Did you say your name was Ricky Martin?

As we approached the Tanzania-Malawi border at dusk about a week ago, I kept hearing the person sitting next to us on the minibus insist that we needed a bike to cross the border. I’ve been to both the Mexican and the Canadian borders, and while I never expected the border between two of the least developed countries in the world to have anywhere near the security precautions that the US does, I could not imagine why we so desperately needed a bike to cross. It turned out that the bus didn’t actually go to the border, but stopped about a mile away. Immediately upon exiting the bus, we were swarmed by at least 20 men with bicycle taxis and fat wads of cash of all currencies grabbing our bags and our limbs and shouting things in our faces. It was probably one of the most overwhelming moments of the past 5 months. We decided to cross the border on foot, though I have since then developed a facination with the bicycle taxi....


When we woke up the next morning at about 5 AM (the time when it is officially too loud to sleep anymore), Chris and I were both instantly in love with Malawi. Chris described it as not having the same kind of desperation as Tanzania sometimes does, which I think is a really good description. People were equally, if not more, fascinated with us, and just smiling at someone often caused them to burst out in bashful giggles. We walked past a nursery school and heard every single child inside scream “How are youuu?” with sounds that could only come from a tiny person. There are beautiful, forested mountains that drop straight into Lake Malawi, easily mistaken for an ocean. You can see the silouette of Mozambique across the lake, and if you hike up into the mountains there are waterfalls, caves, cold springs and forests with baboons and wildflowers blossoming everywhere. It really did look different from any other place I have ever seen, and it is so strikingly beautiful I would just be content to ride around in buses, looking out the windows.

Definitely one of my favorite things about Malawi, though, was talking to people. English is one of the official languages of Malawi (it is in Tanzania too, but few people speak it very well) so we could talk to almost anyone. Peoples’ names are hilarious- we met people named simple, Jealous, Jester, Tiger, King David, Ricky Martin, 2pac, and we met three people named Gift. Everyone is really friendly and interested in chatting with you for no less than 2 hours at a time....

One thing that we were introduced to in Malawi was the phenomenon of “The Backpackers” (translated= cheap places to stay that cater to a certain crowd—not quite hostels, but similar). Most “backpackers” have things like guitars and board games to borrow, both of which you could play from your barstool. They have composting toilets, big gardens, and some sort of livestock that they would slaughter for you if you wanted to eat it so that you could “live off the land”. We stayed at several of these places, each one being very unique. For example, our second night in Malawi we stayed at a place called “The Mushroom Farm”, where we slept in a tiny tent flush against the edge of an enormous cliff. It was about 11 km straight up a mountain, so we hiked up with our packs and three small boys who were wearing no shoes. It took us a couple hours to arrive, and when we did we were both sweaty and unable to believe the breathtaking views from our campsite. We stayed at another place called the Butterfly Lodge, where we had our own personal chalet and there were rabbits along the path to the bathroom. When we arrived in the town where this lodge was, we were picked up in a boat, carted across the bay, and dropped off at our doorstep by our own personal boat escort... But none of these places cost more than $5-10 a night, even for the most expensive rooms... we spent the equivalent of about $5-7 to stay there.

For the most part, the people that arrive at these backapackers’ places seem to be absolutely ridiculous. Take, for example, the regular, Sunday night crowd that we encountered at the Mayoka Village Bar, one of the “most legendary wicked backpackers’” along Lake Malawi, as described by a young, flamboyantly counter-culture British guy that we met at “The Mushroom Farm”. We first met a man who we would later refer to as the Man-who-wouldn’t-stop-talking. I don’t know his name, because there was never really a moment where he wasn’t speaking when we could have asked, but he seemed really angry the majority of the time and his eyes bulged out of his face when he got really heated. Chris and I tried not to make too much eye contact with him, hoping that the conversation would end. While it definitely didn’t end, it was interrupted by Sage, a clearly bipolar man who we later learned came to Malawi to escape the South African Police after being convicted of a hit-and-run. Sage was giving us advice too crude to repeat while Chris, myself, a boy named Thaeus from New Zealand (with flowing blonde hair, gray, skin-tight jeans, and the I’m-so-shocked-that-I’m-hearing-these-words-come-out-of-someone’s-mouth face), and a 22 year-old guy from New York (who seemed to have acquired some sort of strange Australian-English hybrid accent from travelling) sat and listened. One of the local guys, King David, came over to listen, and all the while, there was a narcoleptic old man in the corner attempting to sell candy bars. We were later told that the sleeping man was actually the first black man to catch a fish in Lake Malawi, the first black man to work in a white bar in Malawi, and the first black man to own a boat in Malawi. While I’m not saying that these were lies, I am saying that I am highly skeptical of this series of claims.

