The wet season in Tanzania is extremely quiet of visitors in the bush. Large mammals disperse from many of their dry season home ranges and the wild sorghum and red-oat grass gets higher than a man’s head. The heavy rains wash away the harsh dry season as the mood changes. I’m lucky and spent six weeks this season teaching in the bush with a group of trainee guides.

I started training Asilia’s guides in 2007 when I was managing and guiding from Suyan Camp. Initially it was simple training to waiters and tent attendants to give them some knowledge of birds, plants, and insects in the camp. The idea grew into a three-month course for ten guides who are currently guiding from their various camps. Its success initiated two-week on-going

training courses in November and May every year. Working with professional teachers on methods and the syllabus, I refined the course into a six-week course ending with two weeks placement in a camp with a mentor guide.

Our guide course started with three weeks back in Piyaya. The rains had brought the wildebeest back out onto the plains and our game drives were filled with lion (over 20 individuals) and cheetah (11 individuals) sightings. We completed the practical three weeks in a camp in Tarangire National Park. The diversity that we encountered in this course rivals any other course in Africa. Our carnivore list included leopard, lion, cheetah, caracal, serval cat, wild cat, genet, golden jackal, black-backed jackal, bat-eared fox, aardwolf, spotted hyena, honey badger, zorilla, white-tailed, dwarf, slender and banded, and Egyptian mongoose. The antelope list included most members of every tribe including Fringe-eared oryx, and Tarangire brought our bird list close to 200.

Some excerpts from the training diary:

“… after climbing my favourite kopje as the sun set looking for leopard spoor and a resident barn owl and talking about geological formations we spotted four 3-4 year old male lions hiding in some hibiscus looking out on the plains. We could only approach to about thirty meters before they showed signs of preparing to run…”

“… we set off early in search of the four lions to see if they’d hunted, but were distracted by a hyena chasing an abandoned wildebeest calf. We watched the kill and then from about half a km away a lioness came running over to steal the kill. She proceeded to feed on it. We followed her back to the pride which was guarding two wildebeest they’d killed in the night…”

“…this afternoon we set off late looking for cheetah. We spent some time scanning the plains from a hilltop and spotted the shape of a cheetah a long distance away. We approached to find two cubs eating a Grant’s gazelle while their mother panted…”

“… this morning one of the trainees spotted a White-faced Scops Owl in the Whistling thorn. It was wonderful after having talked about camouflage and mimicry, to watch the owl make itself as skinny as possible, close its eyes and use its ear tufts to look like a stump…”

“… a Peter’s Foam-nest Frog hopped into the classroom. After picking him up and putting him on the table it changed colour from dark bark-brown to a cream…”

“… stopping to watch hundreds of open-billed storks flying out of Silale swamp as the sun was setting we almost missed the leopard with an impala kill in a Desert-date Tree…”

“… we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a herd of elephants that were distressed for some reason. It was a great lesson in staying calm as they mock charged from more than one direction…”

“… spent this morning identifying trees and flowers. There are at least five different morning glories, the purple mallows showing both yellow and purple shades, the pink ink flowers, the yellow Aspilia mossambicensis in stands- one of the Maasai keeps stopping and saying, please enjoy the landscape…”

“ after watching a DVD on social insects we spent the next day reliving the content of the DVD as we found the progression of sociality from solitary wasps to mud wasps, to paper wasps to bee hives, ant colonies and termites…”

Day 1

With renewed enthusiasm for a place that keeps ending up as my private playground, Saturday saw me back in Olduvai Gorge having a picnic on the 2-million year old lava and tuff. Having just spent a fascinating hour in the Oldupai museum, looking at the collection and reconstructions of skulls, bones and stone tools displayed at the museum, I cut brown bread with a stainless steel knife on a ceramic plate, poured cold white wine into wine glasses, and contemplated the advancement of tools and objects that may be unearthed millions of years from now. My mind was on evolution, changing landscapes, evidence, and the gaps of knowledge of the Earth’s History. I’d never noticed the photos of the Leakeys with dinosaur bones in southern Tanzania, but after an interesting conversation and a hyper link to a National Geographic Article, it had me wondering what was buried under the rock I was standing on between the deepest underlying rock (570 million years) of the Gol mountains and the 2 million year old basalt. How much do we really know?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100303-dinosaurs-older-than-thought-10-million/

Our journey continued, the same track I’d taken last week, but as always- never the same. The wildebeest migration is driven by their need for water and already, there were signs that they were preparing to moving back towards the permanent water sources in southern Serengeti. There was still enough grass on the plains that the wildebeest couldn’t resist, but their thirst kept driving them into never-ending lines as they made their daily trek to the last remaining water. We stopped in front of Nasera rock to watch a dung beetle rolling his prize to the random spot he’d bury it… slowly adding fertilized layers to the soils that covered the most recent tuff- of the last 30,000 years. The big picture can quickly overwhelm me- the uncomprehendable millions of years and the hundreds of thousands of years, to the near insignificant tens of thousands of years and all the interdependences, delicate balances, and implications that we’ve only really uncovered and documented in the last few hundred years let alone decades.

