September 13, 2010
Hi friends!
Greetings from safari! This is the first time I've had access to the internet (and it is extremely
slow!) since the safari began on Friday. It has been an incredible adventure so far. I have already
seen four of the "big five", i.e. elephant, buffalo, leopard, lion, and rhinoceros (the
rhino I hope to "hunt" tomorrow). I have also "shot" (with my camera) giraffe,
of course(!), impala, cheetah, gazelles, ostrich, monkeys, baboons, zebra, wildebeest, hippos,
and various smaller game. We spent two days in the Serengeti, and tonight we are settled in a lodge
on the rim of the Ngorongoro
Crater, which at 18 miles in diameter is the largest intact caldera on earth!). We have been
warned not to walk outside without an armed security guard after dark (which is necessary because
the dining room is in a different building from the sleeping quarters) because buffalo and elephants
have been known to roam the grounds at night!!!
Today we also visited a Masai village.
The Masai are one of very few tribes (Tanzania has 129 tribes) to maintain their way of life, dress
and traditions, not succumbing to the westernizing of Africa. They are herders, raising cattle
and goats on the plain, from which they take their nourishment, drinking their milk and blood,
sometimes mixed together, and eating their meet. They eat no vegetables of any kind because they
feel the gods provided that for the animals' nourishment. They are easily identified by their bright
red robes and jewelery. You seem them all over the countryside herding their flocks. When we arrived
at the village, the people greeting us with a welcome song and dance, and each of us were given
the tour of a Masai home. These are made of wooden poles and insulated with cow dung, with thatched
roofs. Inside they are very small (maybe 20 square feet, tops) and dark with a small fire place
for cooking and warmth (about 9 inches in diameter), and two sleeping places, one for the wife,
the other for the children. The Masai are polygamous. Men may have several wives but each wife
must have her own home which she herself must construct. The women take care of the home, raise
the children, and also take care of the elders (anyone who has reached the age of 40!!!). Very
interesting, but I was very glad to get out in the sunshine as soon as I could!!!
The funniest moment of today was a lunch stop at the Oldupai
Gorge (where Dr. Louis & Mary Leaky discovered the skeleton of an early homonid in 1959).
We had a lecture there about the geology and anthropology of the region. Afterwards Marcus, a
young Austrian here with his wife on their honeymoon, sat down on a stone bench next to an old
Masai man - and the two of them began to compare CELLPHONES!!! In the middle of nowhere, they
have cellular reception!!! What a world!!!
So much for now, my friends.
Love to all,
Charlotte
September 14, 2010
Hi everyone,
I'm back on this slow computer! I cannot wait to organize my photos for you because I have some amazing shots of these absolutely glorious beasts that God has sprinkled the earth with! A few days ago we came across a lioness with her four cubs trotting up the road. We got very close to them and were able to take great close-ups of the little family (by the way, the female lions - like the Masai - do all the work, including the kills to feed her family; the males like to lie around and bask in the sun and roar!!!). The safari drivers stay in close radio contact with each other so before we knew it, another 20 Land Cruisers were on top of the little family. The lions kept their cool in the face of the paparazzi!
Today we were face to face with elephants and buffalo, saw hippos out of the water (they usually look like big rocks), and encountered many zebras and a little family of jackals. We left the compound at 6am for our "hunt" and had a boxed breakfast near a small lake where hippos were bathing. We saw a hyena deliver a kill to her family and in the distance (my photo will not do it justice) we saw a rhinoceros, completing our "big five". I took some video of a massive herd of buffalo trying to cross the road in front of us. About six got across when the seventh panicked, called out to the six who quickly reversed direction. Then we had a face off - us and several hundred buffalo: they were determined not to cross the road until we drove away!!! The standoff lasted several minutes. The buffalo won!
One surprising detail is how cool and windy it is here at the Ngorongoro Crater. It's hard to believe that we are only six degrees below the equator and wearing long pants and jackets. I think one factor is the altitude. We are at 7800 feet above sea level. The crater appears to be a wind tunnel. No mosquito nets up here and mosquitoes don't fly this high - that's a small blessing.