I know I have spent many-a-blog-post dsecribing East African transportation to you, but I definitely think that public transportation reached new levels of terror for me in Malawi. I cannot get over how people drive like absolute maniacs in this region of the world... We found ourselves on quite a number of interesting vehicles over the course of the week. We started off in a big charter bus called the Sumry High-Class that had unbelievably psychadelic apolstery—with neon-colored bush animals in a mosaic-like pattern. After realizing that we were too late to catch a bus one day, we hitchhiked on the back of a flatbed truck that had 6-8 pigs, a gazillion tomatoes, and at least 20-30 people on the back. Two pigs in particular coveted the sack of beans that Chris was sitting on and muscled him off the bag in order to steal his seat. On our trip back home we rode in a dalla dalla that was literally taped together—as in the steering wheel was partially attached with packing tape, dashboard was attached with tape, and I wish there had been tape for the door handle so that maybe it would work. You could see through the floor to the ground below you, and there was no glass on the windows. I was impressed, however, that the spedometer worked, but that was the most terrifying part. I looked over at one point and saw that we were going about 120 km/hour with at least 30 people packed in. After one of the tires exploded into tiny slivers of rubber and we arrived to town with the spare, I swear I started believing in some sort of higher power. We transferred onto a new bus, where Chris and I both shared seats with many, many boxes of chickens (102 baby chickens in each box, total of 12 boxes) and drove off into the sunset. We hopped a bus the next day, only to stop for an extended period of time where we were told that the radiator had burst (?) and it might be 3 hours before we left again... so we flagged down a giant truck and hopped into the cabin, where we were stuffed into two very cushioned, though dark and confined corners where we wouldn’t be spotted as passengers at the police stops.

Well, I could go on and on about the adventures that we had in Malawi. Needless to say, the trip was unbelievable. I will post some pictures and creat a link to them which you can find below with the other links to photo albums. Enjoy! Chris and I will be in Iringa, Tanzania again working for about a week and then we’re off to Nairobi, Kenya for another little trip. Hopefully we’ll be going to the northern extension of the Serengetti (where the wildebeast migration is), a giraffe sanctuary, and an elephant orphanage... Okay, more later. Love.

Adventures!!!

We're going to Malawi tomorrow!!! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I might be a little out of touch for the next week or so. But it's for a good reason, like kayaking in a tropical lake, or absailing down a waterfall, or mountain biking through a herd of zebras... definitely something along those lines.

Also, I put up a more pictures a while ago. They're in the album labelled something about working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (on the right if you scroll down). Enjoy! Later.

Midget, Fidget and Squidget

Some very unexpected things have happened since I last wrote... First, we were evicted from the camp where we were living. Second, our boss quit. Third, about 100,000 Shillings ($85) disappeared from Chris’ stuff. But despite all of these terrible things happening, we are still in good spirits.

We have all spent the past three days packing up and moving everything that was in camp, including the entire solar-powered electrical system and the pet eagle, to town. Legally, everything should be fine- the Wildlife Conservation Society didn’t do anything wrong to be evicted- there is just a big corruption scandal and a few powerful people are getting paid off to let some really shady behaviors slide. I heard that a $15,000 bribe was paid by a hunting company (that currently hunts in the nearby game reserve) to the district commissioner to issue an eviction notice to the WCS. This all makes sense in light of the fact that they are hoping to set up a “photographic” tourism sight near to where WCS had its camp... The whole “shida” (swahili: problem) has been escalating since before we got here, but I never would have guessed that the WCS would be kicked out of the Wildlife Management Area by someone who didn’t have the authority to do that.... The whole situation has turned into a really huge mess, and it seems like had it been handled a little differently by the rest of the WCS management it could have been easily resolved. Therefore, our boss resigned. He’ll be here for another 6 months and then may be transferred to another WCS program.

It was really sad to drive through the villages today on our way to town and think about the repercussions that closing Lunda Camp will have on the nearby community. But at the same time, it was really great to think about all the ways it has helped these villages. Our boss (Pete) seems to be really admired and respected. Whenever I mention that I’m working for WCS, people always respond with kind words about “Coppolillo” (his last name). There are about 10 people employed at the camp—they’re all really wonderful and work really hard. They will all lose their jobs. In the villages, making a couple dollars a day is a really good income that can easily support a family. While I have no idea how much the Lunda staff were paid, I’m sure it supported an intricate web of family members and friends. People seem to love the WCS—you see people wearing WCS paraphernalia, and people are always so happy to see the WCS truck pull through the villages. I’ve been reading interviews that a PhD student here has been doing on human-elephant conflict, and everyone is aware of the connection between WCS and benefits they have started to receive from the nearby wildlife management area.