Take these figures for example- dung beetles roll away 75% of the dung produced in the Serengeti. The soil itself is 15-20% made up of dung beetle balls. Without dung-beetles the Serengeti wouldn’t support the nearly 3 million mammals.

Day 2 & 3

Hot coffee served from stainless steel French-presses set the morning off as we trolled out onto the plains. The wildebeest gathering as they headed towards the remaining water on the plains amused and awed us with their repetitive gnuing, their blank-stare faces, and the infinite numbers gathering on the plain.

This amateur video clip shows images of our morning game drive.

(apologies, due to slow internet I am having trouble uploading videos to this page)

I’ve posted images with captions of the rest of the trip and a video clip of lions feasting on day 3. The only thing I didn’t get a photo of was the aardvark that was digging in the road or the 11 lions we saw on the night drive. This time I don’t have words and I’ll let the images speak.

Day 4

These mother cheetah and her cub entertained us with a failed hunt before we said goodbye to the Serengeti plains and headed up through Ngorongoro back home.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but what if you can’t capture that picture in a physical image without distorting it or failing to grasp the immensity and at the same time the detail of what your mind is seeing?

This weekend’s mission was to have fun, find a few hundred thousand wildebeest, to get back out into the wilderness, and a chance for me to show a few friends in the safari industry a quiet and amazing corner in the Serengeti ecosystem. It wasn’t three hours into the trip when the first fawn-colored wildebeest calves stood staring at us from next to their mother’s sides as we made a right turn off the main road and made our descent into Olduvai gorge. The river in the gorge was flowing but fordable and we picnicked as storm clouds darkened the sky and threatened a downpour that skirted us. Up out of the gorge we crawled and then made our way along a track that had grassed over, through some wait-a-bit thorn and then out onto the Angata kiti plains to Nasera rock. A coffee break, leg stretch and we were soon off again, cross country now, through the hundreds of thousands of wildebeest. Here’s an image for you- if you can imagine six guys on a weekend trip with a freezer full of beer, but all sitting in near silence on top of a Landcruiser as it drifted across the plains with the rolling green hills in awe of the vastness, the aggregation of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle, and solitude. We drove for a good 30km before the horizon in front of us changed from short grassland to a series of inselbergs, each with its rock-splitting fig in full leaf, and behind them an Acacia-woodland in which the camp was hidden.

I got stuck, I hate to admit it, but it was part of the trip hence part of the adventure. Only a few kilometers from camp I radioed that I would be in within the half hour and then took a gamble on a small stream and pulling out cheering at not having bogged down, slammed into a hole. Nothing we could do to jack the car up and get something underneath it was working so we settled down for an ice-cold beer and packet of cassava chips. As the sun set on our impromptu sundowner, we discussed the nine Aardwolf we’d seen- how many we’d seen before, and then how we’d all read about digging the spare-tire into the ground as an anchor for the winch when there were no trees around. Soon we were digging and with a small tug from the winch and a bit of wheel spinning the cruiser popped out of the hole. I’ll spare you the details but in the dark I sunk the car again, and one of the rescue vehicle looked even worse before it reached my car so we called it a night, and drove into camp with the second rescue.

The next morning we made easy work of our new winching technique and soon we were scouring the plains again, watching large herds of eland leap imaginary fences and bat-eared foxes dodge their way into their holes before emerging again to watch us, their satellite dish ears cocked for the slightest sound. Brunch knocked us out again, but by two we were raring to go. Fridge stocked we crawled back onto the plains in search of the ten cheetah we knew were around. Two is a bit too hot for action but we made our way towards a major drainage that flows into Serengeti, again through numbers and numbers of eland, zebra, gazelle towards a hillside that was so thick with wildebeest, they looked like ants. We gravitated towards a small clearing in the herd and combing the grass with our binoculars pulled out a hungry young male cheetah who obligingly got up and ran straight into the herd of wildebeest sending them scattering. We spent the afternoon with him as he posed for the camera and then made his was across the plains spotting a young Thomson gazelle. He gave chase again, another failed hunt, but the fun is as much in watching the chase as in the kill.

