I’m sitting in Morogoro, Tanzania next to a guy who
speaks almost no English watching Ghana play soccer in the quarter finals for
the World Cup. I can assure you that all of Africa is watching, too. Everywhere we walk on the street during a
game has the buzz of those funny horns they blow during the game. Right now, I love life in Africa. In the past
5 days we’ve moved from Kenya to Tanzania, a 28 hour journey, broken up by a
day in the Masai Mara National park for an amazing safari.
Nairobi, arrived in Nairobi at 5 am, left for Masai land at 6 am and arrived in
the village by about 2:30 pm. Then the
adventure started. We were in the home
village of the two Masai warriors I wrote about earlier this month. On Monday, we went on a walking safari around
their land. We saw Thompson gazelles, a
wildebeest, some jackals, and a few zebras. The walking safari wasn’t dangerous, but it was exciting to be walking
under the protection of two Masai warriors carrying bows with poison tipped
arrows. We got to practice shooting the
bow and arrow, too.
After our walk, some of our group helped slaughter a
goat to be butchered and skewered in halves and roasted around the fire. We all sat and around, stayed warm and
enjoyed the Masai entertainment. Our
entertainment was tribal chants and dancing and I really enjoyed it. We slept
on the floor on cow skins to shield us from the dirt floor-a real village
experience. After our night’s sleep, we
got up early for our driving safari. This was excellent and just what you would think of for an African
safari. We saw lions, elephants,
giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, water buffalo, a crocodile, and a black
rhino. Wow, what a lucky day!
The day after our safari, we had a 17 ½ hour bus
ride to reminisce and remember all our fun the previous day. A highlight was driving past Mt. Kilimanjaro
and wishing I could take a week off to climb it. We also had another interesting experience.
We were riding a greyhound style bus that was actually pretty nice. However, when we pulled over to an open field
and the driver said we could get out and have a restroom break (not exactly his
words), we laughed and marveled as the whole bus emptied and all went to find
bushes to step behind for relief. I love
this experience not because it was comfortable, but because it was unique and
very fun to tell people about. I only
wish all my friends and family from home were on the bus with me when it
happened. I would love to have seen
their faces.
