Last Day; Boo Hoo

It's over. Tomorrow morning I fly to Dar es Salaam. I get there at noon and so I have taken a hotel to go to for the afternoon. Dar is not a tourist friendly city. I will rest and read until around midnight when I will go back to the airport for my flight to Istanbul. From Istanbul I go to Chicago then, from there, to Toronto and then home, winter, rain, friends, teaching, Leon and cooking.

Never before has a vacation being centered on living things. I've usually travelled for sites or cultures and not until India did I really dramatically experience the exhilaration of extreme foreignness. Still, my Indian vacations were pretty focused on temples, forts, mausoleums and palaces with a side-effect benefit of cultural experience.

This trip was animals, flowers, trees, landscape and, most of all, people. Nothing I saw and found so stimuli tuning can be repeated. Nothing is guaranteed; a lot of the magic here is serendipitous such as the cheetah kill, the chameleon and the baboon still birth, and I can hardly wait to come back to see what can happen next time.

I am on my third book about Africa. Maybe I will keep on reading African authors to help keep this memory alive.

What a blast this trip was. Morocco and Egypt, never again; but Tanzania is paradise and there is so much more to see.

Thanks for reading my blog and for filling my head with memories of you when I write.

From a walk today ...

Dec. 28; Penultimate Day

Jasper, Jo, Domino and Edmund left today, but we had dinner together last night and lunch together today. They are all lovely people and I hope to see them again—maybe I will go to their B&B someday where Martin Clunes (Doc Martin) is a neighbor. Jo and I enjoyed a particular connection.

The day before we met, they went snorkeling and Jo brushed up against a Portugese Man of War. She was stung on her face, but shortly thereafter lost all feeling in her arms and legs. She was terrified until a diving camp manager assured her it would pass.

Jasper is an explorer, so he found all the great restaurants we've been enjoying. Tonight, I will go back to where we had lunch—an unpretentious little beachside nook, completely out of sight from the road, and serving delicious simple food.


Sideways, but you get the idea.

Boxing Day

I have often repeated the mantra: "Came for the animals; discovered the people, landscape, birds and flora," but when I say "landscape" you probably think "pretty vista." part of my meaning of landscape, however, is the geography. These are more rocks from mainland Tanzania, around the volcano near Lake Natron.





And you would never know about most of them because on the outside they look like this.



Boxing Day has likely set the pattern for my remaining days. I could go to Grave Island or visit the spice farm, but I just want to relax, read and chill.

6:30 Get up.
6:45 Take in early morning sitting on the beach watching its come to life.
7:30 Breakfast.
8:00 - 12:00 reading under a fan in the bar.
Noon. Swimming, shower.
1:30. lunch
2:00. Nap.
3:00 A walk, errands, swimming (while the pool is shaded)
4:30. Shower and coke in the bar with book.
6:30. Taking in sunset on the beach.
8:00. Dinner then maybe a cheesy TV movie or watching the exotic Arabian or Indian channels as I like to do.

Bwana is resting, reading fabulously interesting books about Africa's past and present and already planning his trip back.

Location:Shangani St,Zanzibar Town,Tanzania

Christmas Dinner

Click on the photos to enlarge them.


Christmas dinner began with my driver not turning up, but a young security guard at the hotel walked me here so I tipped him handsomely. The restaurant/hotel is called 236 Hurumzi.


When I arrived, the place was rather packed, but after sunset, the crowd thinned and we were only one party of four Americans, a couple from China, a single French woman d'un certain age and me in the area where you sit on cushions on the floor and use small personal tables.





There were many, many courses, all delicious. The only weirdness was that they were playing Christmas carols and a man who seemed to be American came and sat behind me and smoked endlessly. He turned out to be Canadian. He introduced himself to ask me about my iPad and then I discovered that he is an owner here and an ex-pat from Montreal. As we talked, the carols stopped and local musicians began to play and sing.


Dinner went until shortly after 10 pm and Ian said I could walk without concern. When I got to the garden near the hotel, it was going gangbusters with a food fair as you see in the main square in Marakesh. It was vibrant and alive and the smell of the foods was intoxicating.

Christmas Day

Last night, I went down to the beach at sunset. It was alive with women in fabulous couture, strutting alpha males, break dancing juveniles and families, a great many in the water and the rest on the white fine sand. But I could sit on hotel property and the security staff here keep the touts away and the waiters keep my glass full. I've had a few lassies just as good as in India.

The unusual thing to see last night was huge schools of fish that suddenly jump out of the water like flocks of beach birds with some kind of collective intelligence that has them all changing direction as if one. Hey all jump at the same time and in the same direction, disappear, and then do the same thing again in another direction.

So I went down to the beach at 6:30 to see how early morning on the beach rolled out. It was calm and full of men doing exercises and jogging. The light, as with sundown last night, was beautiful. I am loving this time of relaxation now that I have slowed down; I am into my second book that has, unfortunately, been printed I a tiny font.

This is how a boat unloaded right in front of my hotel.


Passion fruit.


My balcony, bottom left.


The bar where I read in the mornings.

T'was The Day Before Christmas

Above: My legs and my buddy in Stone Town, on the nearby promenade.