The option for Sundays should always include a lie-in, instead of moving at dawn we feasted breakfast in camp and then head off to look for fossils in a dry river bed. Over 7000 extinct species of mammal have been identified from fossilized bones in Olduvai, and it’s exciting to think that the fossils we were picking up are possibly the remains of species we will never see. We lunched on top of a hill to the gnuing of the wildebeest and then in post-lunch stupor drove the next 40km again, through wildebeest towards Ndutu. If this trip was about numbers of animals we saw thousands. Hundreds of eland, thousands of zerba, tens of thousands of gazelle, and a few hundred thousand wildebeest, but also exactly twenty two Aardwolf and one Striped hyena.

The Aardwolf is evolutionary one of the most interesting member of the hyena family. An insectivore, it feeds almost exclusively on termites and has lost the strong jaws muscles, and sharp carnascial teeth its cousins have and instead has pegs for teeth. It’s typically found in pairs or solitary and is generally active at night. The little hyena is also fairly neurotic and hard to photograph let alone see- so twenty-two in two days is a surprising number.

Ndutu was its usual gem, and we watched four-month old lion cubs playing in the dying evening light, watched a coalition of hungry cheetah “passively hunt” as Nick called it, and as we left were rewarded with the spectacle of nearly ten thousand wildebeest as they made a mad dash across Lake Ndutu.

Read Nick's blog entry on the trip: click here

Its not every day that you can get anyone older than a child to roll down a hill in the middle of a forest imitating a gorilla. Fortunately, the National Geographic Expedition I was leading had 14 exceptionally fun and different people and when the toddler gorilla decided to violate the 7-meter rule and tuck and roll down the hill, some of us just had to follow suit including the Bibi in the group.

I’m not writing a long entry on this trip but I am going to mention a few highlights. It was an honor to be asked by National Geographic to lead one of their expedition tours in East Africa. Read about the itinerary on their website.

National Geographic Expedition February 2010

There was never a dull moment on the trip, despite some long days packed with game viewing, Maasai boma visits, and the Olduvai Gorge museum. We even managed to find time to deviate from the main roads getting into the thick of easily a hundred thousand zebra on the plains, to sit and watch as a male lion posed on a rock scanning the plains for his pride, and to pick up a less known snake or chameleon for our expert, Bill Branch to brief us on.

The obvious first exceptional experience happened by accident when we noticed a particularly beautiful male giraffe with a pink object hanging from it’s shoulder. A white landrover with Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) sticker was inching its way forward as the giraffe appeared to be having a little bit of trouble staying standing. Through binoculars the thin rusted wire noose hung around its neck- a snare set by poachers. A quiet pop and another pink dart landed next to the other one and the giraffe struggling against the drug sat down. The vet’s threw a rope around him and then tried to cover his face and cut the snare from around his neck. Time was ticking and the pliers wouldn’t cut the wire, finally they managed to slip it over his head.

I managed to format my camera memory and lose the photos I’d taken of the safari part but made up for it in Rwanda. I don’t often take pictures of people but the kids performing the Rwandan traditional dance had so much energy invested- just look at their faces!

The darkness is coming in fast and the road we’ve been following hasn’t been driven in months and the influx of the rain season has turned it into a gully. I’ve been bush-bashing and now I’m walking in-front of the car with my brother driving pushing through grass that’s above my head to get to higher ground. Its wet and all of us are hoping we can get to the big Acacia trees where we’ll set up camp.

Feeling liberated- I head off with my headlamp to collect firewood while my brother, father and cousin set up the tents. A couple matches and the flickering flames leap up the rungs of Commiphora kindling getting bigger and lighting heavier Acacia sticks. Meanwhile we’ve opened the fridge and the first gushes of cold liquid on the backs of our throats are heavenly. The slight anxiety to get camp up in the dark fades and my cousin’s first night under the southern hemisphere’s constellations is not in anyway typical. I apologize but the feeling is juxtaposed by his enthusiasm and as we lay out cushions next to the fire. I hear sighs of satisfaction.

The next morning, I coax another flame from the coals and heat water for coffee. Everything tastes so good in the bush. We pack camp and head off on a walk. Fresh elephant tracks pass nearby camp, but none of us heard them. The bush is alive and the rains have invigorated growth- birds are courting as are plants with their glorious flowers.

