Week 2: In Which I try to Redeem Myself from the Mundaneness of my Last Post

           My most recent update, if I may flatter myself, was after the standard of J.R.R. Tolkien: It might have had the makings of an engaging story, but the excitement was certainly buried in the details. =P The good news is, now that I have my backdrop set, I can move forward with the adventures! And there have already been many. For my busy friends, I again bullet-point (sorry, all the bullet-points are long, feel free to skim)—but the most exciting part of this post is, I’ve decided to include lots of pictures. It may take two hours to submit, but I hope you enjoy!

·         Adventure #1: the wildlife

 My first day at TCDC, I was excited to realize that Africa isn’t really all that different from the United States. Sure, it’s a constant 68 or so degrees, and the trees are taller and smooth-skinned, with gray branches like the archways of a cathedral, but still, they’re all friends to me.

The trees remind me of this painting I saw in the Chapel basement, by Cory Ench. Haha, I wasted one of my pictures on something that’s not from my trip. ^_^

 

I found mimosa, lantana, and wood-sorrel. My family has a pot of kalanchoe outside their front door. I know banana trees, even if they’re not US-native plants, and I recognize a host of imports to Floridian gardens, like Tradescantia (pallida and zebrina) and Bougainvillea. There’re white plumeria and canna lilies and I’ve seen Aloe vera growing wild and tall. Those of you who know my odd habit of eating plants I find in the dirt will realize how stunned I was to also find a real, live green-briar, on a pass through the woods. You gape, but I swear it was so. ^_^ Families plant roses in their garden beds and the grass looks like grass anywhere, although probably lusher and more green than the grass I currently have in my front yard. The sun wasn’t even out, so I didn’t need sunscreen or bug spray or anything.

It wasn’t all stunningly familiar; there was a huge African tulip tree with huge, red-orange flowers curving up to the sky with lacy yellow edges. I found out that the reason we have avocado every day for lunch and dinner was because our host family has an avocado tree growing right in their yard. And the banana trees…well, they’re banana trees. You know them, you love them, you see them and you know you’re not in Kansas anymore.

              

 Another plant I don't know the name of.

That was my first day. “Look how familiar everything is! It’s like home, but maybe taller and greener!” The second day, my roommate and I wondered how we had possibly managed to miss the giant birds in the trees. They’re big and they’re noisy and they leave painted white splatter in circles below their branches that are four feet across. They hunch their shoulders like vultures but Larry says they’re a type of stork. They soar heavily through the sky, their huge bodies like fast-moving blimps and their feet trailing awkwardly behind them—Larry says they use them like rudders.  They look like they’re eight feet tall with a wingspan that would stretch across my room, but Larry says they’re only half that size and would never come above your chest. I don’t know if Larry is much of a naturalist. ;-) Sometimes they caw, sometimes they screech, sometimes they coo or clack their beaks together with a sound like a loud woodpecker. I can never tell if the sounds outside my window are monkeys or cats or gigantic stork-birds. ^_^ I found a feather underneath one of their trees (outside of the shower zone). It reached from my elbow to my outstretched fingertips.

The next day, in the morning, Lotte came back from her turn in the bathroom to tell me she’d just seen a monkey. I jumped to the window and saw a black tail slide up a tree and jump to another one like a squirrel. A little later I saw it again, picking at a fallen avocado and trying to figure out how to peel it. Apparently monkeys (kima, in Kiswahili) are not just fans of bananas, but also avocados and carrots. Mama Resti tells me that they only pick the ripe ones, and if you ask them they will throw some down to you. (At you, I revised internally. Still, charming.)

Next day was Saturday. We went on a relatively unmemorable hike around Lake Duluti (there was water, and there were trees, but mostly there was still dust), and I saw a squirrel. If the monkey was like a squirrel, this squirrel was like a mouse. It was tiny and brown with a bushy tail; it probably would have fit in my hand. It jumped to a trunk and disappeared before I could pull out my camera, though I did think it was worth a picture. I also got a silhouetted picture of a kingfisher, small but distinctive over the lake. Then on Sunday Lotte noticed a gecko about an inch and a half long on our wall. I couldn't catch it, but I got a picture before it escaped under the dresser.

 Gecko. I think. About life-size.

