Amaizing Corn

 

This is the view from our first safari lodge at Ndutu. The brown sign says something like "do not go beyond this sign or you'll be eaten by lions." Something like that. I tried to bring back the generalized pointing at things pose.

 

 

Senior statesman Brandt noted that many animals would display their posteriors whenever we pulled up next to them. He said he might put together an album exclusively featuring butt shots. For stripeless donkeys, I think they are just preparing to deliver a kick in self defense.

 

 

I think this is a Grant's Gazelle or some other large antelope.

 

 

I plan to get a lot of mileage out of these lion den photos.

 

 

Yes, that is a giraffe skull casually sitting on the side of the path. Lions do occasionally take down small giraffes or even large and sick giraffes.

 

 

We rode in the safari vehicles usually standing up with our upper bodies hanging out the roof. It was really quite comfortable but you had to hang on with the road or lack of road being so bumpy. There were no rules about where the vehicle could go in Ndutu and in the Serengeti so off road was the way we rolled. In Ngorongoro and Tarangire we had to stay on the paths.

 

 

Through the Lutheran partnership with Iringa diocese congregations, much work has been done on farming techniques greatly increasing the yield in corn and beans. This is a picture of Ipogoro's new corn silo storage device that Augustana helped supply funds to build. Now they can sell excess corn when the prices are higher.

 

 

Ipogoro Lutheran Church offers a variety of community programs like this preschool whose session started the week we were there. We passed out candy canes and soccer balls to these several hundred kids. Pastor Nixon said many of these kids are orphans due to the on-going AIDS crisis in Africa. Fortunately for many kids when their parents both die from AIDS (or something else), they may have extended family who will take them in.

 

 

This is John, Mary, and I supervising the unofficial Christening of the soccer balls.

 

 

 

In case you haven't figured this out yet, I am presenting these pictures in a mostly random order so as to not bore you with too many of one topic all at once. In our first two days in Iringa, we visited four of the five preaching points for Ipogoro. By the way, Ipogoro is a growing town adjacent to the larger city of Iringa--Iringa sits up high on a plateau while Ipogoro is next to the "highway" at the bottom of the hill. This preaching point (the name escapes me) is the one that is pretty far up in the hills. We had to walk about 10 minutes straight up a slope that is probably impassable by any vehicles other than a dirtbike. This congregation recently completed a new bathroom facility with a septic system out back behind the church building. We had a tour of it.

 

 

After we exchanged our usual introductions with the congregation and sang some songs, they brought out a case of soda in returnable 1970s style tall bottles (Pepsi, Coke, Fanta orange, etc). We were able to casually circulate and talk with people either with some interpretation help or all in English. Sue and I showed off our photo album of "our life in Minnesota" and we handed out photos of ourselves standing in the cold on Christmas morning. Finally we did a photo shoot of the ground breaking for the new evangelist's house that they plan to build next to the church. Everyone grabbed a shovel or a hoe and dug in. Someone got a great photo of me leaning on my shovel as if I were a county worker exercising my right to lean on my shovel.

Onward Lutheran Travelers

 

After our week in Iringa doing church related things, we headed for the Iringa airstrip to catch our chartered flight to the northern game reserves/national parks/wildlife preserves.

 

 

This is the Caravan (doesn't look like a Dodge) that all eleven of us flew in to the capitol, Dodoma. Then John and Mark got into a smaller plane and we headed separately up to the landing strip at Ndutu. The Ndutu strip is very short so there are weight limits when it comes to landing.

 

 The Tanzanian Flag

 

The security screening process was very strict in that the airport lady sort of looked through our bags. This was the flight where each person could only have about 55 pounds of baggage total including bags, carry ons, cheesy souvenirs, etc. The sisters in our group went hog wild shopping in Iringa so they were constantly asking others if they had poundage to spare. I actually jettisoned two books just to reduce my weight and to take up less space in this world and so the sisters could bring their wooden giraffes. The pilot didn't seem to tally up the weights of the bags but he did weigh each one and then distribute them under the plane evenly.

 

 

The Losbys live a few blocks from us here in South St. Paul. They are the only ones whose ages never came up in casual conversation. I think they're in their mid fifties but I may be over-shooting.

 

 

I loved the GPS device with the airplane as the icon instead of a little blue car or a monster truck like we have on the Garmin.

