Greetings! For those new to my distribution list, welcome aboard. I travel, usually work but also personal when possible, and I love to email to my peeps about it afterward. Occasionally someone around me will drink too much and say things s/he doesn't mean, like "I really enjoy your writing." So I keep up these journalistic efforts to entertain and inform whenever I get to disappirate to somewhere fascinating. To the rest of you, hello. It's been a minute. Please see Facebook for pictures and videos, and thanks for indulging my little literary hobby.
First, ya'll know I lived near Boston for about 7 years. I saw this and it made me feel good. So you should watch it and feel good too, if you haven't already. And go donate blood already.
So. Now that we're all acquainted, I'll get to the point. The two people who brewed me in a test tube celebrated 30 years of more-or-less blissful marriage this year and wanted to do something awesome. They performed lots of research. After much googling, questioning and soul-searching, we decided on a Safari through the Serengeti with some Afreaky stops along the way. At this point Jack, Garrett and I began pouring hour after hour of research into the trip (went to a zoo, watched Lion King, and this). We booked time off work, booked flights, and bought books for the flights. We were then victimized by American Airlines, separated from our bags, deviated to Dubai, and went through more lines than Whitney Houston circa 1990. FINALLY, we arrived in Nairboi.
The pre-safari safari consisted of an insertion in local life. Our guide, callsign Ray, introduced us to a man named Paolo. Paolo, for lack of a better term, was real. Describing his village, Karutu, presents the most fascinating journalistic challenge I've encountered to date. Red dirt everywhere, no roads. His home was a mud-floored 2-room smaller than my apartment (but with more places to sit) , and all 5 of his kids and his wife live there. He and his family played music and sang for us, we had tea, and discussed that his oldest son is waiting on university acceptance letters. His village is a commune of sorts - everyone has a job, and laziness is detested. The village surrounds a giant quarry dotted with kilns - if someone in the village is without work, he makes bricks and sells them. Then the village will take care of him. If he's lazy and won't make bricks, no one will help him or his kids. He becomes a social if not literal exhile. See ya.
Paolo took us to church. Paolo's people, the Iraqw, were of Ethiopian descent, and accordingly are Shi'ite Pentecostals or something like that. The five of us trudged into a building, again, roughly the size of my apartment, which had mud floors and several dozen little plastic lawn chairs in it. These lawn chairs were occupied by Karutu-ians (?) who were dressed to the nines in the epitome of soulful-black-woman-going-to- church attire. Go figure. They even had on nice shoes, which boggled the Haake mind collective, as our mud-caked footwear had to be shaken off or in some cases removed prior to entry. The church bigshots wore suits, and the only electricity we saw in the village (except cell phones, oddly) was used to power a keyboard and speakers. The service was in Swahili, so I paid attention a little more than I usually do. Also, we danced. Like, everyone. Brothers Haake were drenched in sweat through our neo-fratty safari shirts, but the village people [sic] around us didn't sweat a drop through their heavier fabric clothing. We thanked them, prayers were exchanged, money was donated, and off we went to "auction." On the way mother was instructed on how to make Ugali (think cornmeal) and I taught a wee one how to use crayons. Cute.
The "auction" occurs every first sunday near Karutu. It pulls Massai tribesmen and other randos from over 20miles away. All on foot, of course. People drag their wares to the auction, set up shop, hawk as necessary, and then go home. I'm no Census expert, but I estimate between 8000 and 10000 people were present at this "auction." We were the only Wazongo there, and as such were constantly followed by vendors trying to sell us everything from old 80s-90s sporting goods to "medicine" in legit potion bottles (250hp, just like that). There were giant beef and goat shanks available, but sadly I'd already eaten.
The next day we went to a school. When I was in sixth grade I was either fighting, talking or spending my parents money virtually at all hours. The children we encountered were none of these things. Many of them walk 5-10km each way each day to get there. The children studied swahili, english, history, math and science. Roughly 40 to a class. Most treat notebooks and used pamphlets like a luxury item, and all the colorful laminated "learning aid" crap we grew up partially ignoring was nowhere to be found. Our gift of crayons and notebooks appeared to be an absolute godsend. See video and pictures for more info. This was too humbling to adequately describe in this medium.
So onto the other part of the trip - the cutest baby animals we saw, from ugliest to awwww-liest:
10 Wildebeest
9 Hyena
8 Zebra
7 Gazelle
6 Impala
5 Baboon
4 Giraffe
3 Lion
2 Leopard
1 Elephant
I have photographic documentation to back this up.
The diversity and density of wildlife in the Serengeti defies description. Not only was the whole cast of Lion King represented, but they were ubiquitous. We became animal hipsters by the trip's termination - we began by stopping at every sniff of a giraffe or zebra, taking pictures and ooooh-ing and ahhhh-ing. By the end of the trip we regarded these herbivores with the same grandeur as anything we'd eat in a bowl with milk on it. Couldn't care less. In a week of hanging out in sweet tents on the 'Geti we encountered hundreds of gazelles and impala, thousands of wildebeest and zebras, plenty of giraffes, and a few dozen elephants and lions. In the metaphorical schoolyard, Lions are bullies who take what they want because they're the biggest. Leopards and sneaky, reclusive and clever. Cheetahs are perfectly engineered killing machines, but aren't very big. Land Sharks. The BMW M3 of the Animal Kingdom. Elephants are terrifying when they're feeling protective, regal and intelligent otherwise. Rhinos are tanks. Impala make me wonder what Chevy was thinking when searching for mid-size Sedan names. Giraffes remind me of myself in high school.
A noteworthy portion of this experience is that, to all my friends (both of you) and coworkers I'd spoken to about the trip, the phrasing of it was always:
Oh you're going to Africa?
How was Africa?
Did you get AIDS in Africa?
While there, we traveled more or less constantly for 10 days, and felt we'd seen a tremendous amount of geographical and zoological diversity, not to mention social and economic weirdness. On a map, however, we saw one pinky-finger-nail of the continent. Saying "I've done Africa now, what's next?" is akin to visiting Delaware and remarking "Man, North America is pretty sweet!" So, as is typical with these trips, I return knowing that the amount I now know as a result of this pales in comparison to all that I know I don't know yet. I want to go do more.
Also, South America and Antarctica are the last continents that haven't been corrupted by yours truly yet. I'd like to work on that. Who's with me?
Thanks for reading all of this. I imagine it took several days and some kind of bookmark. See yall around, and keep it adventurous. I have a bunch of these travelogue thingies now, so I added them to the Google+ thing because I'm not hip enough to do otherwise. Add me if you'd like to have a read.
Yours in volleyball dominance,
Rusty