 Monday’s new animal was particularly fantastic, because I got to touch it. =) I found a chameleon crawling from the grass onto the sidewalk in one of the school's courtyards, during chai break. It was scared of me but I managed to pick it up and it was quite well-behaved. I held a chameleon! And terrified it. It was adorable. =) =) =)

Tuesday was my first break in my streak of exotic animal sightings, unless you count some very interesting bugs. But I went on a safari last weekend, and that makes up for everything. =) We saw everything from zebras to wildebeest to ostriches, jackals and antelopes and gazelles, plus an amazing close-up of a giraffe (twiga) and an elephant (tembo). We saw hyenas and warthogs, bison and hippos. We even saw a rhino and a cheetah, very far off in the distance. It was absolutely fantastic! A few snatches of Ngorongoro Crater:

The view of the crater from above, right before we descended. The white spot on the left is the salt left behind by the lake, which is mostly dry during this time of year.

Ngorongoro is, I believe, the world’s largest caldera. Huge mountains surround the valley on all sides, effectively hemming in the animals so that you can get a great safari year-round. The drive up took about three and a half hours, which took us from the green, forested land of Usa River down through flatter, yellow plains with herds of cattle and termite mounds interspersed with rough-hewn dry gullies. The cement buildings with corrugated tin roofs gave way to patchwork cabins tacked together with cardboard, wood, and metal, sometimes with no windows and questionable roofs. Then they disappeared altogether, and the only homes visible were round, grass-and-mud Massai homes and the occasional cement structure. The one thing consistent was the dust, which came in through the windows of the vehicle and clogged the nostrils, even before we ever got into the valley. Inside the park, we started up one side of the crater and down the other. Everything was really beautiful then, green and steep like a jungle; even the dust turned pretty, going from gray-brown to a reddish color. Would have been even more beautiful if it had stayed mostly on the ground. ^_^

 The Massai tribe is of cultural interest to a lot of tourists. They’ve chosen to live the agricultural lives that their ancestors have been living for thousands of years…with some modifications. A little extra money from sticking clubs and necklaces through the window of tourist safari vehicles and finagling for cash never hurt.

Before we even got into the park, we saw this guy by the side of the road. He stared at us for a minute, then lumbered away. I really wanted to see one, so this was awesome!

Going on a safari!

I was worried, before we got there, that there wouldn’t be any animals around. After all, it’s winter here, so it’s the dry season, and we weren’t going in the morning or the evening, when I’m used to animals coming out. But they were everywhere! Take a look at this:

Look at these animals! Everywhere! We had wildebeest and zebras standing around really close and scattered nonchalantly everywhere.
 

The zebras and wildebeest were by far the most common, but upon our entrance into the valley we say a whole bunch of Thompson gazelles and several warthogs too.

In Kiswahili, zebras are called "striped donkeys." I think that's funny.

Bison. Some of my best pictures were through the binoculars.

A female ostrich. You can tell because it's all gray instead of black with a pink neck.

We saw several lions. Our first pair was a male and a female, way off in the distance, sitting lazily and watching all the prey grazing. We took lots of pictures, thinking it was the only chance we were going to get. But this guy was sitting in the shade of another person’s car—I think it was eating food that they were throwing to it—and when they started the engine, it got up and wandered slowly back over to its parents, who were probably thirty yards away. Simba, in Kiswahili.

Wildebeest, lying around. “We’re not interesting, you’re not interesting…Good day.” ^_^

Absolutely incredible! We were almost out of the park when we happened upon this guy, eating his dinner twenty feet from the road. Probably the most amazing sight of the day!

We’d just left the park when we saw a whole slew of monkeys. This little guy jumped down from the ledge and couldn’t get back up without, erm, help from his mother. ^_^

The funniest thing is that since the trip, I’ve seen monkeys almost every day. Lotte got an amazing picture of the kind that climb the parachichi tree.

 

The other day, Lotte and I went out on a walk through a nearby forest and corn field, and saw a completely different type of monkey. White and black with long, long haired tails.

                Then, the next day or two, I saw more monkeys in someone’s yard. I reached for my camera, then shrugged and let the monkey dash away without trying to take a picture of it. Why take more pictures? There are always more monkeys. XD That’s how crazy this place is, hahaha…

                Oh, look at me, one bullet point finished.*googly eyes* But definitely one of the coolest ones! =D