 

 

Before the flight our pilot, Martin Zimmerman from Switzerland prayed. He then warned us that he'd be using oxygen when we got up to 12,000 feet "to stay awake". Nervous Carla almost had a bird when he pulled out his nasal oxymizer and cranked it up to 2 liters but she was glad he warned us in advance.  12,000 feet seemed pretty high for this medium small airplane. Nervous Carla sat right behind the pilot where I had her take a photo of the empty seat next to the pilot. I intended to use the line "God was our copilot" but decided it wasn't funny enough for inclusion in this always humorous blog.

 

 

He also warned us that we'd first circle the runway once before landing "to make sure it was clear of debris and/or animals." Sure enough, there were some zebras (stripped donkeys) walking across the runway as we buzzed by it. This photo was taken on our way from the airstrip to Ndutu Lodge (about a five minute drive).

 

 

The Ndutu Lodge, like many of the older establishments was originally a large game hunting lodge and when you hear of people talking about "the big five" animals in Africa, they're referring to the days when hunters hunted on foot 1)elephant, 2)rhinoceros, 3)leopard, 4)lion, and 5)giraffe. Several of us after seeing the majesty of these animals up close and personal could not even imagine someone shooting at them with a gun. 

 

There are about thirty duplex cabins with porches overlooking this wooded buffer zone to the Serengeti. In the morning we saw zebra walking by and some gazelles.

 

 

Our room had three twin beds complete with mosquito nets. We really didn't see any actual mosquitoes anywhere on our trip. There were some annoying bugs that would get up in your face but I never noticed an actual malaria-carrying mosquito. We took our daily anti-malarial medicine (Malarone) and in fact will be taking it for another five days.

 

 

That afternoon we went out on a game drive in our two safari Land Rovers. Almost immediately we saw the pride of lions basking in the late afternoon sun. Actually around every turn we'd encounter new and exciting animals and birds. Remind me to post the photo of a dung beetle doing what it does best.

The Prodigal Daughter

 

The Swahili word for zebra means "donkey with stripes" so of course whenever we saw an actual donkey we'd refer to it as a "stripeless zebra".  This is from the Ngorongoro Crater, the largest unbroken volcanic caldera in the world that is not entirely a lake.  That's quite a qualifier, isn't it?  Oh, and the crater is one of Africa's seven wonders of the natural world.

 

 

In the crater we happened upon this big boy mainly by noticing the five safari vehicles lined up with tourists snapping photos.  He's probably under five years old as his mane is still pretty sparse and decidedly un-bouffant.  The animals must be able to just ignore the safari vehicles rumbling around every day from sunrise until 6pm.

 

 

This is an adult female lion standing over a fresh kill of wildebeast.  We couldn't figure out why she was all alone.  Usually, other lions will appear for lunch when one of them makes a kill.  There weren't even any hyenas scavenging about.  Weird.  We got this picture on extreme zoom.

 

 

We spied these two male lions making their rounds at the entrance to Tarangire National Park in front of a massive and ancient Baobab tree that Tarangire is so famous for.

 

 

Do these stipes make me look fat?  The donkey with stripes on the right is very pregnant.

 

 

Here's Mark attempting to capture bird songs on his I-Phone.  He asked us to be quiet and we were but I'm pretty sure he also got the Japanese tourists next to us on his recording.

 

 

Look who appeared at our door today as if she stepped off the 68 bus.  Makiko has returned!  Actually, her BFF Jennah dropped her off.  We went for some Don Pablos Texican food last night.

 

 

Makiko's has been staying with Jennah since last Sunday.  I'll drop her off at the airport on Thursday.  We challenged Makiko to identify things, anythings that are different in our house since she left in June of 2010.  She immediately pointed out our two Paris paintings.  She remembers Mr. Wheel and promptly engaged him in play with his fishing wand.

 

 

She's staying in "Makiko's Room" also known as the guest room. In April she'll be starting her third year of college--it sounds like she's studying communications.

Urban Oasis

 

Here's Sue demonstrating the foliage on steroids of Arusha, Tanzania.  Our rooms here were duplex round cabins artfully laid out in the lush gardens.  Our six rooms were in the newer quarter a few minutes walk from the main lodge.

 

 

Here are the safari drivers Kisani and Daudi.  All of our safari days lodge arrangements, meals, and transportation were set up through Dorobo Safari company.  So even after we finished with the actual safari on Thursday morning, our guides drove us into Arusha and were still available for all of our transportation needs.  These guys were great guides--we were in good hands.