We decide to head to Sidai camp, where we should have slept last night had we not detoured and stopped too long to watch magnificent kudu, the long-necked gerenuk, giraffe, and gazelle stare at us. The road is not a road, but in the morning light we find our way, over rolling crystalline granite hills- I could go on the whole day, but I realize that we have arrived at a good stopping point. Nestled into Oldonyo Sidai (Mountain of Goodness) is a hunting camp. Built with local materials, it’sluxurious backdrop offers our heads a resting point on the large cushions in the open dining room. An old plow blade is acts as a bird bath and our bird list increases in 2’s, 3’s and 5’s. Male whydah’s display their extended tails, and emerald spotted wood doves and laughing doves chase the waxbills and sunbirds away.

At around 4, I get restless, it’s hot and I’m on holiday, but the bush is too vibrant for me to lie still. I wrangle the others- all feeling the same and we head off to look for elephant, and then do a night drive back. We find the elephants, and watch until its nearly too dark to get back to the road, then drive back, spotlight leading, illuminating nightjars, genets, and lesser galagoes that leap 10 feet from branch to branch. They leave scents along their paths and its said they can accurately execute a 3m jump on a pitch-black night by their keen sense of smell.

We sleep well and in the morning rise to the dawn, still and quiet. I load the rifle and we head off on a walk. There is a sand river I’d like to explore and we follow an old game trail. A lion has passed before us, and we can smell elephant and see where they have fed that night. The sun gets hot and we find ourselves walking the sand river. It’s a bit too warm to see much game, but the dikdik and giraffe don’t know that. That night we drive the sand river again, and on returning to camp use the spotlight to pick up jackals, and a great reward- a White-faced scops owl. Its been 7 years since I’ve seen one.

It’s so nice to be off any schedule, and the next morning it’s a late start. We arrive at a junction. Two roads diverge, one is graded, the other is just a track. The GPS shows that the track should take us around the north of Gelai mountain to the east shores of Lake Natron. We take the track. Like all the roads we’ve been on it hasn’t been driven in a while. We engage four-wheel drive, in some places we follow the little arrow on the GPS that changes direction if you leave the track. We can’t see the road, in other places its obvious, sometimes we have to dig the banks to climb out, other times it’s a low-range crawl. Our driving is distracted by beautiful straight-horned oryx, that gallop off. Occasionally giraffe stick their necks above the acacia scrub and watch us pass. I wonder what they think.

Around the north of Gelai the land becomes rocky and my cousin calls it a moonscape. Kiti cha mungu (God’s stool), otherwise known as a small hill. My father and cousin talk of Arizona, the Sonora desert. I don’t know if they have termite mounds there. We stop at one that must be nearly 30ft high. The rocks get bigger and it seems each gully leading off Gelai has carried with it rocks as big as basketballs across the road and down to the lake. We can’t drive the edge of the shore because at the base of each gully is a spring that softens the shoreline.

Oldonyo Lengai appears in the distance. We are headed towards its base but tonight we will sleep under the stars again, on the shores of the lake. We stop, set up camp, the sun has sapped us of energy, but we are rejuvenated by the shining grass flowers, the dark mountains, the reflection of Shompole, Masonik, and the Rift wall in the lake. Flamingos add pink, and the springs are all surrounded by dark green sedge. Grants and giraffe wander down to drink from the springs. That night we sit shirtless under the stars, sipping beers and listening to my father sing on his guitar. My cousin adds his songs as does my brother- such peace.

Too many things happen the next day to write about. The silent morning, the sunrise over Gelai, skinny-dipping in hot-springs- a dose of the daily amenities no luxury lodge could imitate. We drive south and cross the top of the lakebed. Alkaline salt flats that mirage, with zebra in the foreground. We head up the escarpment and climb, and climb and climb to the top where we have lunch and look out across our morning’s journey. We push on, across the Ngata Salei plain to the base of the Sonjo mountains passed their settlement; agriculturalists who have been in the area since long before any Maasai. The mountain pass we climb is flanked by cycads. Old plants that once fed dinosaurs. The temperature drops and the trees are lush- less adapted to desert conditions. The birds are also more colorful and soon we are seeing Augur Buzzards again; a bird identical to North America’s Red-tailed Hawk.

By 4 we are at the edge of the short grass plains that vitalize the migrating wildebeest. High in phosphorous and calcium the seemingly fragile grasses support lactating wildebeest. The plains are also full of zebra, the stallions fighting for their harems, and to my father’s amazement there are herds of nearly 500 eland. Most people only read about these congregations at the beginning of the rains. We stop and scan with binoculars before heading down into a woodland to the camp. Familiar smiling faces of the camp crew greet us with cold washcloths and ice tea. Our first hot showers it seems in ages are lifted into the bucket showers.

