Friday, June 5, 2009

The Beast Monster

So, I spoke of mental scars. This 'mountain' (read devil mountain) would be the source of those scars. Well, this and the eastern-style toilets.
This volcano was to be the pinnacle, literally and figuratively, of our safari. When we were told we would climb a volcano, naturally we were all for it. My mind wandered to the lava floes in Hawaii, where you walk on flat rock and say 'Hey! There's lava over there, cool.' As you can see by the above picture, there is no flatness on that volcano. Nor is there really any rock, as we later found out. But I digress.
On our last day at the Serengeti, we awoke at 6am to start the long 8 hour drive North to Lake Natron, a place famous for its massive flocks of flamingoes and red algae. At any time, the lake can look red, blue, green, or pink, pretty cool. We made camp at about 4 in the afternoon, and we immediately started to hike along one of Natron's tributary rivers to gorgeous waterfalls. It was so worth it. Mostly because certain people (you know who you are) had not taken a shower during the entire safari and the safari cars were beginning to develop a funk.
We made it back to camp just as dark began to fall on the lake. A meager meal of rice and lentils was served as our Maasai guides told us about the mountain. All that was required was a windbreaker, a walking stick, and two bottles of water. We would leave at 11pm. Right, PM. It would be too hot to hike during the day and this way, we could see the sunrise over the stunning landscape of Lake Natron. By 9PM, we had crawled into our sleeping bags for some sleep. Needless to say, morale was low. Who in their right mind would awake at 11PM, after two hours of sleep and a small meal, and hike a 10,000 ft. volcano in the middle of the night? Well, TIA. Everyone woke up and rallied. Climbing into the trucks in a dream-state, we began to drive to the foot of Oldoinyo Lengai, Maasai for 'God's Mountain.' (Wrong.)
As we started the hike, I felt like we were the Wise Men, going to see Baby Jesus. The stars were bright and the moon was massive in the sky, almost cloaked by whispers of clouds. My walking stick from an acacia tree brushed aside thicks patches of golden scrub. The only sound was 30 feet walking through the volcanic ash. Well, until Brock started listening to Daft Punk and singing, that kind of ruined the atmosphere I had going. He had taken some of Joanne's caffeine pills, and they were working for him. He later found a glow stick to wave around, then I felt less like a Wise Man, and more like a raver.
Around the same time Brock's caffeine pills wore off, exhaustion started to take hold of most of us. We had hiked for maybe an hour, and the guides told us we had four hours left to the summit. Everyone dug in and decided to keep going. And that's when it started to get tough. The trail went straight up the face of the volcano, incredibly steep. At many points, you were forced to get on your hands and knees to crawl up the volcano. For almost all of us, it was too much. But then we saw Angie, one of the girls in the group, pushing herself to reach the top. No one could make her stop climbing, she was more determined than anyone I have ever seen. Even when the guides told her to turn back, she wouldn't. I think without Angie, many of us wouldn't have made it to where we did, she gave us the strength to keep going up. She was simply amazing.
After several hours more of climbing, maybe it was 3:30AM by now, people began to really feel it. A few of us began to get sick and about half of the group turned around. I decided to keep climbing but I can say now, I wish I had turned around. After another hour of crawling on my hands and knees in ash, I was beat. My calves were on fire, and I had sweat through my windbreaker. At about 8,000 ft., the remaining group met and took a rest. Now, the guides told us we only needed windbreakers to climb. But it was freezing. The wind had picked up, and it was bitter up there. It was as this point that we watched in a complete stupor our pull out gloves, a sweatshirt, and a cap for himself. Hmm. Brock, Mary Rose and I decided to head back down the mountain to find some respite from the wind, and then maybe start again. We found a small crevasse to hunker down in where Brock and I attempted to light a fire for warmth. Everything in my bag was burned; old plane tickets, receipts, napkins, notebook paper, wet napkins. Nothing caught. We tried burning the golden shrubs growing on the side of the mountain. Nothing. We gave up after exploding a lighter in our faces and fell asleep on top of one another and waited for daylight.
After an hour or so, we awoke to the sunrise. And our guides were right, we were amazed at what we saw. No, the sunrise was not beautiful, but the landscape, my god. It was hideous. I've never been to the moon, but the area around Natron is about as close as you could get I imagine. Grey rock on top of grey dirt, surrounded by grey rocks. Grey grey grey. Dry rock. Dry dirt. No animals. Nothing. For miles. Grey. Moon.
We all looked at each other and asked 'Why the hell did we do this?' Unfortunately, they blamed me because I organized the safari. Bleh.
We decided to hike down the mountain as sitting up and admiring the landscape was a complete waste of time. Hiking down proved to be just as treacherous as hiking up as it was all too easy to lose your footing in the ash and slide down thirty feet. We found that walking in the crevasses was much easier as there was solid ground underneath. The more we descended, we noticed the walls of the crevasse would grow. When they were about three feet high, we all agreed that we needed to find another way down this mountain. But there was no other way to see. We continued in our crevasse, looking for paths out. Forced to jump down small ledges, the walls continued to grow. As did the ledges. Eventually, we were jumping down five or six feet to continue. At one point, we jumped off one that was a sheer eight feet and we found ourselves stranded. To continue down, it was at least a ten foot drop and we saw that the walls would only get higher. Getting back the way we came seemed impossible. We were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Mary Rose took a picture of Brock and me and I though to myself, 'My god, this is it. This will be the last picture they find of us. It's like Into the Wild or something.' We sat and planned our next move. Brock and I thought that sitting where we were seemed to be the best option. If we continued downwards, we wouldn't be as visible for the rescue chopper. I looked around for things to burn for a signal fire, we began yelling 'HELP!' in unison, I found a whistle on my backpack and began blowing. At one point, I think we began to imagine voices yelling back to us. Finally, Mary Rose, bless her, suggested we climb back up and find a way out. And find a way we did. Brock and I pushed Mary Rose up these rock walls and we used our non-existent rock climbing skills to climb out. After half an hour of rock climbing, we found ourselves on a shale-like face of the mountain. If we were careful, we would have slid down the face back in the deep crevasse we had emerged from. We crab-walked across and all of a sudden, emerged onto the path up the mountain, covered with our foot prints. We were marooned in this crevasse while being only thirty feet from the path. Idiots.
We walked for two more hours down the mountain and found a car parked, waiting for us. We had been rationing water the way down, so we drank the car dry, and passed out for a few hours before we were taken back to camp.
So, not God's Mountain.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Returnment


