Below is the journal I kept during the fifteen weeks that I was the faculty leader of the Lewis & Clark College overseas program of study in fall 2008. Every year a group of LC students and one faculty member spend the semester traveling and studying in Kenya and Tanzania. 23 students participated in the 2008 program. We arrived in Nairobi, Kenya on September 1st and departed from Arusha, Tanzania on December 5th. Since this is no longer an active blog, the entries have been rearranged in order from oldest to most recent.

Our group in the Yaida Valley, Northern Tanzania, 24 November 2008

Arrival in Nairobi

September 7, 2008; Nairobi, Kenya — Greetings from Nairobi! After many months of planning and eager anticipation, the 2008 Lewis & Clark College East Africa program has officially begun. We are now in our fifth day in Kenya and quickly becoming accustomed to this region of the world that will be our home for the next three months. Our group consists of 23 students, our assistant program leader Cara Eandi, and me.

On Monday, August 31st, I had the pleasure of meeting most of the students in London and introducing those who had never been there to that great city. After we checked in to our flight to Nairobi we left Heathrow Airport and took the tube (London Underground) to the center of the city. London is a city that requires a lifetime to truly know. We had only two hours, but we did our best. Our walking tour included Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. We then crossed the River Thames and back again and cruised through Trafalgar Square finishing with lunch in Leicester Square. After that it was back to the airport and an overnight flight to Nairobi.

We arrived early Tuesday morning at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at dawn and were met there by David Sperling, our main contact in Kenya. Our first impressions of Nairobi came as we crawled through the morning rush hour traffic from the airport into the city center. Nairobi is a sprawling metropolis with many of the same problems faced by major American urban areas: expanding suburbs, garish shopping malls and housing developments, and congestion on every major road to and from the city. In many ways, Nairobi bears more of a resemblance to what we have left behind in the US than it does to what awaits us in the other parts of East Africa to which we will travel.

Our first few days were spent at a comfortable and well appointed guesthouse in western Nairobi. Swahili classes began on Wednesday as did Prof. Sperling’s East Africa area studies course. It has been a pleasure to see how well all the students are adapting to this new environment and the enthusiasm and diligence that they are bringing to their studies. On a more personal note, it is also a bit intimidating for me to become a student once again. I have decided to take the Swahili class with the students and try to learn the language along with them. We have four hours of intensive language training each day and it is a challenge merely to stay caught up. Fortunately we have four outstanding instructors and their patience, good humor, and high spirits have made the daunting task of learning this new language a lot of fun.

On Saturday the students were introduced to their home stay families and everyone relocated to Riruta Satellite, a western suburb of Nairobi where we will remain for the rest of the month. Riruta seems to have the feel of a village within a city. Most residents know each other and are constantly greeting each other in the street and stopping to chat. We are fortunate that all the home stay families live within walking distance of each other and of the house that we are using as a classroom (and in which I am living). Tomorrow we resume our studies in our new home in Riruta.

Local butcher shop in Riruta, Nairobi

Life in Riruta

September 14, 2008; Nairobi, Kenya — Our first week as temporary residents of Riruta has gone by quickly and I am pleased to see our group adapting well to their new surroundings and to their home stay families. The adjustment to life in Riruta is a substantial one. Many of the homes do not have the material comforts and conveniences we take for granted in the US. Some the families do not have running water. The change in lifestyle coming so abruptly after our first few days in a comfortable guest house is a lot to demand, but the students have responded eagerly and enthusiastically. They are spending time with their families and getting to know the neighborhood. Riruta is a welcoming place with many of the charms of an African village, albeit one that is absorbed within a sprawling metropolis. Most people seem to know each other and this lends a reassuring measure of security in what is otherwise known to be a dangerous city. Outsiders get noticed right away and we certainly fall into that category. When we walk down the street, we are often greeted by children. “Hello Mzungu (white person)! How are you?” Most of us are not used to this type of attention and it is alternately startling and charming.

For my own part, I try to spend a part of each day walking around the area and getting to know people. I have become a regular at St. Jude’s Catholic parish, though my ability to follow the liturgy in Swahili comes mostly from observing when people sit, kneel, and stand. Masses at St. Jude’s are usually about two hours (the homilies are especially long) but this hardly compares to Sunday services at nearby Pentecostal churches which last all day. I know this because there is one near my house and I can hear music and preaching on their sound system for hours on end. It is remarkable how religious people in Kenya are. There are dozens of churches of every denomination in our neighborhood. Most schools are associated with a church and much of the programming on Kenyan TV is religious in some way or another. In my own church, the weekend masses are packed with people. The priests and deacons are very young and there are several nuns assigned to the parish—all of whom appear to be under thirty. It would be unusual to see so many young members of the clergy in a Catholic parish in the US. It is often remarked that Africa and Asia are the future of the Catholic Church and it is easy to believe this after attending mass in Nairobi. I’ve enjoyed being part of this congregation and the parishioners have been very welcoming.

Our classes are continuing, with Swahili instruction in the morning and David Sperling’s history course in the afternoon. The pace of our Swahili class has not let up and we are learning large amounts of new material each day. The language itself is not terribly difficult; it has logical grammar, uses the Roman script, and is phonetically the same as English. The difficulty is retaining whatever grammar we have learned while memorizing all the new vocabulary and still continuing to keep up with the new material. Learning a language intensively is like drinking water from a fire hose. I am pleased to see most of my classmates (I am also taking the course and doing all the homework) rising to the challenge and am amazed at how much we have all learned in such a short amount of time.

On Thursday and Friday we had our first class trips. We visited the National Museum of Kenya, the Railway Museum, and the home of Karen Blixen, the Danish baroness who came to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation and later wrote of the experience under the pen name Isak Dineson in Out of Africa and “Shadows in the Grass.” The popularity of the book and the movie it inspired have made the Blixen house one of the most visited tourist attractions in Kenya. Scenes from the movie were filmed outside the house so it is immediately familiar to many visitors. We had a group tour of the interior and then had coffee nearby. The house is in the posh and leafy suburb of Karen (named for Baroness Blixen) west of Nairobi at the foot of the Ngong Hills, and is a far cry from the bustle and squalor of Riruta and some of the poorer areas closer to the city center. Standing in stark contrast to the Karen Blixen house, which is beautifully landscaped and well maintained, is the Railway museum, which is rather decrepit and clearly underfunded. Nevertheless, it contains probably the best collection of colonial artifacts in Kenya. The railway was central to Kenya’s development, first as a colony and later as a nation-state, so it was good that the students were able to spend time in this museum. They even got to climb on the trains in the overgrown rail yard next to the museum.

Now that our days in Kenya are beginning to fall into a routine, I expect that they will go by very quickly. We will be in Nairobi for all of next week. The week after, we begin our excursion into the Eastern Highlands and will have the chance to see a bit more of the country.

That’s all for now. Kwaheri.

Karen Blixen House and Coffee Farm, Ngong Road, west of Nairobi
12 September 2008

History, Matatus, and a visit to the Hospital

September 21, 2008; Nairobi, Kenya — This week I began teaching my course, HIST 298: The History of Modern East Africa. The students, for their sins, are being instructed by two historians. David Sperling is an expert in Islamic societies on the East African coast and is covering precolonial East African religion and culture in his course. Since I am a historian of the British Empire, I am teaching a course on the colonial and postcolonial history of the region. David had been teaching his course since the second day after our arrival and I have just started my lectures this week. In the first class, I discussed different examples of colonialism throughout history to help put the East African example in comparative perspective. In the second class I talked a bit about the changes in European society and about the first European exploration into the interior of Africa in the nineteenth century. I am glad for the opportunity to teach the students while they are on the program and to learn a bit more myself about this region of the world in the process. (Whether the students are glad to have me as an instructor may be a different story altogether.) We have only been in Riruta for two weeks but it feels much longer. Our group is now reasonably well oriented to the neighborhood and many have found their favorite hangouts. A local pub called “The Office” serves room-temperature beer (“Tusker,” the Kenyan lager, which is quite good) and the proprietor, Freddy, and the regular customers have been very welcoming. I joked that it reminded me of the TV show Cheers. I must say, I never expected that Kenya would be the place where I would finally find the watering hole “where everybody knows your name.”