We sleep again, this time to the chorus of zebra and hyenas. The lions are silent tonight. The next three days we rise before dawn, coffee brought in French-presses to the tent door. We head off and find beautiful coffee spots on rocks or under trees eat breakfast and enjoy the wild. One day we drive to the Sanjan Gorge that cuts through the Gol mountains. They are 500 million years old I’m told- as old as the oldest mountains and once higher than the Himalayas. We find fossils and stone tools in eroded volcanic ash soil and finally hike down the steep banks of the gorge as two Black Eagles fly out from below us rising on updrafts. It is breathtaking. The water has carved natural slides in the rock but its too low to swim. Instead we lay in the brown water refreshed.

That evening is our last and we drive across the plains- it has rained while we were in the gorge and it seems that the wildebeest numbers are increasing. They must sense it before it rains. There is no need to use the road and the few land marks triangulate where camp is. The next day we head home. It will be the 8th day out and we have yet to see another tourist. The vehicles we have seen can be counted on our hands. 45km south I know we will cross the Olduvai Gorge and with it we’ll meet the masses. Our days have been filled with rich events, many I know I find difficult to describe. I have skipped parts of the some of the days- even highlights like the sand boa, a very rare find, or the Tree of Life standing out in the plains.

The sun is already high in the sky as we set off through the ankle deep talcum powder dust. A woman holding a little basket with a small wet rag in the bottom leads us up the hill. Carefully wrapped in the little wet rag is a precious little eye drop bottle in which is an important clear liquid.

We walk up to the first house and where we are warmly met by kids with shy smiles each of who wants to shake our hand, and then turns around and giggles. The old “Koko” or grandmother sits on a small stool in front of her hut holding her grandchild. Two scrawny cows are eating the left over corn stover that has been brought in from the fields. No chickens are running around today and we greet everyone in turn.

“Koko takwenya”

“Iko”

“Mama takwenya”

“Iko”

“Layoni sobia”

“Eba”

“Karibuni”

and we are welcomed.

We proceed. While the woman deliberately unwraps the little bottle from the wet rag and unscrews the cap, a little boy climbs up into the chicken coop and grabs the first chicken. His mother takes it from him and holding it one drop of the precious liquid is squeezed into the chicken’s eye. We’re only there for two hours but we’re having fun and we’re having an amazing experience with people welcoming us into their homes.

Nearly 100% of unvaccinated chickens in Tanzania die every year from a virus known as Newcastle Disease. The nutritional impact of this on rural peoples is harrowing. Yet, a precious bottle of vaccination costs 2800/=, about the equivalent of $2.15, and can vaccinate 400-600 chickens.

We move on to the next house. The chickens are inside the hut and a small window provides amazing light as Nicol squeezes in the door opening, trying not to let any chickens out. She gets some amazing photographs and everyone is lining up to have their picture taken with a chicken.

The woman with the little bottle charges 50/=, the equivalent of 3.8 cents per chicken. Of course on our tour we pay the $1.30 it costs to vaccinate the 35 chickens our neighbors own. On this first round in the village, the 50/= will cover her costs but in the future, she may charge up to 100/= per chicken which will bring her income. Even at 50/= per chicken, she can make the equivalent of $30 per campaign. I’m reminded of the saying “give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime”. The knock-on effects of this simple vaccination program are really amazing.

We walk back to the house in silence. As a guide, providing a genuine cultural experience is difficult. We didn’t set out with that in mind, but it has turned out that way- and in a far more real way.

All photos by Alyssa Nicol www.nicolragland.com

I took Nicol to the Ngorongoro Crater. She wrote to me about an article and wanted me to change that part of the itinerary because of the crowds, but I wanted her to see it. I likened it to being 30 miles from the Grand Canyon and not going to have a look. It was a risk, because I know how busy the crater gets and how awful it can be with traffic jams, but its still an amazing place- a caldera with the highest densities of animals found anywhere in the world.

The morning starts before the sun has risen- drinking coffee and trying get warm we huddle into the vehicle and start our descent into the crater. The fog is lifting out of the crater, the dust from the previous day’s chaos has settled as we make the first vehicle tracks of the day. We end up watching the animals nearly alone and as we exit the crater heading for our next destination, I’m hoping that it was worth it. I look back and can see 20 vehicles congregating along a short stretch of road where lions have just killed a zebra. Its what we wanted to avoid, and we did.

(Photo by Alyssa Nicol www.nicolragland.com)

I take a left at the Ngorongoro airstrip and head towards a small village where I will attempt to drive down a new road that I walked 10 years ago with a friend of mine when it was just a donkey path. It’s another risk but Nicol wants to get off the beaten track as I do. I’m a little nervous because I know that 13km of road on a map can be hours of low range four wheel drive clambering and I just hope we’ll get to camp before dark. The road is steep with loose rock in places but the Landcruiser makes easy work of it even when it seems that the road is sliding out from under us, or one wheel is in the air.

