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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Moyo Hill Camp - 2/21-2/22


Moyo Hill Camp – Day 17 – 2/21/11
So today was non-program day #2.  Everyone had been complaining so much that breakfast was pushed back to 9am.  This meant that since I was on cook crew I would have to be in the kitchen by 8am so I still got to sleep in quite a bit.  Cook crew was uneventful since everyone showed up and there were lots of happy people at breakfast because of the extra hours of sleep.  By 10am we were in the cruisers and on our way to the hike we had voted to go on.  The trail head was almost directly across from the entrance to Lake Manyara National Park.  We set off at a relaxed pace with askari (guard) Boo-ra (his name sounds that way-no idea of the correct spelling) leading the way.  At the front was myself, Julie (from Ca), Luke (from Colarado), and Greg (from Vermont).  We were happily going along for maybe ten minutes when we got a call to slow down.  We stopped part way up a rocky slope and looked back to find that our group had gone from 19 strong to only a few of us in the front and a giant clump of people inching their way up the hill many yards behind us.  They caught up and we continued on for fifteen minutes before this process was repeated.  This pattern was repeated over and over the whole way up the hill.  Walk for a bit, stop in shade and drink water until rest of group got there, waited longer while they rested and drank before pushing off again.  I am certainly not saying people should climb mountains faster than their fitness level.  However, as Luke put it “you get more tired if you stop constantly, why can’t we split into two groups that way everyone can travel at their appropriate speed?”  This idea was rejected on the bases that we should do things as a group.  So the front group was constantly stopping and waiting.  While it wasn’t fun never really establishing a rhythm, the views of the town Mtu wa Mbu (literal translation- River of Mosquito) and out over the whole valley below us were spectacular as we climbed.  When we finally reached the top an hour and a half later we sat under some trees and ate.  By this point askari Boo-ra was teaching Julie and me a song in Swahili (I’m not sure if its about going to war or fighting the devil and finding salvation….the meaning was never entirely clear) and our Swahili professor was admiring my pocket knife I leant him to peel an orange.  Greg and Luke had moved on to talking about the peaks they someday wanted to climb and which mountaineering school was the best.  By the time the rest of the group caught up, Julie and I had mastered the first verse of the song and demolished a pack of ginger snap cookies.  From the top of the trail we wound through some hedges and littered dirt tracks before coming to a small gathering of the typical mud houses complete with smiling mama, small eager child saying jambo, and a few feral dogs and cats hiding behind the few cows in the yard.  Waving and smiling at both mama and baby, we proceeded past onto the dirt road beyond to meet the cruisers.  Hopping in and reapplying sunscreen we headed to the luxurious part of our day.  We went to a tourist lodge.  A really nice tourist lodge.  Fancy gate, nice gravel, beautiful stone patio, and lots of comfy chairs…it was the stereotypical tropical resort in the middle of the poverty that “mzungos” (white people) expect when going on expensive vacations in third world countries.  While there is a very anti-tourist vibe feeling amongst all the students on this trip, we reveled in being able to sit on chairs that are not straight backed and too small in the seat to be comfy.  However the real treasure of this place is their pool.  Yes some of us had gone swimming in Tarangire (I did mention that is was green right?) but some people turned their nose up at a little flavor in their swimming accommodations.  No such complaints here.  The pool sat in the middle of a tropical garden full of native plants and flowering trees and the pool deck was the same stone as the entrance patio.  There were cushioned lounge chairs and fluffy towels and the pool has bar stool in it so you could sit at the counter and drink while still in the pool (this was a hit with many students who are finding their ration of beer only once a week difficult).  My favorite part was the elephant.  Not alive but a life size elephant that stood at the deep end of the pool squirting water in a lovely arc from its raised trunk.  I celebrated this reprieve from the camp base by buying a 2,500 shilling bar of Cadbury chocolate.  So in this idyllic setting we whiled away most of the afternoon before briefly stopping at the tourist bar Happy Days on our way back to camp.  It was a very good day off overall  
Moyo Hill Camp – Day 18 – 2/22/11
Just in camp today.  We began the morning with Environmental Policy which was actually interesting today.  We learned about PRA (participatory rural appraisal) which assists rural communities in achieving their development goals.  It is a system based entirely on local knowledge with the outsiders merely assisting with organization.  I believe we are doing a field exercise on this tomorrow.  The morning finished with another guest lecture by Dr. Kissui this time on lion conservation (his personal research) and lion social structure.  It was a great lecture and we learned quite a lot about lion-human conflict, why lion infanticide occurs, and how lion hunting might be made sustainable.  The afternoon we went to the local school to do some community service.  We divided into a reading group, a music group, a gardening group, and a building group.  I picked building group which was going to help them build a stove in a partially constructed brick building.  We got all the sand and cement mix blended together on the floor and sat down to wait for the building expert to arrive and give us some directions.  Another lesson about Africa: everything runs on Africa time.  We sat waiting for two hours for this guy to show.  He did arrive….just as we were leaving.  So we might go back tomorrow to do the cementing that was supposed to get done today.  Upon getting back I did my laundry (I think I’m getting better at this hand washing stuff but I still miss my washer at home) and did NOT get fried legs this time! Unfortunately my burns from my last laundry attempt are still reddish rectangles above my knees that will probably remain there until next winter when all tan-ness vanishes.  A bunch of us played hacky-sac (try to keep small been filled ball off the ground by kicking it up in the air with your feet toward another person in the circle) before dinner while talking about cool books we were reading or had read previously.  A shower then off to bed with me!

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