The students have been with their host families for two weeks and seem to have settled into their routine. Many of the students have remarked on the amount of television that their families watch. Some families that do not have running water in their homes have 50-inch plasma TVs that are switched on continuously for most of the day. The TV programming ranges from American and Kenyan televangelists to an addictive Mexican tele-novela (soap-opera) called “Los Dos Caras de Maria” (The Two Faces of Mary). Since I do not have TV I am definitely missing out. I keep up with the plot vicariously through conversations with students. I sure hope Ignacio and Maria get back together.

Riruta is west of the Nairobi city center and taxis rarely, if ever, venture into this area. Actually, the same is true of westerners in general. We are the only ones here as far as I can tell. Consequently we rely on the buses and matatus (privately-owned mini-vans) to get around town. The buses are amazingly efficient and after learning the routes one would be hard pressed ever again to resort to the over-priced taxis in this city. The matatus are even more interesting. Most of them (as well as many of the private minibuses) are elaborately decorated with ornate pin-striping, window decals, and pictures of famous people. Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, and Barack Obama have made more than one appearance on the matatus that I have seen. The matatus are usually packed with people and the music selected for our listening pleasure (and played at top volume, I should add) ranges from reggae to American and Swahili hip-hop.

Alas, on Friday we had our first casualty of the trip. Nothing serious, really. I escorted a student suffering from severe gastro-intestinal problems to Nairobi Hospital and the ER doc decided he was so dehydrated that he should be admitted and put on fluids until the lab results came back. He spent the night in a private room, was seen by the attending physician, and was discharged the next day. He’s fine now. What was most surprising was that the total bill for the initial doctor’s exam, the ER treatment, the private room, meals, IVs, drugs, and the attending physician’s fee was US $592. Amazing. And that was before the insurance claim was filed and in one of Kenya’s best hospitals (equal in quality to just about any US hospital). It did make me wonder about the prohibitively expensive level of the equivalent treatment in the US. I guess my advice to any uninsured Americans in immediate need of hospitalization is to try to be in Nairobi when it happens. They should be so lucky.

That’s it for now. Next week we leave Nairobi and head north into the Eastern Highlands. We will spend two days in Embu, circle around Mt. Kenya, and then spend one night in Nanyuki before returning to Nairobi. It will be nice to get out of the city for a bit. We haven’t left since we arrived.

As a final note I should add that many students have set up blogs while they are in East Africa. You can access them by going to the program website at https://moodle.lclark.edu/course/view.php?id=291 and signing in as a guest. Once you have done that, scroll down to Section 3 titled “Blogs and Photo Albums.”

That’s all for this week. Nitaandika tema juma kesho. Kwaheri.

Clinic and Pharmacy in Riruta, Nairobi

Journey around Mt. Kenya

September 29, 2008; Nairobi, Kenya — Last week we ventured outside of Nairobi as a group for the first time since our arrival in Kenya nearly a month ago. Our excursion, which lasted three days, took us around Mt. Kenya and to four different towns in the Eastern Highlands. The trip proved to be an excellent introduction to the beauty and ecological diversity of central Kenya as well as providing an informative—albeit at times disturbing—view of the realities of life in the country’s rural areas and small towns.

Our first stop on the road leading out of Nairobi was in the town of Thika. In the days of the first colonial settlements, Thika was the furthest one could reach by oxcart in a day’s travel from Nairobi. Settlers heading into the Eastern Highlands stopped for the night at the Blue Post Inn before continuing onward. The inn is still there and we were able to enjoy some refreshments there as well as a view of the nearby waterfall. Thika is also famous for being the childhood home of the writer Elspeth Huxley, who chronicled her early years in her memoir The Flame Trees of Thika. After Thika we continued until we reached the town of Embu, the headquarters of the Eastern Province and located southeast of Mt. Kenya. Embu strikes one as a rather unremarkable town, but typical of a reasonably prosperous regional hub in the agricultural center of Kenya. Like many of the towns in the Eastern Highlands, it began as a supply center and market for the European settlers.

The next morning we left for the town of Meru and traveled along a winding road into the heart of Kikuyuland. The landscape is extraordinarily beautiful: lush green hills and valleys dotted with terraced banana farms and tea plantations. Since it is now the beginning of spring in the Southern hemisphere all the flowers are in bloom. Lavender Jacaranda trees line the roads and the bright red “flame trees” can occasionally be seen as well. It is like a paradise. En route to Meru we stopped in Chogoria, the village of a former student of David Sperling who now works for the Clinton Foundation in Nairobi. We visited the primary and secondary schools there and were able to meet the students. After a series of awkward introductions our group spent nearly two hours playing sports with them—mostly volleyball and Frisbee.

After our visit to Chogoria we continued toward Meru. Shortly before entering the town we passed a small, partially obscured, and barely noticeable sign on the side of the road informing motorists that they are crossing the Equator. Very anticlimactic, really. I had expected a bit more fanfare (back home the sign inside the Holland Tunnel marking the crossing from NJ to NY is a bigger deal). We arrived at our hotel in Meru and the next morning I taught my class after nearly a week’s hiatus. Meru is a curious place, but rather unpleasant compared to Embu and, especially, to our adoptive home in Riruta back in Nairobi. The poverty is evident and our busload of western students immediately attracted unwanted attention. As soon as we stopped, several touts and street kids approached us to beg or try to hustle us. The most disturbing were street children addicted to glue and other industrial solvents. They sniff these highly toxic fumes almost continuously and as a consequence have suffered irreversible damage to their brains and nervous systems. They wander around in rags like zombies, with glassy eyes and hands outstretched, incapable even of forming speech. A few of the ones who confronted us actually had the bottles of glue clenched in their mouths as they staggered around. It was a horrible sight and I am certain it left a strong impression on the students. I have lived and traveled for years in the developing world and never encountered anything quite like it.

After Meru we left the lushness of the Eastern Highlands to head off to the frontier town of Isiolo. The terrain changed very quickly and the verdant farms and hills of Kikuyuland gave way to the flat, dry, and barren scrub of northern Kenya. Isiolo is a frontier post and is the last town for over 200 miles as the road continues northward. Unlike in the Eastern Highlands, most of the residents here are Muslims. Many are Somali migrants and most are extremely poor. There is a beautiful mosque at the entrance to the town, but not much else to recommend the place. To say it is a frontier town is no exaggeration. It looked like the set of a Spaghetti Western: dry, dusty, and with a slightly menacing air to it (ala “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”). Sergio Leone and a young Clint Eastwood would have loved the place. We spent 45 long and uncomfortable minutes there, had a surprisingly good lunch at a local restaurant, and quickly boarded our bus amid a throng of aggressive souvenir vendors and glue-addicted street kids.