 

 

The lodge was located ten minutes by truck straight up a very bumpy road hill right in the middle of Arusha town, a city of a few million people.  As we drove up the hill for the first time, I commented that this is another location where Sue and I would never have gone.  I told Mark that if we had come to Tanzania ourselves, we would not have seen or experienced 90% of what we did on this tour.  People who climb Mt. Kilimanjaro or who go on safari stay at this lodge before their climbs/safari.

 

 

Ilboru is a true jungle oasis in the middle of a grimey, smogy, crowded, hard-scrapple city.

 

 

Brandt, the senior member of our group announced he was taking off his shoes and walking in the grass barefooted the day we left since it was -10 degrees F in Minnesota.  It was 80 most days in Tanzania.

 

 

Mark asked to meet the chef who had prepared us several great lunches and dinners.  The entire kitchen staff came out to sing and dance for us.

 

 

Der Fleigender Hollaender - The Flying Dutchman

While we waited for our flight from Amsterdam to London, I enjoyed reading the individual names on each of the KLM airplanes.  One 747 was called "City of Atlanta" even though I don't think KLM flies to Atlanta. . .

This plane is "Crested Coot"

 

 

When we returned home yesterday Mr. Tailwheel was fat, warm and happy not unlike a lion a day after a big kill.  Mary kept our house and cat up and running.  Thanks Mary!

Twende Tanzania!

 

Twende is Swahili for "let's go" and "go" we did!  Today's blog is just 8 photos chosen from the 1800+ that we took on our two cameras.  We are intending to share the good ones with others in our group but some of the group's cameras took some amazing shots.  Our contribution will be some of my patented action shots.  This is what we wore on the 26 hour trip there and on the way home.  (we had some laundry done in Iringa)

 

 

This was our first afternoon of safari in Ndutu Preserve.  This might have been my favorite session of safari because it was all so new and exciting.  Every corner we rounded and every hill we climbed revealed more exotic wildlife from this pride of lazy lions sunning themselves to cape buffalo to mongoose to zebra, to Grant's and Thomson's gazelle.  Our guide Kasani said he heard that these big cats took down a buffalo the day before explaining why they looked so incredibly lazy.

 

 

Look how excited and energetic we look on our first leg of the flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam.  Dan from church, who works for Delta, was able to send some niceties our way back in coach class.  These niceties were in the form of more gin and tonics than we could reasonably drink.

 

 

 

This was our first wildlife siting on the 9 hour bus trip from Dar es Salaam to Iringa.  We were zipping through Mikumi National Park at about 60 miles per hour.  We also saw our first warthog as it dashed across the road in front of us.  Later on the game drives we would see countless zebra and many, many warthog families.

 

 

This was our surprise greeting on the side of the highway just before getting to Iringa where we would spend the first week of our trip.  The trumpet playing white girl is a German volunteer.  This was quite the welcome for our 11 road weary travellers.

 

 

We didn't see elephant on the first two days of the safari but Daudi, our second guide, guaranteed we'd see them in Tarangire National Park.  We saw one half way down the road into the Ngorongoro Crater crater and then in Tarangire we saw more elephants than you could ever reasonably expect to see in one afternoon.

 

 

This was a typical greeting by the kids of Ipogoro Lutheran Church, our companion congregation.  You'd have a kid hanging on to each of your ten fingers as you tried to walk through the crowds.

 

 

In that first surprise greeting on our first full day in Tanzania, we were presented with katanga, these colorful traditional wrapping cloths that you could use for curtains or table runners or as clothing.  This is Ipogoro's pastor named Nixon and Mark our fearless leader.  There will be some good Nixon-related photos to follow. . .

 

 

We visited four of the five preaching points of Ipogoro in our first two days.  The preaching points are outlying extension congregations of Ipogoro led by a non-pastor evangelist.  Nixon goes to each of the preaching points once a month to perform baptisms, etc.  Mobility is difficult for the average subsistence farming Tanzanian so these preaching points are vital.  We walked down a dirt path through farmer's fields for about 30 minutes to get to this preaching point.  We sang some songs and danced after giving introductions of ourselves.  Mark introduced us as "Augustana's Church Leaders".  Nixon did the translating and I especially enjoyed how he'd make the trombone sound just as I did when describing my number one hobby.  Sue did a fantastic job playing her flute by ear accompanying us.

 

 

Right outside of Iringa we visited the Isimila Stone Age Sight where stone artifacts dating back 200,000 years have been unearthed.  We walked through the canyon among these towers of earth that were not eroded like the surrounding ground.  Pretty amazing.