The Unforgettable Tanzania

(Versión en español: La inolvidable Tanzania)

It's been over a month since we arrived from climbing Kilimanjaro, and yet, I haven’t been able to turn the page on this vacation. I find myself looking for any excuse to relive the memories: rummaging in the pictures, checking the map of Tanzania, writing something about the trip…

It may not be a fair comparison, because the memory of this vacation is so recent, and perhaps I am forgetting some special moments I have lived in others, but I cannot stop thinking -and resist the temptation to say- that this has been my best vacation ever! A combination of factors leads me to this conclusion: a good balance between personal challenge and comfort; a good dose of adventure; full contact with nature; the genuine kindness of people; too much discovery, and perhaps the most important, is that the four of us fully enjoyed each stage of the journey, with very little friction between us, and with the very gratifying satisfaction of having reached the highest point in Africa all together.

Uhuru Peak: The roof of Africa

I bring pleasant memories of Africa, especially from Tanzania, which in some respects wipes away the stereotypes that I had of the continent, but in others reinforces them. The part of Tanzania that we were lucky to know, reminds me, and not, Venezuela in several respects. It resembles and differs at the same time, as both countries are full of contrasts, and contrast is perhaps the best way to describe them. That “looks like”, and “not looks like”, gave me, and took away from me, the feeling of being at home. It is difficult to describe. When I travel to the Dominican Republic or Colombia, to name two examples, I feel at home because the cultural similarities between those countries and Venezuela, the country in which I born. In Tanzania I have some kind of that feeling despite language barriers, and the fact that I know very little about their traditions and culture. The warmth and simplicity of the people made me feel like home, but the language and the unknowns undermine that emotion.

I found an example of how Africans looks so much as Venezuelans, on the first flight we took from Toronto to Addis Ababa. After midnight, victim of insomnia, I left my seat and went for a walk through the plane. When I reached the tail, I met a group of Africans drinking beers. There were no flight attendants nearby, and one of the guys in the group asked me if I wanted one. I said yes, and then one of the girls who was in the group, opened one of the compartments and passed me a beer. Within minutes we were like friends engaged in a relaxed conversation.

The piece of Africa we traveled on this holiday is full of humble but cheerful people, proud of their traditions; incredible landscapes and poor villages; a lively and vibrant nature challenged by the disturbing presence of humans; poverty and wealth coexisting in the same space; wild animals centimeters away of tourists, which were armed with sophisticated cameras, but that have completely lost their instinct and their ability to survive in the wilderness.

What I liked most about our stay in Tanzania was definitely the mountain, despite the hard time we had during the last stretch of the climb, and all the luxuries we found at the Safari. The eight days we spent at the Kilimanjaro are simply priceless, to the point that I already long to go back soon.

In the mountain we learned a few more words in Swahili, to add to those we have already learned at Beverly and Sherman’s home (our neighbors and friends from Tanzania). It is a language that I find enjoyable. We were in close contact with the mountain guides, especially with a Focus Fungarú, a skinny, humble guy who enjoys singing and climbing mountains. Focus served as leader of the expedition and was the one who approached us every night, after dinner, to tell us the plan for every next day. You could also say that he was the director of the orchestra, because he was the one who was always ready to direct the song "Jambo Bwana" or "Kilimanjaro" whenever the opportunity presented. I find it difficult to determine his age, but I guess he was in his forties.

Focus told us that if you want to be a mountain guide in Tanzania, you must begin as a porter, carrying the heavy bags for a while, then become a cook, and finally go to college to obtain a Mountain Guide’s certificate. If I recall well, the certificates are issued by an institution known as Mweca College. Mountain Guides are trained to communicate with tourist in up to 8 different languages, and must know about the flora and fauna of Kilimanjaro Mountain, its preservation and of course the park rules. To go to the college, you must have some savings to pay for tuition. And once you receive your certification and guide license, you will need to follow the park rules to preserve its privileges. In a poor country like Tanzania, a guide job is worthy and, at least in our experience, the guides care well to follow the park rules to avoid any risk of losing their license (and source of income).

