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.     

                              

Massai Village Visit

                                                  Maasai Village Visit

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      I cringed as the children skittered close to the lurching cruiser wheels, as heedless as farm dogs chasing a car. Dressed to impress in blue and red with bright strands of beads around their necks and tire-soled flip-flops or  barefoot in sack like dusty shifts, the children of the Maasai ran to greet us. “Jambo. Hello.” Swahili and English.
      We had bounced a long way over rutted arid roads to visit here, a small circle of dry thornbush piled in the middle of a vast rolling plain of dusty Acacia trees and brown grass thickets. In the distance a dust cloud obscured a Maasai herd of sheep and cows searching out what nourishment they could find. Plants, herds, and the Maasai themselves awaited the expected rainy season’s promise of another year of life.
                                            Maasai Village Men

       Three dignified men emerged from the compound. Our guides introduced them as the three brothers who, with their eight wives, lived in the village. Ceremoniously the oldest man welcomed us in English, and led us through the kraal’s thorn bush perimeter. Inside, the thornbush fence  encircled animal pens crowded with cows, sheep and goats, and eight thatched, mud plastered huts, one per wife. The dust lay loose and thick on the ground.
      More men,  teenage boys, and a group of women trailed by toddlers were waiting to greet us. Visitors had walked, or run, long distances from other small Bomas to be present. Even now, stragglers ran rapidly across the landscape.
                                      Women and Children

        Both men and women wear shu'kas, in which cloths, often red, are draped about the shoulders, and waist. While both sexes wear beadware, the  women weighted their necks and wrists with strands of colored beads. Heavy five inch earings pulled heavily on earlobes while more beads clustered high in the ear. Traditional stiff wide collars of beads appeared to support their shaven heads on a colorful beaded platter.
                   
      The Maasai women and children formed a group and sang. My USA attention span was quickly exhausted by the swaying, clapping and singing, on and on. Eventually, one at a time participants came forward and drew a tourist visitor out to be dressed and brought back into the singing group. A woman came forward and took my hand, arranged a shuka around me, and placed beaded collars around my neck. When we were all dressed and integrated into the Maasai circle, native men entered the center, leaping  and bounding into the air.
      The women also entered the center, undulating their sinuous bodies and flipping the beaded collars up and down in time to the music. Approaching a man they extended a shoulder, the men responded with a shoulder bump, and a minute of paired dancing ensued.
      The Maasai woman shepherding me indicated that a shoulder bump meant the woman liked a man, and his return bump indicated interest. I bumped shoulders with a warrior, and he bumped back, to general laughter.  Moving bodies, bouncing collars, chanting in the hot dry air continued. The Maasai take pride in endurance during these dances, but I was ready to quit. 
      I was sweating slightly, even in the aridity of the air.  The Maasai were not sweating and exuded no body odor.  Why, I wondered don’t these people smell? Many had come from distances, rushing along on foot. They were jumping, dancing, singing and clapping. Water for washing is scarce.  I know I’d have been like a bum in the subway tunnel by weeks end.
     Women  displayed beadwork on the ground or on cloths for us to purchase as the singing came to an end, and we bought handiwork eagerly, because we knew the women would keep the money we paid them to use for themselves or their children
      We completed our purchases, and the market dispersed.  We crowded into one of the tiny bomas. Comfortless, almost completely dark, airless. In the center an empty fire ring and a store of wood. The only openings for ventilation or to release smoke were a couple of coke can sized circles in the wall, and what tiny spaces penetrated the thatch roof. The bed was piled hardened clay covered by a single stiffened cow hide.
     Our guide introduced the first wife of the second brother, a woman of twenty. He explained she spoke poor Swahili which he would interpret as best he could.  We could ask any question, even intimate ones.
     We asked several questions about the woman's children, how many wives her husband had, how long she'd been married.  She said she was twenty, married four years, and had a three year old son, and the year old baby boy she carried onher back.  Her husband had two more wives.

     Then a woman asked about the circumcism rituals.  The first wife answered the questions with no sign of embarrassment. 
                                                                      
                                                                           circumcised boy                                                                   
      Of course the men were circumcised. No anesthesia, no antibiotics. In public.  Everybody looked to see which boys were brave, and if any winced, or allowed a tear to run down their young faces, disgrace ensued. Maasai men did not mind pain! The girls did not like a coward!
     For a time after circumcision the boys painted their faces black and white and remained outside the village, learning to be men. She was reticent as to what this entailed.
     The women were also still circumcised. In public,  with no anesthetic, or antibiotics. The women were not judged so harshly if they cried, but they too tried to be brave. They bled a lot, a few died. They wanted to be circumscised, because otherwise no one would marry them. They seldom sought medical aid because it was against Tanzanian law.
     Most women had their babies at home. They refused to eat much so they would have small babies and an easier time.
The year old child in her lap still seemed tiny.                               
                                                                       Massai wife and Mother
      My stomach roiled, and a lump appeared in my throat as she spoke in matter of factly of her circumcision and childbirth here in the bush.
     More questions followed.
     If a man wanted to take a new wife, he should ask the older wives, but usually he got his way.
      Of course women built the houses, cooked, and did village work. Who else?”
     It was time to leave.  We said good by and asked one more question.
      She smiled, this twenty year old girl sitting in her tiny black hovel with her baby on her back. “Yes”, she said. “She was happy. Life was good.”