Our final evening was spent in the pleasant settler town of Nanyuki. Along the road there the scrub and dust of Isiolo ended and we found ourselves cruising through rolling grain fields that could have been right out of Eastern Oregon or Northern California. Once we arrived in Nanyuki we stayed at the Equator Chalet which offered a comfortable and relaxing end to a long and stressful day. We ate dinner together and the next morning a few of us woke up at dawn to see the sun rise over Mt. Kenya. Later in the morning we visited a veterans’ cemetery maintained by Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The cemetery contains nearly 200 graves of servicemen killed in the Second World War. These include British, South African, and Rhodesian officers attached to RAF squadrons in East Africa and well as East and West Africans who served in the King’s African Rifles and various labor and auxiliary corps. The headstones were engraved in English, Afrikaans, Arabic, and Hebrew. The cemetery was a fascinating and out-of-the-way remnant of the British Empire and one that we happened on quite by accident. Afterwards we headed to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club—East Africa’s most posh and exclusive resort. After some artful persuasion by David Sperling, the management allowed us onto the grounds. The club was founded in the 1950s by the American movie star William Holden and continues to cater to very high-end clientele. The cheapest rooms start at US $900 per night while the priciest drinks on the menu include a martini for around $2100 (it has gems in it instead of olives). There is a helipad and landing strip for guests who can’t be bothered to drive the potholed and congested road from Nairobi. It was certainly interesting to see how the other side lives, and offered a stark contrast to the poverty and desperation we had seen in Meru and Isiolo a mere 24 hours earlier.

On Friday we returned to Nairobi and caught the brunt of the evening rush hour traffic at we entered the city. It was a relief to return to Riruta and our familiar environs. I am now much more appreciative of how much a community Riruta really is. Despite the urban squalor, it is clear that the schools, churches, and shops here do give the neighborhood an unusual degree of security and cohesiveness. Vagrancy and panhandling are not tolerated (in fact, I am much more likely to be approached for a handout on the streets of Portland than in Nairobi) and children are well looked after. That is not to say that what we encountered in the towns of the Eastern Highlands does not exist in Nairobi. It does in slums like Kibera and to a much greater degree. Yet life in Riruta and with our home stay families has insulated us from this reality. It was good for our group to get of a view of the beauty and ugliness of Kenya outside of our little oasis in Nairobi.

On the road between Embu and Meru in the Eastern Highlands of Kenya
24 September 2008

Final Week in Nairobi

October 5, 2008; Nairobi, Kenya — Our final days in Nairobi are nearing an end and tomorrow morning we board a bus for the 9-hour trip to Mombasa. The shift to the coast and away from Nairobi and Kenya’s central highlands marks an important transition in our semester in East Africa. We will be entering the predominantly Muslim and overwhelmingly Swahili-speaking communities along the Indian Ocean, beginning in Mombasa and continuing onward to the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. At the end of October we will head to the Tanzanian mainland and begin the safari portion of the program.

Last week was probably the most academically demanding since we arrived. Swahili classes took on a bit more urgency as the 2½ -hour final exam on Friday approached. Our daily routine began with morning Swahili instruction followed by ninety minutes of my Modern East Africa history class and then two hours of David Sperling’s religion and culture course in the afternoon. Swahili classes were largely an intensive review of the substantial amount of material covered in the last four weeks. In my course we focused on the development of colonial Kenya while David spoke in detail about the basics of Islam. David is an expert on East African Islam and over the years has developed many contacts in the Muslim communities along the coast of Kenya and Tanzania. His lectures were meant not only to round out the academic portion of his course but to prepare us for the people we will meet while we are on the coast—especially during our upcoming home stays in Pemba.

After the Swahili exam on Friday students returned home to spend the remaining time with their Nairobi home stay families and many of us also paid a final visit to our neighborhood pub, “The Office.” The proprietor and regulars toasted us in grand style and some the students gave Freddy (the owner) a new bottle opener for serving his room-temperature beer. The Office has been a nice, if unexpected, addition to our program and one of the many ways in which Riruta has come to feel like home. Yesterday we had a luncheon to say farewell to the home stay families and to thank them for making us feel so welcome and for taking such good care of us.

As I finish up this week’s entry I have mixed feelings about leaving Nairobi. Like many of the students, I am eager to move on to the new experiences that await us, but I have come to feel comfortable in Nairobi and will miss being here. This was not something I initially expected since Nairobi can be a daunting and difficult city with a nasty reputation that is not entirely undeserved. However, now that the students and I have discovered all the interesting things the city has to offer, selected our favorite stores and restaurants, learned to navigate the bus system, and made many friends here it will be hard to leave. Once we arrive in Mombasa we will be back to the disorienting anxiety of finding our way around a strange city and an unfamiliar culture just as we were when we arrived in Nairobi a month ago—but with it comes the excitement of immersing ourselves in something new.

Our final day in Riruta, Nairobi, 4 October 2008

Mombasa and the Kenya Coast

October 15, 2008; Zanzibar, Tanzania — On Monday, October 6th, our group departed for Mombasa after having been in Kenya for 33 days. The process of loading all our luggage onto a bus (a practice to which we have since become well accustomed) and piling ourselves inside reminded us of the itinerant nature of our program and brought to an end the settled comfort of our weeks in Nairobi. The lengthy bus journey took us from the highlands around Nairobi (elev. 6000 ft.) through a gradual descent to the coast. Much of the route cut through Tsavo National Park—Kenya’s largest—along a road that runs parallel to the tracks of the old Kenya-Uganda Railway built in the 1890s by the British with Indian labor. As we were passing through the area of Tsavo where the infamous man-eating lions had once devoured 35 railway workers, the rear suspension of our bus gave way and we ground to a sudden halt. We waited alongside the road for several hours while the coach company sent another bus to get us. Mostly the students played Frisbee or sat by the side of the road conversing with each other and with the occasional passerby. Maybe some were waiting for the lions. Shortly after nightfall our new bus arrived and we continued onward to Mombasa.

Mombasa and Nairobi are both in Kenya but the two cities belong to different worlds. Nairobi is a modern metropolis in the interior of the country and is a relatively new city, having been first surveyed and settled as a railway junction in the 1890s. Most of the people there prefer to speak English, Kikuyu, or some other tribal language instead of Swahili and the population of central Kenya is predominantly Christian. By contrast, Mombasa traces its roots to at least the 5th century AD and has long been tied culturally, economically, and religiously to the rest of the Indian Ocean. There is a strong Arab presence (mostly from Oman) and the large majority of people are Muslims. Swahili is also universally spoken as a first—or only—language and is preferred above all others. The bus journey may have seemed long, but in retrospect it was a remarkably short distance to travel from the office parks, shopping malls, and grand avenues of Nairobi to the mosques, bazaars, and winding alleyways of Mombasa.

Our hosts in Mombasa were Prof. Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany, a distinguished Swahili poet and scholar, and his niece and assistant, Amira, also a poet. They met our group on our late arrival and took us to an excellent local Swahili restaurant. The next morning they escorted us to Biashara (commerce) Street to buy the appropriate clothing in the bazaar. Men bought koftas (Muslim caps) and were fitted for kanzus (full length cotton tunics) while the women bought kangas (colorful headscarves and shawls). This is to be our attire for the next two weeks (see picture below), and indeed many of the places we have since visited would have denied us entry had we not obliged out hosts in this way. After our purchases we walked to the Swahili Cultural Centre of Mombasa where we were given an introduction to Swahili poetry and treated to a recital (with translation) by Ahmed and Amira. In the afternoon we toured Fort Jesus, a 16th-century Portuguese citadel built to secure that European country’s control over the maritime trade routes of the Indian Ocean. Since Mombasa has the only natural deep-water harbor along the entire coast of East Africa, Vasco da Gama immediately saw the benefit of the place when he first arrived there in 1498. Fort Jesus offers a commanding view of the ocean and the harbor and is remarkably well-preserved. It was constructed primarily from an early form of concrete made from pulverized coral and limestone mixed with water and honey. After Fort Jesus we departed for a resort hotel in the small town of Kanamai along the coast about an hour north of Mombasa. There we relaxed on the beach for two luxurious but short days. For me it was the first time I was able to swim in the Indian Ocean in nearly nine years.

