The Never-Ending Joys of African Massage

Hello from Tanzania. I’m wrapped in a blanket, winter hat and several layers of clothing as we bounce down dirt roads in our open air vehicle from Tarangire National Park on our way to Ngorongoro Crater. It’s early Winter here and we are traveling through beautiful trees crisp with leaves in deep hues of orange and yellow. The benefits of bumpy roads? We get about 15,000 steps a day on our pedometers without doing a thing. Our guides jokingly refer to the bumps as “African massage.” It’s so bumpy that when the vehicles stop, the drivers tighten the nuts on the tires to ensure they won’t fall off.

It took 12 hours of driving to get from Kenya into Tanzania. We passed through border patrol, through tiny villages with women and men draped in bright colors and past women carrying huge loads of sugarcane and baskets on their heads. We saw girls rolling barrels of water into their villages from the nearest well, instead of going to school. We saw boys as young as 6 tending cattle by themselves, instead of going to school. In Tanzania, it’s compulsory that all children attend school through the equivalent of high school, but within villages this is rarely enforced.

Tarangire National Park was created in 1977 and covers an area of 1100 square miles, that’s 1/3 of the size of Yellowstone just for reference. This place feels more wild than Kenya’s Amboseli, as the animals have a larger buffer from gaping tourists. The wildlife is stunning. On our game drives we came across herds of 100+ zebra, families of giraffes grazing, water bucks- which look like deer, but have horns instead of antlers. We saw countless birds and saw many species of eagles I never knew existed. Land monitors, impala, monkeys, mongoose, warthogs and jackals were everywhere. Animals often hang out together- meaning you may have an area full of wildebeest, zebras, warthogs and impala. They benefit from being together because one animal will have a great sense of smell and the other will have better eyesight, so they work together to survive.

We spotted our first lion of the day and were within 10 feet of him. It was quite unnerving to be so close to a lion, and initially he was in the brush with his eyes watching us through a veil of green foliage. After awhile, he walked out into the open and we noticed that he was injured and had a gaping hole on his back, having been injured by a horned animal in a scrum. He was healing so we let him rest and continued our game drive.

As our guide Sammy explained, life is hard in the bush. It’s difficult to survive, and we saw this in real time as we saw a zebra stumbling as she was missing a hoof, a giraffe limping, and the injured lion. I asked Sammy if there is any wildlife management here and he said no- that it’s really all in perfect balance. The lions help to maintain all of the populations of the other animals and they never go after the strongest creatures, but eat the injured animals that are having a tough time and wouldn’t survive long regardless. After the lions eat what they want, the hyenas follow safely behind and eat what remains. A hyena’s digestive systems can process bone in 30 minutes and their scat is white because of all the processed calcium within it.

Last night when we got back to our tent after dinner, I noticed that my suitcase had been rifled through. Packets of vitamins were split open and spilled in my clothing, other things eaten through, snack wrappers from Luna’s backpack were strewn about. We knew something was in our tent but we didn’t know what kind of creature. A employee of the camp came in and looked around and said, “looks like a rat, probably a rat.” Unnerved but having nowhere else to go, with no way to switch tents, we packed up all our things, wrapped our mosquito nets around us and tried to sleep. Josh and Luna slept right through- but I laid there much of the night hearing the creature in our room move about and chitter. At least it wasn’t interested in us. This morning, at 4:45, I woke up to the sound of a lion roaring several times. There are guards who watch the camp at night, sweeping the camp with flashlights and Maasai warriors hired to keep the guests safe. In the evenings, we weren’t allowed to walk without being escorted by a guard with a spear in hand. It definitely took some getting used to as we walked to and from dinner with a swat team like entourage, their flashlights sweeping all around the grounds. Wine helped take the edge off the “what the Hell are we doing here?” feels.

There are so many things I take for granted in our life at home- and we’ve been gone so long now that we’re beginning to notice more and more things. Seatbelts, what seatbelts? It is very rare to find a seatbelt in Africa. Most of the roads we’ve driven on have been dirt and when we have been on paved roads, we’ve been repeatedly held up by government officials who have just stopped traffic to hold meetings in the middle of the streets. Last night Luna commented on how she’s now pretty used to using bottled water for brushing teeth and drinking water as we’ve been doing that through Greece, Turkey, Kenya and Tanzania.

The adventure continues. It means more than you know that you’re reading and supporting us along the way. It’s really nice to feel like we’re connected to our community when we’re half a world away.

With love,

Carly