Tomorrow we head out to Tangire and expect to see large herds of elephant. On Thursday, our safari ends with lunch and I will go back to Kilimanjaro overnight and fly to Mwanza the next morning where I'm expecting Fr. Paschal to meet and host me. This is the only part of my itinerary that still feels a little iffy, but he is excited that I am coming.
Please feel free to share my adventures with anyone who may be interested!
Love to all of you,
Charlotte
September 16, 2010
Hi everyone,
My safari concluded this afternoon and I said farewell to my six traveling companions: two English couples, and a couple of Austrian newlyweds who did quite well spending their honeymoon with five adults more than twice their age! They were all very sweet. Our driver/guide left a lot to be desired, unfortunately, and that was reflected in all of our tips, I'm afraid. Nonetheless, we had a "wild" time!
We left Ngorongoro Crater the morning after I last wrote. When we went up to meet our driver, the view of the crater was phenomenal, with the clouds below our feet! Unfortunately, that meant we had to drive through those clouds on narrow and uneven dirt roads not seeing but 20 feet in front of us as cars coming up to the rim were doing the same. Those hairpin turns and switchbacks made that whole experience quite harrowing.
Our next destination was the Tarangirei National Park which is home to over 3800 elephant! They were everywhere including roaming around the hotel grounds eating the beautiful plantings some landscape artist had designed for the lodge! They do make such a mess of things!!! In the park we also saw herds of buffalo, zebra, wildebeests, wart hogs, giraffe, of course(!), and a few more lions watching all of them very carefully while contemplating their next meal! More beautiful pictures.
I thought I'd make a few comments here about life in Tanzania in general. They are very well equipped to a ccommodate European and American tourists, with almost all the amenities expected in four star hotels. Tourism is a big part of their economy and for good reason. Their national parks are stunning, the animals are protected but free to roam as they please (the parks are not even fenced in - and we have seen giraffe just wandering around outside of the parks!!!). Most of the vehicles seen on the roads are, in fact, Land Cruisers, carrying tourists from park to park. Very few normal cars, and those can be seen only in the cities. Most Tanzanians get around on foot or on bicycle. You can see them carrying enormous loads, including tanks of water on their bicycles, mostly walking them up and down hills. The more "affluent" may own motorbikes. The average annual income in this country is the equivalent of $500 US - but that's an average of those who are working. If you factor in the unemployed population of working age, that figure would drop to a mere $200 a year. Their homes are small and rough, without indoor plumbing. Clean water is scarce during the dry season (even some of our hotels limited the times one could shower). Malaria takes out more of the population here than does AIDS. Yet, a surprising number of natives have cellphones - no indoor plumbing or TV or even electric lights but they have cellphones! Our driver says these are usually prepaid plans and the phones themselves are cheap, made in China! I think my phone may have been made in China but it certainly wasn't cheap! But then again, I earn more than 80 times the average Tanzanian!!!
Tanzania, poor as it is, has been the most stable democracy on the continent since it became independent in the early 1960's. Their first president, who is very much still a national hero (his birthday is a national holiday) held office for the first thirty years of independence and he was a wise, well-educated man who saw the need to bring unity to the 139 tribes that inhabited the country once lines were drawn on a map. He first united them linguistically, making Swahili the official language of the country. He also united them educationally, establishing standards for the country and requiring all children of school age to attend school. Only the Masai people were holdouts on that front (they were moved out of the Serengeti and re-established in the Ngorongoro conservation area) but evey they have eventually complied with thoserequirements. So this has been a peaceful country as opposed to its immediate neighbors (e.g., Kenya and Rwanda). Most Tanzanians are Christians; those who live along the coastline and in Zanzibar are Muslim. By the way, when we were growing up the country was called Tanganika; when independence was granted, they united with Zanzibar to form a single country and their new name is the combination of the two.