Occasionally, I stop the car and admire a leopard orchid, or for Nicol to take a photo of a baobab with her Holga film camera. Trickling through one of the valleys is a clear stream and I remember cooling my feet in it when I walked down. I park in the shade and we grab the picnic basket and walk downstream under some magnificent fig trees and we sit barefoot on rocks in the stream, eating pickles and making our own sandwiches with avocado, tomato, smoked beef and home-made bread and cheese.

It refreshing to be with someone who finds this fun and I expect that everyone probably does, but its easy to get caught up in worrying about what people will like or not like. As we finish the last bites of our sandwiches, it is as though we planned it, a herd of calves comes down to the river herded by some young Datoga boys and girls. Nicol calls it serendipity. The dust kicked up by their hooves disperses the harsh light and this noontime scene becomes a photogenic moment. While the cattle drink they ask to borrow a cup so that they can drink some water. Nicol takes some photos and the kids are happy. I share some bananas, but wonder what the implications of this innocent interaction will be.

I stop the vehicle, a solid mark four inches wide stretches across the road in front of me, and I step out, it is obviously the track of a big snake. The Hadzabe who are taking me to get some “mbuyu” or Baobab fruit jump off the top of the truck as my guest calls it. Their exclamations are obvious by the intonation of their completely foreign language of clicks. It’s a very fresh track and I ask if they think we can follow- “ndiyo” they answer and suddenly we are moving through the thick scrub following the track of possibly the largest snake I will see in the wild. They spread out and while one is following the immediate track, the others surge forward looking to pick it up further ahead. A couple of times we circle a thicket, an exiting track is not obvious and we peer into the undergrowth looking for the serpent. The track is fresh enough that it still shines and soon one of the bushmen sees where the snake passed and we are on its trail again. The interruption of bird chatter speeds things up and the keen eyes of the hunters spots a 16 inch section of thigh-thick python entwined in the thorny branches of an Elephant-football plant.

After a little searching we find the head, its tongue flicking in and out of the mouth. One of the shorter stockier Hadzabe places the end of an arrow against his bowstring- surprising me he asks;

“Niue”? (Shall I kill it)

“Kwanini”? Hua munamkula? I reply. (Why? Do you eat them?)

“Ha’a” (No)

“Mnatumia ngozi yake”? (Do you use their skin?)

“Ha’a” (No)

“Sasa kwanini unatakakumua?” (So why do you want to kill it?)

“Labda kwa ajili yako” (Maybe for your sake)

I don’t know how to answer his last words. “Maybe for you”?

Maybe for me?

I am not a hunter, but I have just enjoyed the hunt, following this animal without it knowing until we had found it. How easily we could have killed it- but to whose benefit? Maybe for me? Maybe for the photographer- I imagine the perfect arrow placement, the writhing 14ft of African rock python as it died. For me? The older of the Hadzabe adds, this snake is “mpole sana” (very calm). “Our safari is blessed by this”, he finishes.

Our journey continues and we head up a valley. A couple of times the Hadzabe go into hunting mode when they spot a dikdik, but our goal is Baobab fruit. The massive trees stand out against the bright sky- something that could be out of Dr Seuss’s children’s books. Again I’m thinking about the light and how harsh it is as we walk up to a beautiful Baobab specimen, one side pecked with holes. “Tuchukue asali”, one mutters and starts picking up bits of Commiphora wood to start a fire. The other is cutting branches from a Grewia to make the pegs he will use to climb the tree. Nicol is busy watching and forgets that she has two camera bodies strapped around her neck. I clumsily try to light the fire with the Hadzabe barely encouraging more than a wisp of smoke, then sitting back to let him get on with it, it’s barely two seconds and he has a coal and then some smoke, and finally the blaze.

My mind wanders back to yesterday; arriving at the kopjie, the meat of a Lesser Kudu laid out across some sticks, everyone sitting around their little fires. Looking into the Kudu’s big black eyes I wasn’t as sad as when I’ve seen them in the back of a hunter’s Landcruiser. I know that every muscle, every sinew, and every organ of this beautiful animal will probably be used. I climbed up to where the men were huddled around the fire, the liver, heart and kidneys boiling in a small pot.

