliness, but contained in the colorful robes and traditions that remind him where he comes from.

Squid balls, Commando

                       Needs a crop to the left, but this was right by our hotel in Stone Town.                       

ZANZIBAR TOWN, Zanzibar – Stone Town, Zanzibar’s old quarter, is relentlessly pretty, with fading colonial buildings with slightly blackened facades giving way to Arabesque compounds with rusting metalwork. Much of it looks like the slightest breeze from the Indian Ocean would bring entire neighborhoods crumbling down.

You can spend your money quickly on all kinds of schlocky tours here: just follow the slimy operator complimenting America and assuring you he will help you for “no money.” But getting lost in the town’s labyrinthine streets and watching local kids diving into the Indian Ocean and battling the incoming tide and outgoing sun to play an evening soccer on the beach (no teams, no rules, just dribble toward the goal) was how we chose to spend our day.

Being on an island famous for its spices and multi-ethnic cuisine, Connie and I wanted to grab a good meal, so I asked the sleepy looking clerk at our cheap hotel for a recommendation. He immediately mentioned what looked like a tourist trap down the road and I was suspicious.

“Is it good? Cheap? Expensive?” I asked.”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been there.”

We finally stumbled down the city’s alleyways a quiet place with plush Middle Eastern-style couches and an equally exotic accoutrement: air conditioning.

A meal of squid balls (tasty, if a bit salty – um, wait, that’s not what I meant) and a restless, mosquito-filled night later, we were pitching and rolling in heavy swells on the Kilimanjaro ferry back to Dar Es Salaam, as Arnold Schwarzenegger hacked, slashed, and shot his way through Commando on the boat’s televisions (it was in English but with English subtitles to help with the ex-Governators accent).

Low tide

PAJE, Zanzibar - Every morning the rea retreats hundreds of meters from the beachside hotels here, leaving tourists in fresh sunscreen sulking at what used to be the waters edge, looking glumly at a kilometer of glassy tidepools and clumps of seaweed between them and the shorebreak.

Moored motorboats and one-sailed dhows look like shipwrecks askew in the damp sand, shore birds swoop in to pick through the unfortunate creatures who missed their ride out to sea, and anyone who wades out a bit, where yesterday afternoon's overhead water is now knee deep, will witness a bizarre scene.

Local women in sarongs wade chest-deep to roughhewn traps of wooden sticks and metal wire to harvest seaweed they then sell to makers of beauty products, while in the background, Western tourists cut through the water (or flop down to it, depending on skill level) in what has become a kite-surfing mecca. The sun and humidity cling and it's hard work for the women that must be done quickly, before the sea returns.

I'm not lamenting the dichotomy, it just is, and it just is strange.

Women harvesting seaweed for pennies, their men in dugout canoes and dhows paddling far out to sea to fish, and dudes in oakleys and complicated harnesses holding on to big parachutes attached to them. Also, some weirdo with a camera, floppy hat, and freckles, waist-deep in the water chatting with the seaweed ladies.

Dalla at me

Our pink-trimmed chariot awaits.

Inside the dalla-dalla. Fun fact: there is no Swahili word for 'full.' Another fun fact: that's not true.

Children walking home from school from the back of a dalla-dalla.

PAJE, Zanzibar – Dalla dalla is Swahili for ‘as many asses as possible squeezed onto a wooden bench and the leftover asses on the floor and out the door,” or something like that.

It also means ‘cheap’ and ‘friendly’ and ‘dangerous,’ though the latter is quickly forgotten amid the cool breeze and easy smiles. The overloaded, converted pickup is to Tanzanians what the subway is to New Yorkers. An inexpensive form of public transit and a way to rub sweaty shoulders with your neighbor, whether you want to or not.

Following a two-hour ride in a packed ferry across the sea from Dar Es Salaam to Zanzibar City (Stone Town) a Zanzibarian I chatted up on the ferry, who smiled broadly when I said a $10 taxi ride was way out of budget, led Connie and I to the anarchy of the Stone Town dalla-dalla stand, where he was also catching a ride to Paje, a town on the opposite side (east coast) of the island.

After being assured by a shady cabbie that there were no more dalla-dallas to Paje that day (it was only 3 p.m.) our ride pulled up, a long-bed pickup with an open-sided wooden cover, a pink-wallpaper interior and benches grafted on to the bed, crammed full of about 20 people, just two who weren’t from around there.

We flew down the road, perilously fast for the potholes, the livestock, and the groaning engine, but the perfect speed for a nice cool breeze that took the edge off the oppressive humidity. Past thatched huts, roadside mango stalls, the tangled jungle of a monkey preserve, and wide-canopied trees blooming ruby-red, we bounced and swerved down the road, stopping in the middle of the bush for pickups, with no schedule other than leave when full. Save for two of us on-board, there was no novelty to this ride for the passengers and yet everyone was friendly despite uncomfortably close quarters.

And then at a dusty roundabout we were off the bus, the barefoot attendant handing down the wood bundles, baskets of produce, and two embarrassingly large backpacks to the off-loading passengers, banging the back of the bus and wobbling back down the road in a dark brown puff of diesel smoke. It cost about $1.30 and has the early lead for my favorite part of the trip.

The omens were all bad …

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - First, due to design flaws in both my Kindle and my brain, I accidentally erased our Tanzania guidebook days before our flight to Dar.

Then there was the Asian man who wore a hard-hat onto our first flight to Doha, Qatar (where we connected en route to Dar). Was he one of the many Philipinos toiling on construction projects in the Middle East or did he know something we didn’t about this flight?

The engines fired and the captain informed us that we should be arriving in Doha at 6:15 am, ‘inshallah.’ In Arabic, it literally means ‘god-willing’ but in reality it usually means ‘not likely.’

Finally, after a shockingly smooth journey, as we lurched toward Dar Es Salaam’s airport it was impossible to miss the charred carcass of a passenger plane in the grass to the right. It appeared to have missed the runway years ago and never received a proper burial.

                                         In colder times, rushing through Frankfurt Airport.

Less cheerful when the heat sets in at night but, hey,free Wonderbread and egg whites for breakfast!

Despite all of the bad juju, though, we arrived at our bare but decent hotel with no problems, just in time to grab a snack and hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, the blaring of hip-hop, and the bullhorn pleading of a bike-bound rat-poison salesman all mingling in the thick tropical air. Imams, hawkers, women in brightly colored sarongs and dour black abayas, businessmen in suits and laborers in rags walked, drove and pulled perilously overloaded carts down the street. There were Africans, Indians, Arabs, and sheisters of all colors. ‘Jambo, where are you from? I love America, you want safari?’

In air so humid you could backstroke down the street, in a country nearly devoid of snow, a Toyota Hilux pickup sauntered down Libya Street with ski racks on the top. I don’t know, either.

It was beautifully chaotic, even though it was occasionally quite ugly, and after a sweaty, sleepless night in Dar, and what is sure to be the first of many Nescafes (the scourge of the world’s coffee-growing regions) we were on a ferry to Zanzibar.