On Thursday we were accompanied by Ahmed Sheikh to the coastal town of Mambrui to visit the Manazilul Abrar Madrassa, an Islamic secondary school for boys that is attached to a local mosque. The headmaster of the school and about half a dozen students welcomed us. They then gave us a brief lecture about the basics of Islam and answered our questions. It was a rare opportunity to see inside the Islamic educational system and to practice our Swahili. The madrassa educates young men from all over Kenya as well as some from Somalia and the Indian Ocean island nations of the Seychelles and Comoros. After visiting the madrassa we had lunch in the town of Malindi and then visited the ruins of the palace at Gede. These ruins date back to the 14th century, before the arrival of the Portuguese, at a time when the sultans of Mombasa and Malindi were the two major regional powers. The vast ruins contain remnants of a town square, several mosques, and houses in which were found Chinese currency among other artifacts. Gede was eventually abandoned and the ruins overgrown by the surrounding forest. During British colonial rule, archaeologists began to excavate the site and now it is open for visits. Once we had finished exploring Gede we boarded our bus and returned to Mombasa by nightfall. The next morning we departed Kenya by air, bound for Zanzibar.

It was almost exactly one hundred hours between when we departed Nairobi on Monday morning and when we flew from Mombasa on Friday, yet we managed to experience an extraordinary amount in such a short period. The Kenya coast is such a stark contrast to the interior that it is still hard to imagine that they are in the same country. In so many ways, the people of Mombasa and other coastal cities and towns seem more oriented to other parts of the Muslim world and the Indian Ocean than to their fellow Kenyans just a few hundred miles inland. Many of the students commented that they would have liked more time along the coast to get to know the area better. They have since had that opportunity in Zanzibar and Pemba. 

At the Manazilul Abrar Madrassa in Mambrui on the Kenya coast

9 October 2008

At the ruins of the Gede Fort in Malindi on the Kenya Coast

9 October 2008

Zanzibar and Pemba

October 25, 2008; Zanzibar, Tanzania — It has been a while since I updated this blog, but I have been on holiday this week and so I don't feel all that guilty about the delay. Much has happened since our group left Mombasa and arrived in Zanzibar by air on October 10th. The flight was short and uneventful but we did manage to get a wonderful view of the East African coast as we headed out over the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar. Once we arrived, our schedule left us several days to explore Stone Town, the main port and commercial hub of the island.

Stone Town is an extraordinary place that oozes history and—to me at least—seems to have more character than any other point on our itinerary thus far. The old section of town is a dense maze of streets and alleyways with white-washed houses rising up unevenly three or four stories above the street. Bazaar stalls and street vendors can be found in all but the quietest spots. In fact, the streets and walkways are so narrow that the sun’s rays shine only onto certain spots and move in an arc as the hours of the day pass by. The plain white stucco and plaster of the buildings are offset by their stunningly ornate carved wooden doors. These are incredibly intricate and often sport polished brass fittings along with the carvings. The architecture overall is a blend of Arab, Indian, European, and African influences. So are the cuisine, art, clothing, and people. As an historian, I have found Zanzibar endlessly fascinating. It seems like an odd mixture of the French Quarter of New Orleans and some of the southern port cities in India like Goa and Cochin—if only for the dripping humidity, lethargic pace, and atmosphere of elegant decay. Dozens of boats are anchored in the harbor at any given time, ranging from freighters to yachts, trawlers, punts, and dhows. The last of these are a type of Arab sailboat whose design has not changed in centuries. Their most prominent feature is a single triangular sail made from heavy brown canvas. The mere sight of them makes you feel like you have been transported to a different age.

Our first two days in Zanzibar included a walk around Stone Town and visits to some of the more important sites. We did some shopping in the main bazaar on the Creek Road and saw the old fort and the palace museum, remnants of the time when Zanzibar was ruled by the sultans of Oman. The Omani rulers were in power until the late 19th century when the British took over. Zanzibar’s Anglican cathedral was built, deliberately, on the site of the old Arab slave market. Many of the early British explorers—Richard Burton and David Livingstone, in particular—were openly hostile to the Zanzibar Arabs and made no secret of their desire to end the slave trade. In the spot where the slave market once stood are today the remains of some the dungeons and holding areas as well a very touching memorial inside the cathedral to Livingstone for his life’s work in ending the East African slave trade.

Apart from the historical and cultural landmarks, I’ve been in Stone Town long enough now to have also found a few favorite hangouts. The first is the Mercury Café named for Freddie Mercury, the rocker from the band Queen, who was born—of all places—in Zanzibar. I have to admit that the café does play a lot of bad country music for an establishment named after a rock star, but they do serve the best octopus pizza and the coldest beer in town. The view of the harbor is an added bonus. My second preferred relaxation spot is the terrace bar in the Africa House Hotel. How does one describe the place? The decor is like the inside of Rick’s “Café Americain” in the film Casablanca but the characters that frequent the place around sunset are more reminiscent of a Graham Greene novel. There is certainly the usual cohort of tourists but also a cadre of longtime foreign residents who meet in the evening and start drinking. There is an air of mystery and boozy expat decadence about the place that makes one think that in an earlier and more exciting day the bar was a hive of espionage and illicit dealings. Maybe it still is.

Our time in Zanzibar was divided by a three-day trip to the island of Pemba just to the north. After a harrowing overnight ferry ride we arrived on the 12th in Mkoani, the maritime terminal on the south end of the island. We headed north, had breakfast in the port town of Chake Chake, and traveled onward to a spice farm. It was interesting to see the cloves laid out to dry in the sun by the side of the road and to sample cinnamon, tamarind, pepper, cardamom, lavender, lemongrass and other spices straight from the trees and bushes. Cloves are by far the biggest export since they only grow in Zanzibar and Pemba (and one other small island in Indonesia—or so I’m told).

Pemba immediately strikes the first-time visitor as a prelapsarian bliss of lush rolling green hills, turquoise lagoons and inlets, mangrove and palm glades, and farm plots dotted with thatched-roof villages. Many of the students commented that the island seemed like a paradise. Pemba has virtually no tourism (unlike neighboring Zanzibar) and nowhere to be seen were the touts, hustlers, and general hangers-on that are endemic to tourist spots like Stone Town and are a constant source of irritation. One can only hope that tourism does not come to Pemba—though it surely will. Yet, the island is definitely poor and underdeveloped and what seems like idyllic charm to outsiders comes at a price to the inhabitants. There are very few cars on the (surprisingly good) roads and much of the island does not have electricity or running water. Unemployment is high and many families survive on clove exports and remittances sent by relatives working on the mainland. Nevertheless, the people are incredible warm and generous and the students were able to stay with families in the fishing village of Tumbe on the northern end of the island. It was a valuable experience to see people living in such a close community and so seemingly isolated from the rest of the world. It was also a test of our Swahili proficiency to be among people who hardly ever speak English (many do not speak it at all) as well as of our ability to respect and conform to their cultural practices—for example, the women in our group were covered from head to toe in accordance with conservative Muslim practice for most of the time there. These home stays were something of an experiment since no LC East Africa program had ever done anything like this before. In fact, it took weeks of patient and delicate negotiations by David Sperling and Hajj, his contact in Pemba, to make it happen. Yet in the end the response from both the students and villagers was overwhelmingly positive. As a result, the Pemba home stays are likely to become a regular component of future programs.