The program here will still continue- there will just be a new program director and possibly some program changes. The older generation here is so passive about everything, but the younger generation of WCS employees and villagers are really fired up at the government, the WCS country director, and the association of villages that actually has the jurisdiction to issue permits for the Wildlife Management Area. There has been talk of protesting... but it’s amazing to me how fearful people here are of their government. I have been brought up with the value that if something that was happening was wrong, you should speak out against it. It seems like the younger generation here embraces that same idea, but the older generation (who recently lived through a period of socialism) has such a different approach to dealing with political problems. I don’t want to say which attitude is better, because I really have no idea what people are up against fighting this incredibly complex and corrupt institution. Either way, it will be really interesting to see what happens...

While all this bad stuff is going on, there have been some lighter moments. To break down camp, a group of about 10 of Pete’s friends came down (the majority of them under the age of 15). It was fun to have kids around—they called themselves fidget, midget, and squidget, names that were even funnier when they pronounced them with their British accents. We got to hear some British opinions on the election, roast marshmallows over a fire, and inch our way out on a sandbank where a crocodile was sunbathing. Side note: it’s amazing how closely the rest of the world watches our politics—I’ve met people who never went to school, who can’t read, who are following our election closely...

Okay, I think that’s about all for now. We’re back in town now, and will be for a while, so I’m sure that I’ll have entertaining stories about civilization soon. After a while, crocodile.

Going a little Bush, now, are we?

“I think you guys are probably gonna want to see this...” I love when people start conversations with sentences like this. Especially in the wild African bush, the second half is usually pretty good. Today, when Dave (an up-and-coming graduate student studying fire monitoring here) came into the office and said those words, he finished the sentence with, “There are elephants in the kitchen...”

If I had to guess why we have had a recent explosion in the amount of wildlife that is entering our camp , I would say that it is because all of the nearby water sources are drying up, but I can’t say for sure. Not only are the elephants roaming through camp, feasting on all of the trees...Each night we go to bed hearing loud, carniverous animals very, very close. Four nights ago it was a leopard (tracks spotted no more than 10-15 m from our tent), and the past three nights it has beena combination of hippos, hyenas, and lions. Many, many lions in every direction. And one left tracks just a few feet from our friend Sarah’s tent. There were 4 water buffalo across the river when I was brushing my teeth the other morning, a monitor lizard was acosted by some large water-birds, and the other night in the middle of dinner an enormous splash next to us in the water caused two of us to run for our lives towards the nearest shelter. Chris and I have taken turns having irrational reactions of terror regarding the predators just outside the tent (mostly lions)... Some of the reactions have involved hyperventilating and forcing our way through partially-unzipped tent walls. And the tension has followed us into our daytime activities. Yesterday Chris looked at me, and out of nowhere stated that literally every time he got out of his chair that day he knocked it over. I’ve picked up the habit of clicking constantly on everything when I get on the computer to do work, and any time we hear a sound in the distance we run to the window with out foot-long mag-lite flashlight to investigate what kind of frightening beast might be approaching. Some people use the phrase “Going Bush” to describe these strange habits that people pick up, and I definitely think that we are working our way towards earning that title.

While we are going a little nutty, we are making progress in the work that we’re doing. We’re done with the website! (Except for the photo gallery if you are about to go look at it) You can see it at: http://www.ruahaconservation.org. If you notice any problems, you should let me know.

Someone recently asked me to give a little more detail about the place that we are living. Let me start with this... Other than the office where we work, which is full of skulls and computers, none of the buildings really have any walls. There are 2 “bandas” where people stay (we are not staying in one- we’re jst staying in a canvass tent). The bandas are basically just wooden decks with thatched roofs and straw mats that you can roll down on two sides as “walls” if you want. Dave and his girlfriend Ashley are staying on one banda and Pete, our boss, lives with his family on the other banda. There’s a school banda- with a tent full of bookshelves, art supplies, and insect collections- where Pete’s two children are homeschooled by their mother. There’s a dining banda, which is basically just a thatched roof on sticks, a bunch of choo’s (bathrooms) and showers, a supply banda, and a kitchen banda (with the most walls of any building- 2), that has a solar-powered refridgerator, stove, a big cooler, and a few cupboards that the monkeys occaisonally raid. Just outside of this last banda is where the elephants were located. And when the elephants were right outside the kitchen banda, we were located inside the banda, some of us partially under the table, and one person perched atop the refridgerator.