Here, I find some similarities as well as some differences with Mount Roraima in Venezuela. The last two times I went there to climb the Tepuy (as are called those kind of top flat mountains), it was mandatory to hire at least one guide among the residents of San Francisco de Yuruaní. But similarities in the organizational aspect end there. In Venezuela, those mountain guides had not training at all, and there is no presence of park rangers to enforce any rule in the national park, much less in the mountain. It was just a formality to carry the guide up and down, with you, and to feed him during the tour. I don’t know whether the matter has changed lately.

And if the Tanzanian's mountain guides seemed to me very well trained for their job, I must say that the safari guide, who led us during our visit to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, was a walking encyclopedia, at least, in terms of the flora and fauna of those parks. Focus had accumulated 10 years’ experience in the mountain when we met him, while Edwin, our driver and safari guide, had been working in the parks for 25 years. His English was much more polished, and his conversations were better versed. In the seat of the Toyota, beside him, Edwin had a very thick book of Tanzanian and Kenyan birds. Not that he needed for checking it, it was there to prove me that the name of the bird he had told me was effectively the name of that bird. At his insistence of naming the birds, I dedicated some time to go through the book and to review the names of the many birds we saw them. I think I have discovered a new hobby now.

Edwin picked us at the hotel in Moshi (Ameg Lodge) one day after descending the mountain. We had slept, taken a shower and were just finishing breakfast when he arrived in his Toyota Land Cruiser. He came impeccably arranged in the proper style of a safari man, with the only omission a hat. Both, the Toyota and his beige shirt, were labeled with the logo of Bushbuck, the safari company that organized all the logistics of our stay in Tanzania. Edwin works for them. From Moshi we went to Arusha and paid a short visit to Bushbuck offices and then we headed towards the Serengeti National Park in a journey that took us about 8 hours.

An overwhelming dryness dominates most of the way from the airport to Moshi, from Moshi to Lemosho, and also from Moshi to Arusha. We get used to see columns of dust rising hundreds of meters into the air. When we first saw one of them, just few minutes after landing at the international airport of Kilimanjaro, we thought it was a tornado, but no one seemed alarmed by it. We soon discover that rather than destroy, what they do is fill all of dust.

In addition to the columns of dust, the landscape is dotted with rudimentary houses pretty similar in shape, size, and construction materials to those I have seen in Venezuela, many times: mud and sticks houses, with zinc planks in the roof, some of them, the more privileged, built with bricks and cement blocks.  It reminded me the rural side of Venezuela, streets without sidewalks, villages that grow along the paved road with rudimentary shops, some of them as improvised as a table over two stones on which the peasants put the merchandises they have to offer to whoever passes in the road. When those small settlements have internal streets are unpaved, full of holes and bumps.

Time to time appeared in our way patches of lands intensely green, that sharply contrasts with the yellowness of the dominant arid terrains. The land is then cultivated, protected by the government to prevent deforestation, or both. In our way up to cross the Ngorongoro crater, we crossed a rainforest similar to the Henri Pittier National Park in Venezuela. Then, we get to the top of the crater just to discover a huge savanna, with sparse vegetation, that opened in front of our eyes and reached the Serengeti National park. One side of the crater was green and densely forested; the other was yellow with scarce vegetation. A striking contrast that we had already felt in other sections of the road, and even days before when we arrived at the entrance of Lemosho to climb Kilimanjaro.

Between the contrasts of this land, I cannot count the one that must exist between the dry and the rainy seasons. As Edwin told us, and many documents we have read confirmed, Tanzania has two rainy seasons a year: a long one from February to May and other shorter from October to December. In August we were in the middle of the dry season, therefore was normal to get the impression that we were in a dryness land. But that perception could be completely opposed if we were visiting the country during the rainy season. I guess we would have seen very bright green land everywhere and almost wetland soil.

