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
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
View northward of Lake Eyasi in the Yaida Valley, Tanzania
15 November 2008