Okay, I hope all is well in the homeland. Chris and I will (hopefully) be leaving in the next week or so to go on a trip to Malawi!! Although we recently found out that the horseback safaris that we thought were offered have been temporarily cancelled due to some government corruption scandal, something we hear a lot around here. I think instead we’re going to go do something called “absailing” down a waterfall and kayaking on Lake Malawi... neither of us know what absailing means yet, but it sounds fun whatever it is. Baadaye kidogo.

Eggs in your french fries???

Since coming out to the bush, Chris and I have been talking a lot about how we have been able to normalize a lot of things that were at first quite frightening/shocking to us. For example, everyone here fries eggs into their french fries— weird at first, but now we love it; when in a car, if you come to a river, you drive through it, rather than over it on a bridge, and the person driving is often drinking a beer; when bathing, you look out on the river and see hippos and elephants doing the same; and when you sleep at night, you hear growling and howling right outside of the canvas walls.

While all of these things seem quite normal to us now, some things which are quite normal still shock me. For example, this happened:

A couple of days ago Chris and I received an invitation to go to “World Environment Day” at a primary school in one of the (somewhat) nearby villages. We rolled out of bed a little past six and hobbled over to the truck and hopped into the back. About an hour later, we rolled into a small village. The village looked like not more than a couple hundred people lived there, small homes made out of mud and grass, one small store, a mosque and a church, and lots of whildren running around. We drove through the village, out a ways to the school. When we arrived we started talking to one of the teachers... we asked him how many teachers there were- he said 6, which I thought was a good number for the size of the village. When I said that, he looked at me and told me that there were 592 students at this primary school. I couldn’t believe it..

The actualy festivities didn’t start for about 2 hours , and in the meantime the children amused themselves by surrounding us, staring, and inching closer and closer. If we said or did anything, someone would repeat it and the whole group would stir a little bit. If we were still, they were still. If we smiled, they smiled. It was a really strange experience, and with several hundred children literally two feet away from you, it’s really easy to go a little nutty. After a very long time of the staring activity, the teachers began the event. Groups of students from four or five nearby schools sang and danced songs they had written about the environment in absolutely beatiful four part harmonies. There was a short interlude, where a man in a lion costume and a man in a ninja costume pretended to beat each other up and do a little gymnastics routine. Afterwards, each musical group came back and performed the same songs they had sang earlier. To conclude, representatives from a bunch of nearby organizations (including the Wildlife Conservation Society) gave speeches about the importance of protecting the environment.

After the ceremony ended, they took us inside one of the school buildings to feed us a delicious lunch, along with all of the other special guests. You could still hear children laughing, playing and singing outside, and their celebration continued until we left about an hour later.

On our drive home, we stopped in another village to pick up some of our friends who were doing interviews on elephant conflict. After thinking that World Environment Day was kind of strange, this seemed absolutely unbelievable. The entire village (not that many people) was out in the center of town drinking Pombe (home-brewed maize beer) and they were incredibly drunk... all of the elderly women were smashed and the old men were sloshed. Everyone wanted to talk to us ut we couldn’t make any sense of what they were saying... and it was only about 4 PM. We collected our friends, hopped back in the truck, and made our way home. We saw 6 or 7 groups of giraffes, tons of impalas, and two kudu, after seeing zebras and elephants and all sorts of game animals just that morning.

We are working hard on the Wildlife Conservation Society- Ruaha Landscape website. As soon as we’re finished I’ll post the link on here if anyone’s interested in seeing where we live... and more pictures are on their way. They won’t upload here but I’m determined. 6 more weeks until America!!

Are we at a Miss Tanzania Pageant?

It is really interesting to compare how I am treated in this country when I was living with Chris, the woman, to when I am now living with Chris, the man. The experiences are in some ways polar opposites. For example, when I was living with Chris the woman, we could hardly go anywhere without being approached by someone who was interested in who we were, what we were doing, whether we were married, and whether or not we wanted to marry them (man) or their brother (woman). When Chris the woman and I were together, people wanted to shake our hands, make eye contact when talking, and acknowledge our presence in any way that they could, whether that was screaming our names at the tops of their lungs or gently stroking our noses to tell us how nice they were. When Chris the man and I are together, we are hardly ever approached... by anyone. And if we are, I am virtually ignored.