After the home stays we returned to Zanzibar on the 15th just in time to receive our absentee ballots in a FedEx package from Portland, which the students dutifully completed and sent back two days later. This is the first presidential election in which they have participated, so it was an exciting feeling for them to be part of this process yet on the far side of the world. They also completed David’s history course and took my final exam on Friday—thus completing three of the four courses of the semester. The albatross is now lifted from around their necks and placed onto mine since I now have 23 exams to grade. As one would expect, it was a happy occasion for the students and their temporary liberation began the next day with the start of their week off. Most of the students stayed in Zanzibar to lounge on the beach or bike around the island. I took my own holiday by returning to Pemba. I stayed in a small beach resort on the northern tip of the island and was at last able to spend a bit of time with some people my own age. It was a wonderfully relaxing break. Pemba is as close to the proverbial desert island as I have ever experienced: white powdery beaches surrounded by tropical forests and empty for miles at a stretch, crystal clear water with coral reefs that reach nearly to the surface, and calm tides and a gentle surf with the occasional dhow plying the surface in the distance. The week went by quickly and I returned today to Zanzibar. I will reconnect with the students tomorrow when we reconvene as a group in the village of Kendwa on the northern end of Zanzibar. We leave for the Tanzanian mainland early on Monday to begin the safari component of the program. These last few weeks I am certain will fly by.

Well, that’s it for now. Everyone is well (apart from the usual bouts of illness—nothing too serious). As we begin the safari portion of the program our access to the internet will diminish substantially and, for a few weeks at least, it will be altogether nonexistent. Please understand if we do not email or phone home as often as we have up until now. For my part, I’ll do my best to keep my blog up to date and get caught up when I fall behind. I have a feeling our most exciting and challenging days are still ahead of us.

Our beach landing at Pembe Abwe on the Tanzania coast

27 October 2008

Pembe Abwe and Arusha

November 6, 2008; Arusha, Tanzania — Greetings from Arusha. We arrived safely here on Monday and are making final preparations for the safari, which we begin early tomorrow morning. As you might suspect, the big news right now in this part of the world is the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States. For weeks we have been asked about the election by many of the Kenyans and Tanzanians we have met during our journey. Most were overwhelmingly (though not universally) in favor of Obama but some were not convinced that a black man could ever be elected US president. As you can imagine, the people here are ecstatic and there has been a festive atmosphere in town for most of the day since the elections results began being announced at 3AM. I am told that in Kenya the government has declared tomorrow a national holiday.

In the last ten days our travels have taken us from the island of Zanzibar to the coast of Tanzania and just recently to the town of Arusha at the base of Mt. Meru. On October 27th we departed from the beach resort of Kendwa at the northern end of Zanzibar by boat and traveled for four hours until we arrived at the village of Pembe Abwe. At Kendwa we were met at sunrise by Mike Peterson and his nephew Zach; they are with the family-owned Dorobo safari company that will be taking care of us for the next month. After a brief introduction we got underway. During the voyage our group was divided between two motorized dhows and we cruised for most of the way until landfall when one of the boats cut the engine and finished the final mile or so of the voyage under sail power. The boats then dropped anchor on what looked like a deserted beach and all of us waded ashore in the waist-deep surf with our luggage held above our heads, immediately after which we stopped for a group photo.

The Dorobo compound at Pembe Abwe is marvelous place. It is situated in a palm grove immediately adjacent to the beach and consists of thatched palms bandas (A-frames) and a circular dining area/classroom of thatched-roof awnings surrounding a baobab tree. For a week we lived like the Swiss Family Robinson and spent the days snorkeling and completing the marine and coastal ecology unit of our biology course. The first class involved us examining a tidal pool along the beach and walking out to a nearby reef at high tide for the first snorkel. The second day was our first boat excursion to snorkel in the Maziwa protected reef a few miles off shore. The reef there is beautiful but our snorkeling experience was diminished somewhat when we found ourselves swimming in the midst of a bloom of thousands of jellyfish. Most were cone jellies that are harmless, but mixed in with them were assorted stinging jellyfish. The stings were like tiny jolts of electricity; only mildly painful but still extremely distracting while we were trying to get the lay of the reef and identify the various types of marine life. Thankfully during the next few days, the jellyfish were not a problem.

Our marine ecology studies involved snorkeling in the morning and lectures in the afternoon. The objective was to become proficient enough at identifying fish, marine invertebrates, and coral that we could pass a written exam and conduct a reef transect (the latter being an inspection of a 500 sq. meter section of reef and counting marine life for use in compiling reef statistics). It is hard to adequately describe the beauty and diversity of an East African coral reef. There are hundreds of different species of marine life within easy view of the surface—so many, in fact, that it is hard to keep track of them all. Schools of vividly colored tropical fish swim close by and on the ocean floor are dozens of types of corals, anemones, giant clams, and other sea creatures. We also saw sea turtles, stingrays, and even a few stonefish, the last of which have the distinction of being the most venomous fish in the world. Despite their deadly spines, they are actually shy and mostly non-aggressive and so we were able to get a close but cautious view of them. No sharks, alas. We’ll have to save those for next time.

The other, less pleasant, introduction to African wildlife was our first encounter with the siafu, the dreaded army ants (or safari ants, as they are often called here). Few descriptions can do justice to these wretched creatures. They travel in columns up to a mile long, each of which includes millions of ants. They devour everything in their path and no other animal can take them on and win. Anyone unfortunate to step in or around them will find their legs covered in them up to the knee within seconds. At that point the little monsters emit a chemical signal and then in unison sink their pincers into the victim’s flesh. The pain is intense and the ants cannot be brushed off. Instead they must be plucked out individually like staples. Some of the ants bite down so strongly that they get their heads ripped off rather than let go. We’ve even been told that some of the pastoral tribes use the ants as sutures for wounds by holding them against lacerations so that the pincers close the wound once the heads are broken off. Horrifying, but then again I suppose it is good to know that someone has managed to find a use for these despicable insects. While we were at the coast, a group of students were driven out of their banda in the middle of the night by a column of siafu. At our campsite in Arusha this week we have been plagued by them, especially around the showers and latrines. We have become so alert (or paranoid) about where we step, especially at night, that we often feel phantom bites whenever a blade of grass or twig brushes our legs. This is by far the most unnerving aspect of our experience on safari, at least for now.

Not much else to tell. On Monday we headed inland and upcountry for the first time in nearly a month. Just before arriving in Arusha after an 11-hour journey we passed Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru—a truly impressive sight. I had mixed feelings about leaving the coast. While I was glad to leave behind the humidity and some of the more unsavory tourist traps, I know that I will also miss the easy pace and distinctive flavor and charms of Swahili coastal culture. Still, it is good to be moving on. The staff of Dorobo Safaris and their families have been extremely welcoming and it is nice to know that we’ll be well looked after in the coming weeks. The safari and Maasai home stays will be the final leg of our journey. The route will take us into the Nou Forest and Yaida Valley and then through the three major parks: Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and Tarangire. We will be gone for four weeks and this will be the period in our program when we are least accessible. Please do not be offended or alarmed if you do not hear from us at all during this time. We will have no access to email or to a landline phone. Some of us have cell phones so you can try to call, but even then we will probably be in areas with no coverage for most of the time. We return to Arusha on December 2nd and will have much to tell. 

