Our last supper together back in the luxurious Panorama Campsite overlooking Lake Manyara and the Great Rift Valley was tinged with a sweet sadness, and I was weighed down with the feeling I have of making travelling-friends and leaving them only days later. It’s a strange feeling to have spent every moment of your waking hours with new people, coming to know their habits and gestures, the way they laugh and how much tomato sauce they put on their breakfast omelette, only to leave them again so soon. But unless you are travelling directly home it’s not so sad after all; my friends were going to Dar and then to Lake Victoria, and had another two weeks of adventures ahead of them, and I was headed back to Arusha and Moshi, and then to Istanbul. I realised that we had been the only group in the mess tent of all the campsites to have shared our dinner with our guide; it had been unthinkable not to invite Samwel to eat with us on the first night and we had taken all of our meals with him since, prepared and served on a beautifully laid table by our gentle cook Athumani. We had met Samwel's parents and his little nephew in his home village just outside Ngorongoro, and when we arrived back in Arusha at the end of the week we met his fiancée Stella in the market, whom he is to marry in December when he has saved enough for her dowry. Samwel was unfalteringly kind and caring, asking every day since the Spanish Sausage Plague, “Haika -” (his name for Erica) “- have you vomited today?” He would then go round the group and check the stomach-movements of everyone in turn. We were indeed a nice group.
In the morning we drove back south-eastwards to Lake Manyara, known for its flamingo population. The wildlife was not very apparent here compared with Tarangire, the Serengeti, and Ngorongoro, but we saw the pink and white flamingoes, some more hippos and elephants, and lots of bare-bottomed baboons, and I didn’t mind simply driving around in the sunshine in our beloved dusty Cruiser. We were all a little tired, my friends most of all, as they were still recovering from climbing Kili and their subsequent illnesses, so there was a fair bit of nodding off going on in the back of the car: surprisingly so given that the dirt tracks we travelled on jolted us about and occasionally led to some head-on-window smacking.
On the way to Arusha we stopped at a Maasai village where the locals gave us a welcome dance involving a lot of jumping, in which we were strongly encouraged to participate, and then they showed us their houses. The Maasai women build the bomas from wood and cow dung, and they tend to last around six to seven years before the wood starts to disintegrate, and the nomadic tribe moves on to fresh pastures. The wife and children all share one bed in the boma, while the man has the other to himself. A Maasai boy traditionally has to kill a male lion with his spear in order to attain manhood, but it was unclear to me whether this practice still happens. The Maasai I spoke with told me contradictorily that this practice was now outlawed and they no longer participated, and that they still continued to do so.
Arusha felt very different when I returned. On my first day in Tanzania, I had had a lot of men walking with me in the street, starting conversations and even sitting down with me when I ordered a beer. But upon my return something was different: not only was my road no longer heaped with piles of earth, but the steamrollers had flattened out the surface; and I was five days older and wiser, and more familiar with the people and the language. I had since learned a handful of Swahili words (although the following accuracy and spelling may be off). I felt that the difference was vast between my answering “jambo” with “jambo” (a pidgin word used to greet foreigners who know no Swahili), as opposed to responding with “Mambo!” (hello and how are you?), followed by “poa, asante” (I’m well, thanks). “Jambo” led nowhere, but “Mambo” led to a small, friendly conversation in which both parties participated. I had learned how to say “My name is Sarah" (“Jinalangu ni Sara”). I could ask for chips and chicken with chilli sauce (“Chips kuku with pilipili”), and say afterwards that it was delicious (“tam sana”). I had been very nervous of being outside after sunset as I had read that Arusha was dangerous after dark, but Samwel had advised a curfew of 9pm and now I felt perfectly safe when darkness fell. I even stayed out until the grand time of 8pm. Perhaps my body language was more self-assured, or maybe I simply looked so grubby after five days in the plains, with clouds of dust rising from my boots with each step, that no one wanted to approach me, but my last evening was very peaceful. Even the prices were different. Previously I had been charged TZS 5,000 shillings for a beer, 1,500 for a bottle of water; and 3,000 for the Moshi-Arusha bus; today they were 2,500, 1,200, and 2,500 for the same things in the same places. A little Swahili goes a very long way.
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More on Tanzania (chronological order):
Arusha, Tanzania - my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa
Tarangire National Park - meeting the elephants
The Spanish Sausage Plague - disaster strikes the Spaniards
Sunrise in the Serengeti - the plague lifts
Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino - we look for rhinos and stare hard at a rock
Lake Manyara and the Last Supper - a little Swahili goes a long way
A goddamn flight on a goddamn plane - karma strikes a rude man as I head to Istanbul
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| Photo by Esculapio 1996 via wikicommons |
On the way to Arusha we stopped at a Maasai village where the locals gave us a welcome dance involving a lot of jumping, in which we were strongly encouraged to participate, and then they showed us their houses. The Maasai women build the bomas from wood and cow dung, and they tend to last around six to seven years before the wood starts to disintegrate, and the nomadic tribe moves on to fresh pastures. The wife and children all share one bed in the boma, while the man has the other to himself. A Maasai boy traditionally has to kill a male lion with his spear in order to attain manhood, but it was unclear to me whether this practice still happens. The Maasai I spoke with told me contradictorily that this practice was now outlawed and they no longer participated, and that they still continued to do so.
Arusha felt very different when I returned. On my first day in Tanzania, I had had a lot of men walking with me in the street, starting conversations and even sitting down with me when I ordered a beer. But upon my return something was different: not only was my road no longer heaped with piles of earth, but the steamrollers had flattened out the surface; and I was five days older and wiser, and more familiar with the people and the language. I had since learned a handful of Swahili words (although the following accuracy and spelling may be off). I felt that the difference was vast between my answering “jambo” with “jambo” (a pidgin word used to greet foreigners who know no Swahili), as opposed to responding with “Mambo!” (hello and how are you?), followed by “poa, asante” (I’m well, thanks). “Jambo” led nowhere, but “Mambo” led to a small, friendly conversation in which both parties participated. I had learned how to say “My name is Sarah" (“Jinalangu ni Sara”). I could ask for chips and chicken with chilli sauce (“Chips kuku with pilipili”), and say afterwards that it was delicious (“tam sana”). I had been very nervous of being outside after sunset as I had read that Arusha was dangerous after dark, but Samwel had advised a curfew of 9pm and now I felt perfectly safe when darkness fell. I even stayed out until the grand time of 8pm. Perhaps my body language was more self-assured, or maybe I simply looked so grubby after five days in the plains, with clouds of dust rising from my boots with each step, that no one wanted to approach me, but my last evening was very peaceful. Even the prices were different. Previously I had been charged TZS 5,000 shillings for a beer, 1,500 for a bottle of water; and 3,000 for the Moshi-Arusha bus; today they were 2,500, 1,200, and 2,500 for the same things in the same places. A little Swahili goes a very long way.
______
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More on Tanzania (chronological order):
Arusha, Tanzania - my first visit to sub-Saharan Africa
Tarangire National Park - meeting the elephants
The Spanish Sausage Plague - disaster strikes the Spaniards
Sunrise in the Serengeti - the plague lifts
Ngorongoro Crater and the elusive rhino - we look for rhinos and stare hard at a rock
Lake Manyara and the Last Supper - a little Swahili goes a long way
A goddamn flight on a goddamn plane - karma strikes a rude man as I head to Istanbul
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