I thought that this was a locational difference at first... maybe that people were more forward in Zanzibar than on the mainland, but then the other night Chris and I went to this bar where we heard it’s easy to make friends. As long as we were together, it was the same thing. We could have been completely invisible. So we decided to split up for 5 minutes as an experiment. Not 15 seconds after he left his chair to go outside to “make a phone call”, someone sat down across from me and struck up a conversation.

The root of this difference (I think) comes from the fact that everyone assumes that we are married. On an almost daily basis people look at Chris, ask him if I’m his “wifey”, to which he typically says no. If he chooses to say no, they usually deny his negation and reaffirm that I am, in fact, his wife. The conversation usually goes back and forth a few times. “She is your wifey”---“She’s not my wifey”—“She is your wifey”—“She’s not my wifey” until someone tires or he laughs, gives up, and accepts our marriage. The strangest part to me, though, is that all the meanwhile I’m standing there next to him. They never address me, even though I can obviously hear and understand every word. And do they think that he would deny our marriage in front of me if we were actually married? I don’t get it.

The other night this was taken to an extreme, when we accidentally found ourselves at the Miss Iringa, Tanzania pageant and someone approached Chris and asked to take a picture of his “wifey”. I remember staring blankly at the man with the enormous camera, and wondering why he didn’t ask me... ? I think Chris gave permission, but my dagger stares may have inspired him to leave without the picture.

If anyone read that last paragraph and did a double take at around the 17th or 18th word, I just want to reiterate the point that we found ourselves at a Miss Tanzania Pageant... and that this happened by accident. Here’s how the day went:

Chris and I woke up, just a lazy Saturday morning, cooked breakfast, walked into town, went grocery shopping, and decided to rent bikes to ride to this Stone Age site where a bunch of researchers have done a lot of archaeological digs and recovered tons of prehistoric artifacts and skeletons. We rode our bikes, labeled the “Chevrolet”, the 20-25 km to the stone age site. Once there, we walked through a dried-up river bed with enormous stone pilars towering above us and a really nice man named Mohammed telling us all about the history of the area. We were escorted on our bikes back to the nearest village, took a Dalla Dalla back, came home to do laundry, cook, play a board game that we have developed an obsession with (called bao- I will teach anyone who wants to learn).... just normal things. Then, in came our other two house mates. They told us that they had met a man at a bar who said that there was going to be some traditional music being played in town, and that the musician usually danced with snakes... It was kind of expensive, but we decided to go check it out anyways....

When we got there, looking around the audience was like a strange fashion show. Women were dressed up in blue sequened dresses that covered no more than 3 inches of thigh, in little black leather jumpers, and all kinds of fancy outfits. We thought this was strange, but waited it out. About an hour later, the festivities started when 12 girls came out with numbers pasted to their bodies doing crazy, almost stripper-like dancing routines. The MCs came on... and within the first minute of their frantic joke-making, said something about the “Wazungu” (Word for Westerners). Suddenly, everyone in the entire place turned around, looked at us, and burst into laughter. Not shortly after, the girls came out, one by one, described their aspirations in life, explained the meaning of the “traditional”outfits that they had designed, and strutted their stuff. By the time the swimsuit competition and the ball gowns came around, we were sure that we had suffered some sort of miscommunication about the nature of the event to which we had just come. We quietly excused ourselves and returned home.

Upon arrival, we received a text message from someone who was still there saying that we had just missed the most unbelievable contortion artist they had ever seen. Chris just looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “I think I need to go to bed”.

While our time in town was good (as you can see), I am very happy to be back in the bush camp. There are elephants around basically all the time, and we can definitely get more of our work done here. And we have plenty of time to think about the ridiculous, ridiculous situations that we have gotten ourselves into in the recent past. I’m still afraid of the large animals, and this fear may soon develop into an insomnia of sort.

For example, Chris and my bedtime conversation last night went like this.
Me: “Chris, do you think you’re going to fall asleep soon?”
Chris: “Definitely...Probably in just a few minutes.”
Me: “Really? Even after those scary growling sounds we just heard?”

I find that if I have to get up an pee in the middle of the night, the entire process takes about a half hour to an hour... because I have to first accept the fact that I can’t wait until the morning (at least 20-30 minutes) and then gain the courage to go outside, despite all of the animal noises that you hear (at least 15-20 minutes). Once I actually get up and leave the tent, I swear I’m back inside within 30 seconds. I wonder if this fear will quell after a little more time here, though I’m not hopefull.

Okay, I’m going to get back to work. But there’s so much more to tell you... and I definitely will. Soon.