Dorobo campground in Arusha Tanzania, 5 November 2008

Safari

November 23, 2008; Soit Orgoss, Serengeti, Tanzania — On Thursday, November 6th, we departed for four weeks of safari led by Thad Peterson and assisted by his son Zach, four Dorobo guides, and half a dozen support staff. For a month now we have lived in tents, eaten our meals under the open sky, attended to basic hygiene using portable showers and latrines, and broken camp every few days only to set it up again in a new location. The safari has long been known to be the defining experience of the East Africa program—at once the most demanding and the most rewarding part of the entire semester. In the end, it is hard to do justice in a few paragraphs to the intensity, challenges, and richness of a month-long safari in the savannah of East Africa. One thing I can say is that the minimal amount of patience I have for camping enthusiasts in the US who like to “commune with nature” has only been further diminished. Nature is not to be communed with. She is an adversary: indifferent to suffering and weakness, offering few second chances, and as cruel in her destruction of life as she is generous in creating the conditions that allow it to flourish. As Murphy says, “Nature is a mother.” But at the same time the beauty and mind-boggling diversity of the ecosystems of East Africa are overwhelming. Yeats once described Irish nationalism as a “terrible beauty” but that description is much more fitting to the dynamic world of the East African highlands.

Our first four days were spent encamped in the savannah near a mountain that the Maasai call Oldonyo Sambu. It rained for much of the first two days, but when the sun came out and things dried up we were finally able to conduct a few hikes and climb the mountain. This was also our first introduction to the Maasai culture. The Maasai are one of the largest ethnic groups in East Africa with a network of tribes spread across the Rift Valley in both Kenya and Tanzania (the borders of which are meaningless to them). Relative to their percentage of the entire population they occupy a disproportionately large place in the western imagination of East Africa and have acquired something of a romantic mystique that is not fully enjoyed by other tribes. The Maasai are mostly pastoralists, raising cattle and defending their herds fearlessly against natural predators. Maasai men were our guides during this period and would often sing and dance with us in the evenings. This was a nice introduction to the people who will host our third and final home stay in Loliondo at the end of the month.

While we were at Oldonyo Sambu, Thad mentioned that nearby there were some old bunkers built by the Germans during the First World War to guard northern Tanzania (at the time German East Africa) against incursions from Kenya (at the time British East Africa). It is hard to believe that the remote savannah of Oldonyo Sambu was actually a World War I battlefield. When staring out from our camp at the vastness of the surrounding landscape, visions of the Somme and Gallipoli don’t exactly come to mind as points of comparison. Unfortunately, we did not have time to see the bunkers.

The following week was spent in the Tarangire National Park, Nou Forest, and Yaida Valley. Tarangire is major tourist attraction and we found it filled with land rovers, luxury lodges, and hundreds of western tourists. Given our earlier experiences the parks seemed a bit artificial, almost like being inside a giant zoo. While the animals allowed us to get closer to them, their behavior indicated that they had long been acclimatized to tourists. Nou Forest, a high-altitude rain forest, was more to my liking. It was lush, vibrant, relatively isolated, and our time there allowed our group to become acquainted with the Iraqw people: an ethnic group of cultivators that live at the edge of the forest. The high point of our time in Nou Forest was a day-long hike to and from a hidden waterfall deep inside the forest.

The next stop was Yaida Valley. This is a restricted tribal area that requires special permission to enter. We spent four days here and were introduced to the Hadza people. The Hadza are one of the few remaining groups of genuine hunter-gathers left in the world. The students and I had a chance to go out with them on the hunt; digging up roots, opening up beehives inside trees (we didn’t do this; we watched from a safe distance), and tracking and killing small animals. Of all the people we have met in Africa, the Hadza live the closest to nature. They survive in the harshest of environments, but never seem to go hungry since they are so adept at finding nutritious food sources in the unlikeliest of places. During my site visit the previous year, I had visited Yaida Valley and found it to be one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever experienced. It is certainly the most remote place on our itinerary. Yaida Valley forms a small part of the larger Rift Valley that runs the length of East Africa. This particular region is the site of some of the oldest human remains found anywhere in the world. The Hadza showed some of the students their cave paintings but could not say who painted them or how old they were since these people have little chronological sense of their own history. The paintings could have been fifty years old or several hundreds (or even thousands) of years old. In some ways, the Hadza are like living human fossils. It is a wonder that they have been able to maintain their distinct way of life into the modern age and it is doubtful how long they can continue to do so.

We left Yaida Valley and continued on to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This is the premier park in Tanzania for viewing wildlife. The park is situated inside a giant volcanic crater ten miles in diameter. As we drove across, Ngorongoro seemed to me even more like a zoo than Tarangire. It was teeming with tourists and any animal worth viewing usually had a caravan of land rovers in tow with people frantically taking pictures like paparazzi chasing A-list celebrities. There was something a bit unseemly about the whole thing, but the chance for us to get a brief glimpse of the energetic East African tourism industry did allow us to appreciate the great amount of time we have spent off the beaten track. After Ngorongoro we spent the day traveling to a campsite called Soit Orgoss just outside of the famed Serengeti National Park. Our campsite was located on a rocky bluff with a commanding view of the Serengeti. No photograph of the place can do justice to the majestic beauty of this vista. We spent four days here and ended the safari component of the program with a final exam on the last day. Today we bid farewell to Thad and Zach as they headed back to Arusha. Tomorrow we pack our gear, break camp, and head north to Loliondo to complete the final portion of the program: the Maasai home stay. 

Acacia tree in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania

10 November 2008

View northward of Lake Eyasi in the Yaida Valley, Tanzania

15 November 2008

Among the Maasai

December 4, 2008; Arusha, Tanzania — Our group is back in Arusha and we are about to complete the last full day of the program. Right now we are luxuriating in a five-star hotel near the center of town just days after the end of an entire month on safari. It is too soon to process fully the experiences we have had—although I must say that lounging by the side of a pool, eating meals in a hotel restaurant, and sleeping in the comfort of a king-sized bed is as good a place as any to start. In fact, just being back in the urban intensity of Arusha and surrounded by every sort of modern amenity has, for me at least, led to a feeling of sensory overload. As happy as I am to be comfortable, pampered, and connected to the rest of the world, only now am I starting to fully appreciate the existence that the students and I have led this past month and just how extraordinary it really was.

On November 24th we arrived in Ololosokwan village in Loliondo, a rural area adjacent to the eastern boundary of Serengeti National Park. The safari was over and we were spending the final phase of the program in a Maasai community, each of us living with a different family. Our first two days were spent at the campsite, meeting with representatives of the Pastoral Women’s Council, a group that acts as legal and educational advocates for the Maasai in the area and who coordinates homes stays for visiting students. We also had presentations from the men and women in the community about the dynamics of Maasai life and what we could expect once we went off with our adoptive families. The group meetings had to be translated since many of the Maasai, especially the older generation, speak only Maa (the Maasai language). Apart from English, even our rudimentary Swahili was of limited use. On the day we were to be introduced to our families, we were led to the village and asked to stand in a row. The host mothers came along and selected us one by one. It was a bit like being picked for kickball back in elementary school. This was the first of the three home stays in which I participated, so like the students I was led off by my host mother.

Living in Maasai family for three days was incredible and I’m still not sure if afterwards I have learned more about the Maasai or about myself. I lived in a boma, which is a small compound of huts adjoining a cattle pen. Each hut houses a woman and her children. Each of these women is one of the wives of the man of the household who is in charge of the boma. Even after three days, I wasn’t sure whose children were whose. My host mother, Nadupo, appeared to be my age or maybe younger. Her children were often joined by their cousins who, because of their schooling, spoke Swahili and even some English and served as my conversation partners. We had translators assigned to us who would visit the various bomas and help the students and me communicate with our host families, but for me at least it was mostly the children who took me around and explained how I was to do my various chores.