Of all the safari adventurers I met this past week, most were British, some were German, some French or from other parts of Europe. We saw a few Japanese tourists, and some from India. But there were just a handful of Americans (and one US gentleman was pretty loud and demanding, of course...."You don't have TOAST?!"). Everywhere we went, we were asked our nationality. Whenever I responded "American", they immediately responded "Obama!". Even in the tiny Masai primary school, the boy in the front row was wearing an Obama teeshirt. They are very proud to feel a connection to the American president, however loose that is.
Tomorrow morning I leave for Mwanza where Fr. Paschal Izengo (our 2009 Mission Appeal Speaker at St. Vincent's) will meet me. It will be fun to see him again and meet his family. This will afford me the opportunity to get a closer look at an average Tanzanian family. I also look forward to attending Mass with local people this Sunday and hearing about their own experience of the Catholic Church.
Take care, friends. I don't know when I will check in again.
Fondly,
Charlotte
September 20, 2010
Hi friends,
Love to you from Tanzania, my last few hours here. I am at the Kilimanjaro International Airport hotel where I reclaimed my big suitcase and repacked for the international flight. It has been a very interesting few days.
Fr. Paschal was there to greet me Friday morning at the Mwanza airport. He was thrilled that I was there and so excited to show me his beloved country. He was also disappointed that I was only staying three full days and always said, "When you come back, we will.....". [He fondly remembered the group of us who went to NCFR for lunch after the last Mass when he was in Churchville in 2009 - even asked how Christina's wedding went(!). He asks to be remembered to all of you.}
I spent my first night at the St. Dominic Pastoral Center in Mwanza. It is a large conference center owned by the diocese. There were two medical conferences going on there that day so there were a lot of people around but I was basically alone (practicing for my 30 day retreat!!!) The accommodations were retreat house simple: basic but clean and I had everything I needed. What a difference from the luxurious tourist hotels I enjoyed on safari! Paschal had to work that day but he came to fetch me for supper and I met his young cousin, Angeline. We went to three different restaurants that night, one for drinks and a spectacular view of Lake Victoria, one for supper, and one for dancing (We took Angeline home after drinks, and then his friend, Fr. Kizito (who is supposed to be going to England to work on his PhD this fall but now has malaria!) joined the two of us for supper and nightclubbing!) It was fun and I was dead tired once we got back to the PC around midnight. We had to wake up Mother Superior to get in!!!
The next morning, Paschal took me to the St. Joseph Seminary for Girls (basically a Catholic junior high - high school boarding school). The girls were thrilled to meet me. The "fourth form" asked if they could hug me and then all EIGHTY of them did!!! It was a Saturday and they did not have classes, but they wear uniforms all the time (different ones on free days, but uniforms just the same; their color of their dress represents their academic class). About a dozen of them insisted on showing me around, and they asked me questions about everything. I entertained them with my twelve Swahili words!!! They were so cute. They asked if we could be "friends" and wanted my e-mail. Perhaps when I'm home I can connect them with some of our youth group members as penpals.
Later we drove north out of the Mwanza region along the lake to the Magu region (on the road to Kenya). The plan was that we were to stay in the rectory at the main parish, but to our surprise there were two other priests visiting for the weekend and there was no room for me. So Paschal checked me into the town's only hotel for the next two nights. Well, up until this point, the worst hotel I had ever stayed in was at the foot of Mt. Sinai in 1996, but this one took new (low) honors! When I went back there after dinner at the rectory, I sat in my room and cried! In the bathroom, there was no towel, no soap, no sink, and no toilet bowl (just a hole in the floor and a bucket of dirty standing water to "flush" with)! The windows had been left open so there were plenty of mosquitos waiting for my return, the floor was filthy, and the mosquito net had holes big enough for birds to fly through. None did so I had to fight off the mosquitoes myself! If I ever do return to Tanzania I will lead a Women's Movement against Stand Up Toilets!!! I will spare you the details....