Hello friends.
As you or may not have noticed, our beautiful group has returned from our beautiful Safari safely (minus some mental scars, perhaps).
Below are some pictures from the safari to Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and Natron. Afterwards, I will explain some.



Ah, mighty Iggy. After a massive rainstorm in the Serengeti ('I blessed the rains down in Africa!') we slipped and slid through the washed-out trails until we found a small pride of lions resting on an outcropping of rocks. They seemed perfectly happy to pose for our photos until someone opened their door a little. Then they stood and glared. The door was closed shortly afterwards. And those are flies on his face. We were no more than 15 feet away from these cats.
An elephant in Ngorongoro Crater, arguably the coolest place we stopped for safari. The Crater is essentially a microcosm for eastern Africa's ecosystem; we saw nearly everything there is to see.

Sunrise over the Serengeti. Which coincidently is spelled Sirengeti, but some old British dude got it screwed up a while ago.
We found a lioness devouring this wildebeest carcass in Ngorongoro. When she was finished, the jackals barged in (little dog guy on the left) for some grub, followed by vultures, and finally the hyenas came to bully everyone away. The one on the right eventually runs off with a full leg in his mouth.

Zebras are freaking cool. 'Nuff said.
Try and guess how many zebras are in this picture.
There's 27, but you'd never know. Camouflage, baby.




Thursday, May 28, 2009

You know pole sana?