I remember the other vehicle arriving, the feeling of betrayal that my local contact had brought me to another “tourist trap”. Sitting with the men huddled around the fire, I am offered a kidney and some liver. I try to learn about the hunt, but only one of them mumbles a little bit of Swahili while the rest ignore me. I sense annoyance to my presence. I know that when they have meat they will not hunt, and now they are carving intricate patterns on their long arrows, adjusting arrowheads and guinea fowl feathers. Three of the men reluctantly get up and head off with the two tourists on the “hunt”. I sit and wait.

Four hours later, after having withdrawn trying to be a fly on a wall instead of an intruder, we’ve already seen more than most see- normal life. The kudu skin is being stretched out in the sun to dry and I hope Nicol is getting some good photos. The tail is brought out and we watch as they skin it and then place the soft hairs on their bows- to tell the direction of the wind I’m told. I hold some arrows in my hand and ask about the poison, found half-a-days walk away but only 2 hours by car, one of the older boys suddenly speaks up in Swahili- if you will take us we will go make poison. We only have one arrow left each. One of my main interests is in plants and their uses and I want to go. They all run off in different directions while I open up the roof hatches, 6 of them want to come.

As we drive along more of them start speaking Swahili. It is obvious that the Hadzabe are having fun, and I wonder what the local guide thinks- sitting comfortably on one of the seats, his window rolled up- is he having as much fun as Nicol and the Hadzabe are? Nicol and I discuss the ethics of cultural tourism, its effects, of voyeurism, of intrusion, and whether can you take a photo without taking. We drive across an alkaline pan towards a small rocky outcrop blurred by a mirage. Its very hot and I remind her to put on sunscreen and stay hydrated.

“Hapo hapo” the Hadza shout as we pull up next to a hot spring. A couple Datoga herd-boys are washing in the “maji-moto”. The light is harsh and not very conducive to photography, but is more about the experience. The boys light a fire, pass around a smoke, and happily go about business. A branch is cut and sharpened as the pounding stick and Nicol is gestured to follow the two older boys as the walk up among the rocks looking for a suitable Adenium obesum (Desert rose) to use. I follow and one of the hunters tells me his ancestors and grandfathers are buried here. There are rock paintings on some of the rock walls. They are proud and happy. It’s not another show. After watching them cut branches from the poison plant, pound at the base and squeeze out the liquid into a sufuria, a Datoga warrior who has been watching too exchanges some words. Nicol asks me for translation because it is obvious that this is not a friendly exchange of words. I’m pulled aside by the guide from the village into a discussion. A Cultural Tourism Identity Card is flashed in front of me and I’m told that we have violated a Datoga sacred site, a Tambiko. We must pay a sheep and bucket of honey. The Hadzabe are defiant, the Datoga are aggressive and we watch and listen. I step aside to try to mitigate without involving Nicol. The Hadza don’t want me to talk to the man with the ID card. They tell the Datoga warriors that they are not being paid to make the poison, that they had asked if I would help them with transport. They quickly cut some more branches to take home and we head down to the car. They are determined now for Nicol to document the poison making with her photos and keep telling her to follow them. They place the sufuria on the fire and the evaporation process starts. Back at the car, they ask if they can tie the branches they are taking home with them on top of my car. The exchange is still heated, apparently the “serekali” has been called on cell phones and are on their way. The Hadza don’t care. “Our ancestors are buried here, these are our paintings from before you came to this land”, they tell the Datoga.

“You want a fine because we have cut plants, but we have not killed them the way you do when you cut for your bomas. We have only cut branches, we have not taken roots or cut the whole plant.”

The older of the boys is most vocal and the Datoga threats change- “You will be the last to run into the hills” they tell him.

He gets into the car and takes out his bow and arrows. He tells them- “We are not people living in the bush, we are people of the bush. When you came to this land you found us here”.

The poison is starting to thicken and we head back to the fire. They tell me to translate for Nicol and explain how the poison curdles blood and when it gets to the heart it is the end, and how the poison they are making will be used on larger animals when the rains come. One of the hunters rolls the thickened poison into a ball using ash from the fire to stop his hands from sticking to the gob. He takes one of his new arrows and starts to shape it around it around the shaft of the arrowhead.

The next day at dawn, we are back with the Hadzabe. Nicol is happy, she’s seen a lot in our 10 hours with the people. The men sit around oblivious to me, smoking and eating meat they are animated about the day before. They laugh when they mention how quickly the Datoga retreated behind the car when they got their bows and arrows out. I wish I had a video camera and tape recorder to record their discussion.