Often I was glad to get outside the boma and do some work. The windowless huts are not exactly the most conducive places to healthy living. The walls and floor are made from dried cow dung and the roof is a wooden frame covered in dirt and thatch. There is almost no light inside and very poor ventilation. The interior was hot, smoky, dark, teeming with flies, and I could not stand up without hitting my head on the ceiling. I slept on a wooden board eighteen inches above the ground and with two baby goats living underneath (no joke). Getting outside was a relief from all of this, except of course for the flies. That was probably the part of living in the boma that took the most getting used to. The flies were everywhere and only continuous movement at a quick pace could keep them off—and even then just for a few seconds. The constant buzzing and the sensation of flies crawling all over one’s body and face was, I must admit, no small distraction. But like many things we confronted during our time in Africa, what at first seemed unbearable become bearable and then eventually routine.

My chores included helping to mend the branch fencing of the cattle pen directly next to the boma and helping to milk the cows. Actually, it is highly doubtful how much help I really was at the latter of these tasks since it took more effort for my host mother and one of the younger wives to show me how to do it than to do it themselves (and I was never much good at it). I also helped the younger boys plow a nearby field—which is backbreaking work, as it turns out. And just in case you are wondering, herding cattle apparently was considered work too important to be entrusted to someone like me, even under supervision (this was communicated to me in no uncertain terms when I asked, and it was a humbling moment indeed). But occasionally I would accompany the men and boys to watch them wash their cattle. The cattle washing station is a giant elongated water trough filled with a chemical solution and covered by a shed roof. The herds are assembled in front of it and the cattle driven through it a few at a time. Each cow or bull has to be washed every two weeks to get the ticks off it. It is vital that the herds be clean and healthy since everything in the life of the Maasai seems to revolve around their cattle.

It is no exaggeration to say the cattle are central to the Maasai since these people own very little else and the main determinant of wealth and status is the size of their herds. Every day at sunrise, the men drive the cattle out to graze while the women remain at the boma to tend to the children and take care of the chores. While most of the cattle are kept in the main pen, the cows nursing calves are kept in a separate area just outside the huts. The women milk these cows twice a day: once at sunrise before the herds are driven out to graze and again in the evening when they return for the night. The fresh milk from these cows forms a major part of the Maasai diet and is served with every meal. It is taken straight from the cow to the boma where it is churned inside a gourd, heated over an open flame, sweetened or salted, and then served up warm. The end result is delicious and cannot be improved upon in any way. The milk is never more than a few hours old and comes from cows with no growth hormone injections or any other genetic modifications and which are allowed to graze out in the open on wild grass. I could certainly taste the difference and after the program is over it will be hard for me to go back to drinking refrigerated, pasteurized milk from dairy cows.

Three days with the Maasai allowed the students and me to experience a fundamentally different way of living. Notions of family, work, wealth, and even time in the Maasai culture are so unlike what is the norm not only among foreigners like us but for most other Kenyans and Tanzanians as well. It is impressive how the Maasai have managed to preserve their culture into the present day and the respect they enjoy from other Africans and the people who visit the region from elsewhere. Yet it is also readily evident how much their way of life is experiencing irreversible change. The younger generation is going to school and learning Swahili and English. Many of them are taking up farming in addition to their traditional herding and many of the younger men nowadays are taking only one wife. Cell phones are a recent addition to the material culture of Maasai life and have proved invaluable in coordinating the movement of herds, but for the younger generation they are also a means of staying connected to the outside world.

After the final day of the Maasai home stay we returned to the camp. At this point, there was a sense among the group that the program was unofficially over. All we had remaining was a two day transit back to Arusha and the Swahili oral exam. It was (and is) a great feeling to be done and to savor that sense of accomplishment. The final two days were taken up by a long but enjoyable journey across Northern Tanzania from Loliondo back to Arusha. Along the way we stopped at Lake Natron (an alkali lake bed that is a breeding area for thousands of flamingoes), hiked to a waterfall near our campsite, and even spotted a cheetah as we drove back to Arusha. The last of these experiences was especially thrilling since it occurred outside a national park and so it somehow felt more authentic than any of the lions or other animals we saw in Tarangire or Ngorongoro. At sunset we arrived in Arusha and settled into our hotel. Tonight we have our final dinner and tomorrow we go our separate ways. In a few hours, the East Africa program will be over, but my adventures here and in other parts of the continent will continue.

Maasai men herding cattle in Ololosokwan village, Loliondo, Tanzania

28 November 2008

Maasai Boma in Ololosokwan village, Loliondo, Tanzania

29 November 2008

Climbing Mt. Meru

December 10, 2008; Arusha, Tanzania — This is my first blog entry since the end of the program five days ago. I am back in the Outpost Lodge in Arusha sitting at a table in the bar and enjoying a cold Tusker while typing on my laptop. Last Friday after breakfast I bid farewell to the students as over half of them boarded the shuttle back to Nairobi. It was an odd feeling to see our group splitting up and going our separate ways after all these weeks together. In some sense I was sorry to see the program end since I know that I may never experience such an incredible journey again. But I must admit that another part of me was eager to strike out on my own and enjoy a bit of Africa alone or in the company of people my own age.

I decided to mark my last days in Tanzania by climbing a mountain. I had originally planned to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro but since I had only five days before I needed to return to Nairobi there simply wasn’t enough time. Instead I decided to climb Mt. Meru in nearby Arusha National Park. The summit of Meru is a mere 14,980 ft. (nearly 5000 ft. lower than Kilimanjaro) but local residents I spoke to told me that Meru is in many ways a more satisfying climb even if it does not bring with it the same name recognition and bragging rights. So in the midst of wrapping up the administrative loose ends of the program the previous week, I stopped in at a local safari company, hired transport, gear, and porters, and arranged for them to pick me up at the hotel on Friday.

The ascent and descent of Meru took four full days: the first was the climb to the lower base camp called Miriakamba Hut, (elev. 8,336 ft.), the second was to the higher base camp called Saddle Hut (elev. 11,712 ft.), the third was the grueling final ascent to the summit then back to the lower base camp, and the last leg was back to the gate of the park and then to Arusha. Every climbing party is required have a park ranger escort and I shared my ranger with Klaus and Werner, two pensioners from Germany who had come to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro. They’d decided to climb Meru first as a practice run. Together we began the ascent in the lush and tropical surroundings at the base of the mountain. Unlike a lot of other climbers I carried all my own gear (and I should add that, unlike a lot of other climbers who hired porters to carry their gear, I had occasion to question the wisdom of my decision countless times on the way up).

Meru turned out to be a spectacular but challenging climb. The most amazing part of the experience, apart from reaching the summit, was passing through the different ecological strata on the way up. The first leg took us through a tropical forest with colobus monkeys jumping across the trees above us and water buffalo and giraffes grazing in open fields nearby. The second leg gave way to scrub brush, ferns, and mossy rocks with no animals and few birds and insects. The third and final leg of the ascent led us through barren rock and volcanic ash with no visible signs of life. There were no plants, no birds, and not even any insects. It is hard to describe how strange this felt after being in equatorial Africa for over three months.

We began the final push to the top at midnight in order to arrive at the summit just before sunrise. It was a tough climb since we were already feeling the effects of the thin air when we awoke and the strenuous climbing weakened us further still. From midnight to dawn we scrambled over jagged volcanic rocks with ash blowing in our faces as we slowly made our way to the top. The summit of Meru is officially called “Socialist Peak”—a name inspired, no doubt, by the politics of Tanzania’s first president after independence, Julius Nyerere. It sits atop the remaining edge of a giant volcanic crater with sheer drops of hundreds of feet on either side. For acrophobes like me it was actually easier to make the climb in pitch darkness with only a headlamp to illuminate the area in directly front of me (rather than actually seeing what was really around me). Thank God for small mercies.

