Friday, November 2, 2012

 Kambi Ya Tembo Sinya Camp.  (Elephant Camp).  Kilimanjaro, the Shy Lady unveils for us.



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      The room in Arusha was cool and the shower hot.  But “Tummy time” was still set to seven hours earlier.  My brain complained, “Its 1.00AM.  We are supposed to be sleeping.
 “Well since we are up”, grumbled my eager eating apparatus, “it’s been about 13 hours since we ate.  How about we get some fuel on board?”
     Other body systems yawned, gurgled, and sent out random signals, basically crying, “what the hell?”  It’s called Jet Lag.
      Charlie and I dressed and made our way past the tended and flower rich grounds of Olasiti Lodge to a thatched open air expanse of building with coffee, a bountiful buffet, and an omelet stand waiting. We filled our plates, and found our way to our designated table. The rest our group was already seated.
       Jumping ahead, it turned out the group was composed of interesting and exceptionally nice individuals, but we didn’t know that yet.  Conversation was stilted.
       As would become routine, porters stacked the luggage we’d left outside our rooms in the Land Cruisers, and we uncertainly sorted ourselves into the vehicle seats.  Our destination was Kambi Ya Tembo Sinya Camp, in game preserve lands near Mount Kilimenjaro. (Tembo means Elephant in Swahili, and this was translated to us as Elephant camp.)
     We waited for the rifle toting, uniformed guards to pull open the heavy gate, and crossed into the city of Arusha.
 We crawled through the crowded streets of Arusha proper, sharing the road with carts pushed or pulled by men dressed in colorful wraps and shorts, donkey or oxen carts, goats turned out to graze, foot traffic, suicidal motorbikes carrying several passengers, cars and ubiquitous dolla-dallas (small buses stuffed to overflowing with standing riders.)  Traffic squirmed its way along the main drag, slowed or interrupted by other streams merging from side lanes, amidst yelling and gesticulations. The entire road had one lone traffic light futilely signaled its message of order to the uncomprehending chaos below.
      The road was lined with tiny shops. Women, parrot- like in their mix of bright cloths,  carried their wares, socks, T-shirts, banana’s, on their heads. Others squated to reach bare hands into sacks of grain, or potatoes, open on the bare earth, to check the quality before purchase, while the hungry goats kept an eager eye out for spills. The occasional black burka created a hole of darkness amid the tapestry of bright hues.
      The drive out of Arusha, a medium sized city of 300,000, took at least forty-five minutes. Gradually the road side shops and pedestrians thinned, the vehicles and traffic cleared, and we moved faster over the paved two land road through dry, open land.  The pavement became loose rock.  After about an hour of jostling over what our guide, Sultana, described as a massage road, our cruisers turned onto deeply rutted dirt tracks running across the open African landscape.
       Acacia trees spread their distinctive, Nova-Nature-Program silhouettes across the horizon. Small clusters of beehive shaped huts surrounded by fences of thorns were seen. And everywhere, scattered across the dry land, cows, sheep and goats, accompanied by young boys wearing the distinct red serape like cloths of the Massai. We were in a game reserve area, inhabited by traditional Massai.
      Within this area the Massai people live in traditional small groups, consisting of one man or a man and his brothers. The wives of an individual man, with her children inhabit one hut, or boma.(The structures are small, about 10' by 10' , thatched , built by each woman for herself from sticks plastered with a plaster-like mixture of pulverized termite mound and cow patty. Boma means home, and can also refer to krall.) The husband moves as he pleases from boma to boma, sleeping and eating for a night or two with one, than another wife.
      A mans wealth is measured in livestock, especially cows, and wives, for which he trades cows.  A woman, who does almost all the work in the Massai world, is valued for the number of children she bears and manages to raise past infancy. 





       An hour or more of this and we turn into an even bumpier track by a sign announcing Kambi Ya Tembo Sinya Camp.  We have arrived at Elephant camp as the sun is setting.  Kilimanjaro is visible, in the distance.  The “shy lady” has welcomed us with her face wreathed in a gossamer pink veil. Beauty stands half naked before us.