Paschal picked me up at 6:15 am for the 6:45 am Mass at the parish church at which he was to preside. As I was there early I got a seat in the fourth row; the row filled in. The church filled up quickly. There were perhaps 8 inches between me and the woman next to me. A teenager saw the spot and trotted in and took it (I would guess her butt was about 13 inches wide). I learned then that the African's sense of personal space is much different than it is in America! The choir was neatly dressed in matching outfits (pastel green shirts and gray skirts for the women, slacks for the men: I only had one dress with me which I wore to church. Tanzania women always wear dresses, so I really looked even more like a tourist as we traveled around!). The music was outstanding - clavinova and drums. The choir practices on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights every week!!! It shows. The assembly, however, did not sing much. They have no hymnbooks so really only can sing the old favorites.
Mass, of course, was in Swahili. The "catechist" (a diocesan-trained parishioner who acts as a pastoral associate and leads Sunday Services in the Absence of a Priest) led them first in a Morning Prayer ritual (not the Liturgy of the Hours). There was a lot of singing, the parish council secretary gave lengthy (and I mean LENGTHY) announcements after communion. The people processed forward three times - for the first collection, for communion, and for the second collection after communion while the choir sang. They kneel a lot - for the penitential rite, for the Prayers of the Faithful, and for the Eucharistic Prayer. There was a three year old girl in the row behind me (not pews, simple wooden benches with wooden slats to kneel on). She did not like the fact that I couldn't kneel when the others did and tried to push me off the bench each time with her little hands! Very, very funny. They receive communion only under one form; only the priest drinks the Precious Blood. All of the assisting ministers seemed to be men though Paschal tells me there are some women who read the scriptures, or lead the psalm. What else was strange was that, except for the choir who sat according to their vocal parts on one side of the aisle, men and older boys sat together on one side of the church, while women and young children sat on the other. They did not sit as family groupings. Paschal says that the women are shy and would rather sit together; I'm not buying it! At communion time, the catechist re-appeared dressed in an alb and a deacon's stole!!! He is not a deacon...they don't have permanent deacons in that diocese. Hmmm... When I asked, I was just told that assisting ministers wear stoles like that. Double hmmm......
The Mass ended at 8:35am, almost two hours after it began! The people lingered in front of the
church, visiting with one another before heading for home.
We had breakfast in the rectory and then headed out to Paschal's home village where I got to meet most of the rest of his immediate family and extended family. Because we were there, he said Mass for them - about 100 Catholics who live in that village. This was a special treat for them (they are lucky to have Mass every other month). They have provided their catechist and his family with a house and meals in exchange for his services to them, which also include the religious education of children and adults and overseeing the small Christian communities. Their choir (which practices two nights a week) had no accompaniment except for a drum. They too made beautiful music. At the end of Mass, Paschal introduced me as a "pastor in America in New York State" and told them how we had met and how kind I had been to him (all in Swahili but I knew he what he was saying more or less). Then he had me "perform" my twelve Swahli and one Masai word! They roared with laughter. Everyone was so happy to have me there. The greeted me as they greet their priests, by shaking my hand and genuflecting (a little off-putting -but very touching)!
We had Sunday dinner at Paschal's parents' humble home, and spent the afternoon outside playing Bao, a game I have heard called "African chess". They loved for me to take their pictures, and they could not thank me enough for coming to visit them. Amazing.... The Tanzanian people are dirt poor, but so gracious and hospitable. They were driving me crazy with their cellphones, though! They have cheap cellphone service but no voicemail so they always feel they have to answer the phone. One night I was out for drinks with the priests and all but one at one point was talking to someone else on his cellphone!
Right now I am back in Kilimanjaro waiting for my 9:30 pm flight to Amsterdam. I had a 1:45pm flight from Mwanza. The plane arrived from Entebbe early, so they just boarded us and we took off a half hour early!!! I feel sorry for anyone who may have arrived later than they should at the airport only to find that their 1:45pm flight was long gone!!!
The safari was a thrilling experience, but being able to witness a slice of normal life was quite sobering. There is a lot for me to process....
I hope to get back to the USA on Wednesday, God willing, after spending one more day in Venice. It will be a relief to arrive at JFK and be able to understand the language being spoken around me. It will also be a delight to hear an accent that says "home" to me.
Take care, my friends! I hope you have enjoyed my travelogue.
Fondly,
Charlotte