Well, I had a surefire plan to upload pictures. We brought along the Macbook from the CSA office, so I was going to put my photos on there and then do something. As you may or may not know however, power surges in Africa are quite common. In fact, we lose power every Thursday night like clockwork. Unfortunately for my plan and for the laptop, the computer was plugged in during one of these surges, effectively frying the laptop. Pole sana.
In other news, we've been playing a lot of Uno, Tanzania-style. I consider Uno to be one of the most boring games ever, that is until I played with a bunch of the Masai that hang out around the hostel. Here's a brief overview of the Masai rules for Uno:
-Mistake: if you ever make a mistake during the game, say throw the wrong color, you must draw seven cards.
-Calling Uno: if you forget or wrongly call Uno on someone else, you draw two cards
-Doubles: (this is crazy) let's say a green nine is in play, if you have a red nine and a green nine, you can play both cards. This even works for Draw +2 cards and Wild +4 cards.

This promotes general mayhem. Before one of the Masai play one of these draw +2 cards, they look at you very sincerely and ask "You know pole sana?" Meaning: do you know how to say 'very sorry' in Swahili?
Good fun.

Yesterday we traveled to Arusha to see the Rwandan Genocide Trials. Most of the time, the trials can be extremely boring, with you listening to three hours of people asking "Did you staple the dossier?" "N0, it was paperclipped." "But where is the staple?" Etc...
Lucky for us, we got a cracker. It played out just like a movie. The defendant, Mr. Caremera was the Minister of the Interior of Rwanda during the genocide and VP in the interim government established by the Hutu Power groups. Needless to say, he was being charged with several counts of war crimes and what not. The prosectuor was a bad ass from America, and he was just grilling Caremera, who managed to deflect every question. At one point in the trial, Mr. Prosecutor (as he was referred to by Caremera) asked him whether Caremera was aware that government soldiers were using rape as a weapon. Caremera took 43 minutes to respond to this yes or no question, instead focusing on how clean and tidy of a person he (Caremera) is and how impatient the prosecutor is. Naturally, the whole group of people watching the trial was cracking up at this point.
Afterwards, we went to the Masai Market in Arusha, which was a terrible experience. There must be 50-100 shops crowded together, all selling the same mass produced souvineers at extremely high prices. And not one of them was Masai. After an painful 30 minutes of haggling, I left the market.
Teaching at KYGN has been going well lately, somehow I've been teaching math. One class is learning fractions and the other is learning basic Geometry. They latched right on to the Pythagorean Theorem the other day, although they have some trouble pronouncing Py-thag-or-ean. We finally bought a math book today, so hopefully the lesson plans will be a little more concrete. Luckily, a group of Israeli volunteers wandered into KYGN looking to teach the other day, and with us leaving for safari tomorrow, it was perfect timing.
Off to Lake Manyara, the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, and Lake Natron tomorrow!

Oh, best Swahili word so far? The word for round-about: keepi lefti.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Photos, phinally

Here are some pictures from the weekend. We took a hike on "the monkey trail." Couldn't figure out what the place was actually called, but we did see some monkeys. Capuchins, or colombas, or something. They look like skunks.
There was also this massively old tree. Over 200 years or something.
After we'd walked for about an hour, we emerged out of the forest into this clearing with some irrigation system. Very Lost-esque, I thought. The towers made for a great view of the land.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