One thing I noticed in the midst of the dryness was the extensions of very dry maize crops, still hanging to yellowed clumps. I thought it was a waste that nobody had harvested the maize, a sort of indolence. But when I asked Edwin why nobody had picked the corn crop, he explained that part of the crop had been harvested already, and the remaining had been left there to dry that way for picking it later. The Chagas, the main ethnic group living on the foot and mountainsides of Kilimanjaro, do a kind of porridge with the corn flour called 'Ugali', that tastes pretty similar to Venezuelan ‘bollos’. They eat this porridge, bare hands, soaking it in a stew. If I understood well, the first part of the harvest satisfies that demand, while the corn getting dried to be collected later has a different use.

In addition to the contrast between the yellowness-arid zones with greener and fresh ones, the opulence of both safari´s hotels were sharply opposed to the general poverty of Tanzania. If after having spent 8 days on the mountain using latrines, a clean bathroom seemed a luxury to us, the facilities we found in Serengeti Sopa Lodge left us perplexed. We were not accustomed to such luxury. My children could not believe they had a bed for each one. Whenever we have traveled, we used to stay in one room and to share smaller beds than the ones we had in the Serengeti. There, we received a red-carpet treatment.

Both safari’s hotels (we stayed at Sopa Lodge in Serengeti and Ngorongoro) were designed in harmony with the landscape, and with good taste. The rooms and bathrooms were spacious and well decorated. The day we arrived to Serengeti Sopa, a monkey was waiting for us in our balcony. The next morning we catched a buffalo grazing placidly at the bottom of our window. There was no separation between the hotel and the Serengeti, or fence to keep the animals away from the hotel facilities. As you can find a monkey waiting for you to open your balcony door, you could easily encounter a zebra, or an elephant, or even a lion. The hotel is an integral part of the park.

Mr. Buffalo

All the elements contributed to create a unique environment: the proximity between the wilderness (but genuinely wild!) with the luxury and comfort of the hotel, without one breaking the harmony of the other. The close presence of Masais, who are reluctant to change their traditions, and still live almost as they did in the past, ignoring tourists traveling at their side. All this combined gives a charming touch to this magical land.

A cheetah watching us!

Around 120 different tribes live in Tanzania, most of whom have assimilated the modernity and live in an integrated world. The Masais however, seems to have chosen to remain isolated without mixing with other tribes and maintaining their traditions, I would say quite intact. Not that they are immune to tourism and trade, in fact they benefited for trading goods with other communities, and are eager to charge tourist for posing in their pictures, for example. But still, they retain the essence of their ancestral way of living, depending of their own animals, without embracing agriculture or hunting, or any modern industry. If they were allowed, they would still be hunting lions to prove their manhood. The Tanzanian government has imposed them a veto to enter the Serengeti and, as I understand, has also prohibited them to hunt lions. In return they are the only tribe that can live in the protected area of Ngorongoro.

Edwin told us that the Masais revere and pray to nature, and when a family problem afflicts them, they go to Ol Doinyo Lengai, the only active volcano in Tanzania, to pray. This active volcano is considered by the Masais a sacred mountain. We still have pending to visit this place.

While I've the impression that Tanzania is a poor country, I don’t think that their poverty could be considered extreme. We saw few beggars, prowling in Arusha, but overall people seemed to have access to food, clothing and health. In the streets of Moshi and Arusha you can still see carts drawn by oxen or donkeys. The funny thing is that this carts are built with rubber wheels and chassis of modern cars.

The way of driving is another remarkable similarity between Tanzania and Venezuela. In both countries seem that there are no rules on the street but survival instinct: motorcycles should beware of cars, cars of trucks, and trucks for bigger trucks, as it seems than the biggest has right of way. The attitude of the traffic police also looked familiar to me. What was definitely different was the steering wheel on the right side...

Ernesto Hontoria

More about our trip to Africa: Tanzania: a trip to Africa’s heart