*(Although there are exceptions, most Maasai, men, women and children have very short shaven hair. The Maasai, especially men, traditionally progress through a number of recognized life stages, and one of the signals to their progress is hairstyle or color.Wikipedia has interesting descriptions of Maasai culture and rites of passage if you want to read more.) *

                                                                          Men with varied hairstyles

Arrival, Shock and Awe

                                         Day 1   Arrival, Shock and Awe

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 Wow we are in Africa.  When the hell can we go to bed? 
      It’s a long, long trip to the metropolis of Arusha, our first stop on the African Continent.  Door to door it's 30 hours.  The psychological trip is longer.
      In Miami we walked barefoot through long security lines, and body checks, hefted our luggage on to the x-ray table, and progressed into the airport's huge terminal. Glaringly lit, air-conditioned to an arctic chill with pine scented rest rooms and automatically flushing toilets, where drinkable if not desirable water gushed from the taps. Glittering shops selling gum, magazines, and luxury goods. Jean or suit clad travelers, dining, drinking or glued to lap tops as they wait to pull wheeled carry-ons down gently sloped ramps onto waiting planes.
      We deplaned in Kilimanjaro airport. Carried our luggage down the steep stairs leading to the tarmac and crossed a hundred feet of dark pavement into the  yellow lighting of the bare terminal where two custom inspectors waited in open kiosks. Discovered the rest rooms are outside, and we can use them only after customs. Showed our passports to an official, picked the rest of our luggage from the pile by the door.
       We found ourselves in the outer airport, a small room with a booth selling cigarettes and cokes closed in the corner, and a line of men waving  signs for the arrivals lucky enough to have pickup arrangements. Instantly,  pushy, insistent would-be porters engulfed us. 
     Everyone but arriving tourists is dark, faces in shades of brown, shades of black. Men and women dressed in bright cloth sari-like garments or uniforms. Men in khakis. No women in trousers.
       I pushed through the crowd and found a wooden hand-painted toilet sign indicating the way around the outside of the tiny terminal.  I cautiously moved that way, and asone looked at me  I crossed under the bare bulb of the outer foyer into the toilet. The smell lead the way. I saw three stalls, one a dirty sit-down toilet, the seat askew, the others porcelain lined holes in the floor, only one with a door.  A roll of toilet paper hung inside the entrance, but I preferred Kleenex. I find my many camping trips stand me (literally) in good stead and use the squatter standing up. 
      Returning I found our group, eleven with my husband Charlie and me, gathered near two six seater Toyota Land Cruisers. A few cabs and motercycle taxis still hoped for fares.
     We were welcomed by a round faced, brown man in Khakis still carrying a sign that proclaims our group identity,  Overseas Adventure Tours.  Another blacker and stockier man is loading luggage into the vehicles.  Everyone introduced themselves, and we said “I saw you on the plane. Where do you live?  Have you been to Africa before?” to each other, and did not listen to the answers.  Time enough tomorrow.
      We climb into the land rovers and rushed through what seems a tunnel of darkness over a two lane strip of paved but potholed highway for two hours.  Exhausted I slipped in and out of sleep, dreams and reality merging only to be jolted apart by a particularly rough bounce or sound of gravel hitting our sides as we skim by another vehicle on the narrow road.  It seems we are flying but a glance at the speedometer shows only 75 Km, about 45 miles per hour.
        We slowed as the road becomes crowded and turned down a rutted dirt track between kiosks and venders, some with dim lights illuminating their wares.  I realized that it is only about 9:30 here, although I was so tired.
        We stopped outside a fortress like gate. A man carrying a rifle and dressed in a military appearing uniform opened it a crack,  and he and another man peered out at us. seeing our guide, they opened the gate wide, and waved us though.  We found ourselves in a landscaped small world, quiet, spacious, where we are assigned to bungalows with screens and flush toilets, showers and faucets which produced water in abundance. But we are cautioned under no circumstances to imbibe this liquid, even to brush our teeth, Bottled water was provided.
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     We sleep for eight hours, secure in our mosquito netted beds, in our screened, guarded castles, and awake at 6:00 AM to bird calls and laughter from workers.


                                     Arusha, Tanzania Street Markets