Our group reached the summit right on time and within twenty minutes we were able to watch the sun break the surface and slowly rise into the sky just behind Kilimanjaro. The moment was truly breathtaking (and not just because we were oxygen starved at that height). We stared through the clouds thousands of feet downward at the greenery of Northern Tanzania and watched with each passing minute as the sky became lighter and as night turned to day. It was a sublime feeling and one that I wished could have lasted longer. However, we had to begin the descent moments after sunrise in order to get back to camp on schedule and to avoid becoming ill from the altitude. We reached Saddle Hut just before noon and then arrived at Miriakamba Hut by dinnertime. By the time we got to the bottom the next morning and then back to the hotel, my knees hurt so much that I could barely stand up. Nevertheless, it was great feeling of satisfaction to have climbed Meru and I am grateful to have been able to see at 15,000 ft. the sun rising over Africa’s highest mountain. It is a sight that will stay with me forever. 

View of Mt. Kilimanjaro from the eastern slope of Mt. Meru, Arusha National Park

5 December 2008

Sunrise at the Summit of Mt. Meru (14,980 ft.), Arusha National Park, Tanzania

7 December 2008

South Africa

December 18, 2008; Cape Town, South Africa — On December 11th I flew from Nairobi to Cape Town to spend a week visiting friends and to see a bit of South Africa. For years I have studied the history and cultures of South Africa and have always had a desire to visit that country. While walking the Camino de Santiago two and half years earlier I met two fellow pilgrims, Rev and Merv, who live outside of Cape Town and they invited me to visit if I was ever in the area. Since I had two weeks free at the end of the program and was already in Africa, this seemed to be the best opportunity to make the journey to South Africa. The flight from Nairobi to Cape Town connected in Johannesburg but I did not leave the airport. Johannesburg has a very bad reputation for violence and thus traveling in many areas of that city—even in daylight—is not recommended. In any event, my layover was too brief to allow me to venture out into town and instead I had lunch in one of the restaurants inside the terminal.

Once I arrived in Cape Town I had a few days to explore the city before meeting up with my friends. Cape Town has been described many international travelers as among their favorite places in the world to visit and it is not difficult to see why. The city is situated on Table Bay facing northward with the neighborhoods of Sea Point, Clifton, and Camps Bay stretching westward along the Atlantic coast. The center of town is called the City Bowl because it is surrounded on three sides by mountains. The most prominent feature of the city is Table Mountain which towers over everything else. The first European settlement was located just north of the mountain but over the centuries, as Cape Town grew, the city and suburban neighborhoods expanded to surround the peak. It is indeed a strange sight to have mountain in the middle of town. Wherever one goes it always looms above, dominating every other structure. The tallest high-rise buildings are a fraction of the mountain’s height. The town itself reminded me a bit of San Diego and has the feel of the Mediterranean or Southern California rather than the Africa with which I have become familiar. In fact, of all the foreign places that I have visited, this is the one that most resembles the United States (with the possible exception of Canada).

For the first two days I stayed in very pleasant B&B in Green Point near the Victoria & Albert Waterfront and spent most of that time walking around town. I managed to see the old Dutch fort and military museum, City Hall where Nelson Mandela gave his first public appearance after being freed from prison, the Company Gardens, the Bo Kaap Muslim neighborhood, and the District Six museum memorializing the forced eviction in the 1960s of the area’s non-white residents to the Cape Flats resettlement area further inland during the height of apartheid.

After two days I met Rev and Merv and stayed with them for the remainder of the week in Villiersdorp, about an hour inland from Cape Town. Villiersdorp is a farming community nestled in the mountains of the Western Cape. The area is stunningly beautiful and produces some the best wines in the world. We visited the town of Franschhoek (“French corner”) settled by Huguenots in the late 17th century and considered by many to be the gastronomic capital of South Africa. After a day visiting the Huguenot memorial we had dinner at an excellent French restaurant and returned to Villiersdorp.

One of the highlights of my visit to South Africa was the opportunity to go cage diving. The best place to do this is in Gansbaai which is about two hours south of Cape Town. The beaches and waters are teeming with seals and the dense seal population has resulted in some of the highest concentrations of great white sharks anywhere in the world. After a brief training session our dive boat headed out from the quay until we were a few miles out. As the crew dropped the cage over the side and baited the water the divers got suited up and waited for the sharks to show up. Each of us took our turn in the cage and were able to see the sharks up close underwater (though not as well as if we had done this in the winter months when the visibility is better). The sharks were truly amazing: graceful, powerful, and silent. They were not nearly as ferocious as they are made out to be in the popular imagination and, for the most part, they seemed more curious and cautious of us than we were of them. The cage dive was at once thrilling, frightening, and humbling. I’m glad that I finally had the chance to experience it.

The main disappointment of my trip to South Africa was that I did not have the chance to see more of the country. I never did get to KwaZulu Natal or to Pretoria. I also missed seeing Robben Island, the prison colony off the coast of Cape Town that housed Mandela and other political prisoners and which is now a heritage site. I had planned to go there on my final day, but the ferry service was cancelled because of rough seas. Oh well, something to save for the next trip. Since I missed out on Robben Island I was glad that at least earlier I had the chance to see the District Six museum. It has been less than two decades since the end of apartheid in South Africa and while the imbalance in political power in the country has largely been eradicated, the economic divisions have not. The country’s robust and diversified economy has lured many migrants from other parts of the continent and brought with it the resulting problems of unemployment and low wages.

The biggest concern among the South Africans I spoke to is violent crime, which is endemic and has risen to alarming levels (although Cape Town is much safer than Johannesburg or Durban). I never experienced any trouble, but I did feel all around me the anxiety and tension related to crime. The ubiquitous presence of razor wire, CCTV cameras, armed guards in even the best neighborhoods, and the warnings not to go out at night served as constant reminders of the risk lurking beneath the pleasant and tranquil atmosphere that I experienced most of the time. Again, the comparisons to the US were stark and unsettling. Despite all this, I found most South Africans optimistic about the future and extremely proud of the changes that their country has made in recent years and how they have transitioned from being governed by one the most odious regimes in the world into a functioning—if imperfect—democracy. South Africa is definitely a country that will require repeat visits to fully appreciate.

So it ends. I am finishing this last entry on my laptop in the Cape Town airport to be posted later. My flight to Nairobi departs in ninety minutes and I will be back in Riruta later this evening. In two days I return to London and then two days after that to New Jersey just in time for Christmas. I’ve been in Africa for nearly four months but it seems like just yesterday that I arrived. At the same time, the richness and variety of my experiences in this part of the world in some ways makes the time seem much longer. I have yet to appreciate fully how my journey in Africa has affected me, but I know that there are few parts of the world in which I have lived where I have developed such a strong sense of feeling at home. The easy-going warmth, genuine friendliness, and unassuming companionship of Africans are gifts that I will never forget and probably never fully appreciate. Evolutionary biologists have long since traced the origins of the first humans to the Great Rift Valley, so perhaps one can argue that any human being who travels to East Africa is experiencing a homecoming of the deepest kind. Maybe that is why the Africans I met often treated me like a long lost relative—on some level I suppose I was. Maybe that is also why I still cannot figure out if my departure from Nairobi in two days will constitute a return home or the leaving of it. T.S. Eliot wrote that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and to know that place for the first time.” We’ll see if he is right. 

View southward of Cape Town and Table Mountain

12 December 2008
 Mosque on Longmarket Street in Bo Kaap, Cape Town 

12 December 2008

View of Franschhoek in the Western Cape, South Africa

16 December 2008

Great White Shark in Gansbaai, South Africa

15 December 2008