May 21

Lots of news, lots of news. We've been in Moshi for a few days now and we're finally starting to get the hang of it. The largest problem for me has been adapting to local time. Apparently, it isn't rude to be two hours late to something, it's pretty much the norm. So when you're told that your ride will pick you up at 8:00 am, that certainly means 8:30 if not later. Or if the driver is drinking konyagi (local gin, terrible) while driving 50km an hour over dirt roads, don't worry, it's okay. Hakuna matata.
During the days, the group has been volunteering at a variety of sites, nearly all of them focused on teaching. I've spent a few days working at KYGN, a girls-only school. I would sit in the back of a pick-up and ride through the sugar cane fields and shanty towns on the edge of Moshi until reaching this leaning brick building, in which there is three classrooms for sixty girls. Unfortunately, I was given the task of teaching the 5-7 year olds. Can you imagine how difficult it is as a substitute teacher to come in and teach a class of 20 girls how to distinguish between different shapes and colors? Then add in the fact that they speak no English (besides yelling "teacha!" every minute) and I speak no Swahili. Although I did learn how to say stop (acha), no (hapana), and say sorry (ongea pole), all vital.
After two days of this, I threw up my arms in defeat. While I would love to continue working at KYGN, it's seems impossible to accomplish anything without a grasp of the language. My time there did have some bright moments though. When teaching one of the older girls, she guessed my age to be 40. Apparently that's a compliment in Tanzania?... And, when the younger girls were acting up, one of the little ones ran outside and broke off a big stick for me, so I could hit those that were misbehaving. I thought it was touching.
Undoubtably, the best part about KYGN is the ride in the morning. You go bombing down these pot-holed roads through the sugar cane fields, and Kili is right behind you, with huge coffee and banana plantations at the feet of the other mountains. It looks a lot like Costa Rica then, very eery.
I volunteered today at TCC, a school/orphanage. I worked with the same age group as KYGN, but these kids were much better behaved and spoke some English. Heaps of fun, TCC was. It's in the same region as the KYGN school, but you have to walk. An exhausting walk, let me tell you. But pretty. Mostly exhausting though.

I've taken ton of what I think to believe to be great photos, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get my pictures off the computer. Stupid Windows, making everything complicated.
Once I get those up, I'll be able to give a much better picture (dur) of Moshi and what we're doing here. Cross your fingers, it should be soon!

Word for the wise: When walking downtown Moshi, it's inevitable that you will be swarmed by men peddling everything from paintings to t-shirts. Saying no does not work. Nor does walking away. The most effective deterrent to these guys I've found, is to speak Spanish and act completely lost. It's an instant classic.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Mambo!

Answer: Poa!
Meaning, "how's it going?" "Cool!"


It's a common greeting in Tanzania, far more than "jambo." Apparently, only tourists say jambo.

We've finally arrived! After that painful layover in Detroit and a terrible flight to Amsterdam (the movie screen was broken, and the floor under my seat was wet, what?) we had a layover in Holland. We locked our bags at the airport and ventured out into downtown Amsterdam for a stroll around the Red Light District at 6am. Aside from the sex shops, prostitutes, and coffeeshops, it was quite beautiful. The skyline of Amsterdam is dominated by massive churches, smack dab in the middle of the District is a gorgeous chapel! Interesting.
Amsterdam Centraal Station was amazing, too. On the inside, it looks like the typical urban train station; neon lighting, dirty floors. Yet on the outside, the station is massive, covered in ornate carvings and gold.

We arrived at Kilimanjaro Intl. last night and as we stepped off the plane, the first thing we noticed was the smell. The air was so sweet, almost mesquite. It did not smell like Los Angeles, nor an airport for that matter. Floodlights lit up the runway as we walked off the plane, massive bugs circled the light fixtures.
As we expected, there was a huge mix-up with our visas. After an insanely high fee (hey, we're volunteering, it should be free!) we found our bags and crammed all twelve of us into a minivan for the drive to Moshi.
It was strange to drive so far without seeing a single streetlamp. The only light on the road came from our headlights. Villages and stores would emerge out the darkness without warning. Total darkness. We knew Kilimanjaro was right in front of us, but we'd never see it. The stars managed to shine through the cloud cover, you could just make out the Southern Cross.
More to follow, I'm out of time at the cafe!

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Detroit sucks.

"If there's anything you want,"
na na na nuh
na na na nuh
na na na nuh
"Come on back 'cuz it's all still here..."
na na na nuh
na na na nuh
na na na nuh

Not true for Detroit. The place sucks, really.
We landed in the Motor City at 4:30 this morning amid storms and turbulence. I mean, if landing is such a hassle, let's just skip Detroit, no one wants to be here.
We have an 11 hour layover today, with nothing to do. At this point in time, we are all experts on the Detroit International Airport. There's a phenomenal water fountain, a fast red tram that runs down the main terminal, and a Chili's. There you have it. 
It's all quite clean though, we've had no problem sprawling out on the floor for a nap. 
It's approaching noon, time for the next dose of anti-malarial drugs.
Kwaheri!