I’m back at the base of the Baobab, the stocky Hadzabe is throwing down honey combs dripping with the clearest honey. The other bites into a comb full of bee larvae. It’s another good day. The experience has turned out well. It’s hard to plan a genuine cultural experience, but I’ve been lucky with Nicol. She is happy to wait and watch and be spontaneous. We couldn’t afford to visit the more remote Hadzabe on this trip- and I can hear some of the comments other guides might tell me about the genuine experience, its true it hasn’t been the romantic untouched hunter-gatherer experience, but Nicol and I have tasted some truth, not as sweet and clear as the Acacia mellifera honey that’s dripped from our fingers.

All photos by Alyssa Nicol www.nicolragland.com more on her website.

The small Cessna Caravan took off from the bush airstrip climbing over the Katavi plains. As we gained altitude, the features we had just explored looking for lion and leopard, and watching hippos, crocs, and elephants, took on a different beauty. The drying river course stretched across the plains, a bold black line against the yellowing grass. Hippo trails and other game paths that led to waterholes looked like the cracks leading from where a stone has hit a pane of glass. The herds of buffalo turned into black dots and giraffe cast long shadows in the grass. The different vegetation zones painted different colors and we tried to retrace where we’d walked from the air. We’d had a good four nights of special game viewing in a park that felt wild and isolated. One night we’d spent in tiny mosquito nets watching the stars. It had been the only night in the past months that it had rained. The plane lifted higher and soon we were flying over miombo woodlands heading towards the Mahale Mountains that dive steeply into the worlds second deepest lake.

The plane ride was short and soon we were descending over the peaks of the mountain to a small airstrip on the edge of the lake. The steep mountains added to the anxious anticipation of seeing chimpanzee, and there were only a few mutterings for the boat journey along the edge of the lake to the little cove where Greystoke camp hides.

Barbecued chicken kebabs, sweet potato chips with guacamole and fresh fruit satisfied our stomachs, but everyone’s real hunger was to see the chimps. We were barely given time to put our bags down before one of the guides came to tell us that the chimps were close by and we must hurry. We hurried off as a big group, not worrying to split into different fitness levels, everyone excited, and also hoping it wouldn’t be too far for the sake of one of the group who had sprained her ankle.

We saw the chimps and everyone was happy, and over the three days we were there saw them a total of four times. The last afternoon though was probably the most rewarding. The trackers had not been able to find the chimps in the morning and Nicol and I set off on a walk with one of the camp guides, content to enjoy the forest, trying to photograph the beautiful butterflies and get some exercise. Deep down we hoped to bump into the chimps and we climbed high to where we might be able to hear them call to each other. The radio crackled to life; “The chimps are close to camp, and heading for camp”.

“Camp was at least an hour away but if we ran…?” We ran and in 20 minutes made it down the hill to camp. We got our exercise and arrived as the 5:30 golden light was shining through the autumn colored leaves. The males from the troop wandered down the path in single file towards us. It was the perfect moment and we followed and watched as they stopped to rest, lying in the path, while we listened to their quiet mutterings wishing we could understand.

The hour felt like ten minutes. That evening over cold white wine and fresh sashimi we watched the sun set over the lake.

More pictures from Alyssa Nicol of this trip below and on www.nicolragland.com

The boundary of Virunga National Park is marked by a rock wall that keeps the buffaloes and elephants from getting into the potato fields that reach right up to its base. The ranger explains that it also helps to keep people from taking that extra foot or two when they plow their fields and thus protects the park. We clamber over the rock wall and head into the thick bamboo forest.

…Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed….

Today we have to climb for a few hours to see them. We’ve been allocated the most famous Sousa group of Mountain Gorillas and we climb high into the forest. Coming out of the bamboo forest we enter a thicker Hygenia forest where we start to see their signs. The trackers have found them and we push on, joining them back on the edge of the bamboo forest.

… He moves in darkness as it seems to me-
Not of the woods only and the shade of trees.

I am staring into the eyes of one of the worlds few Silverback Mountain Gorillas as he crosses his arms to scratch his shoulder, tilts his head, and watches me. There is a sadness in his big, dark eyes and the furrows on his face like those of a man in deep contemplation who has something he wants to share. Living in the thick dark rainforests of the 15000ft Virunga Massif at the confluence of three countries torn by civil war and an exploding human population. His deep and gentle stare distracts me from the stinging of the nettles we have walked through for the last few hours. We sit there in awe at this gentle and massive animal. The young ones play, seemingly oblivious to us, but they also keep their distance. A black-back sits with his back to us, occasionally glancing at us. Its time to leave soon, and we all wish we could stay a bit longer.

Poem excerpts from Robert Frost's Mending Walls.

This is a bit of an article I wrote about a safari in Rwanda. I hope you enjoyed.