Boredom seems like far less an issue. I am crazy, I realize, not to enjoy the absence of winter and the bright light of 6 degrees south latitude. Today I awoke to the diminishment of my souvenir bites and I am reading a great book—"The Africa House," by Christina Lamb. My ambition for the day is to never allow sunlight in me except when in the pool, to wear no socks or shoes so that my feet sores can heal (a minor irritation) and to avoid going outside the compound into Tout-ville.

One long block from the hotel is the bookstore where I got this book (and another). Virtually everything in it is by someone from Africa or about Africa—plus Michael Crichton. I came here (thank you Bruce, Marsha, Leslie) because of a childhood dream that came from a passion for animals. But as this blog proves, the landscape, so incredibly visible here, goes into your soul and so do the people. The subject persona of Africa House, Stanley Gore-Browne, writes beautifully about what has happened inside me here. It is a terribly satisfying read (and I am bringing it home for you, Edwin).

I've had a lovely day, here in the compound; all concerns about boredom are gone. I just needed to learn to slow down to my usual pace and self after the over-stimulation of 15 days on safari. Plus, although there are signs of Christmas here or the muzumgu, this is a Muslim island and I am happy to be away from the calories, carols and cold.

As I write this, it is Christmas eve and 32 humid degrees. I wish you all, dear readers and friends, a happy happy holiday.

Other things I saw today

Some doors of Stone Town.


All carved wood...many are mahogany.





I loved Freddie. The locals didn't see this muzumbu tearing up in the street. Muzumbu is Swahili for "white guy." I think it really means "stranger" but the tone of voice imparts clearly the other meaning. Freddie was born here in Zanzibar; I loved him and miss him. I happened on his former home. His death was part of the AIDS horror story.


A praying mantis GIVING BIRTH!!! The baby is cream colored. I could see her head turn and watch me.

Friday, StoneTown

After not a great sleep (I think I had the air too cold) I got up at 6:00 and went out on the balcony. It made me want to go inside right away and stay there until I leave. It is 32 degrees already and humid. It is going to be hard to endure here because whereas once I loved the heat, I cannot take it any more. Right now, I think swimming in the sea and/or the pool and staying in the shade is in order.

I went for a brief walk last night and the touts were on me like mold on cheese. Going out alone at night will not be something I do until I have done more daytime exploring.

So at 8:00 I headed out to see (miracle of miracles) the park a minute's walk from the hotel, and there I was asked a question by a young man studying his geography. I showed him my photos of Vancouver—I have summer and winter ones—and he had never seen snow.


Daniel is fifteen and wants to be a lawyer. His English is very good and he is out f school because his family does not have enough money for this term, but he intends to go back and his family wants that too. So I hired him to show me the sites for the morning ($30) and made his day. He says he will use the money to celebrate Christmas with his mother (his father is away working in a mine).

Seeing the former slave market was truly awful. It upset Daniel and I both. It is one thing to know about the slave trade; it is another thing to see the cells and chains. Worse, is having been here and fallen completely for the Tanzanian people. How man could make a commodity of these extraordinary people is beyond comprehension.


Happily, I got accustomed to the heat. When I got back to the hotel, my shirt and pants were wet with sweat, but my early afternoon was spent swimming in the delicious pool and then lunching in the shade of the trees—right on the beach in a nice cooling breeze. The hotel ...


My private balcony, is through the green curtains.


Just outside my room and to the right, is this space. It is always empty and mine!


My walk with Daniel took me to Stonetown's every site except two and there are six days more to bore—I mean, go. It's 3:30 and my lips crack in the heat, so I sit under a fan in my air conditioned room with a six pack of diet coke's in my little fridge—I mean if you're going to be bored, be comfortably bored. Polysporin on my lips and Eros Ramazzotti singing to me from my iPad. And after I chill here a bit, I am going to a bookstore I see listed on the map. I am hungering for a book with pages.

When I was walking with Daniel this morning, I bought myself a huge pack of passion fruit. I love them. And the Durian here are huge and make the street stink.


I am going to use fruit as another anti-boredom strategy because this morning at breakfast, I had pineapple that, in each bite, exceeded the sweet taste of all the other pineapples I have eaten in my entire life. I had forgotten how completely I have been robbed of taste. What I am tasting here is to our organics, as organics are to Safeway.


Edwin: I think you had trouble finding Stone Town at first because old Bwana put so little into research before coming, he didn't know until he got here that Stone Town was two words and that, in fact, Stonetown is just part of Zanzibar City. It is the old town; the historical old port city that the UN has recognized because of its coral construction and (faded) colour.

I can't shake the images from the slave museum. I feel as though I have a wound on my heart; the kind that throbs whenever you stop moving to rest.

Catching Up #2

Ndutu Safari Lodge

After a day watching a cheetah capture and eat a gazelle and sitting around with a pride of young lions, you want a good happy hour, and nothing beats these lodges! Each one is unique and all (except, perhaps, Speke Bay) are tied for the best—the most over-the-top "hotel" experiences of my life. Here at Ndutu, I have a spotless cute cabin and the lodge is all open, of course, and super comfy. Bwana LOVED chillin' in the bar whilst writing his posts and thinking about his readers! The view, as we are perched on the edge of a hill, overlooks Lake Ndutu. The soundscape is a cacophony of birdsong.

I am loving posting the photos of the lodges for you, Edwin! I loved your email saying my blog was peaking your interest in this country. Remember, the photos are all about the animals and plants and landscapes, but you must come to experience these people. Seriously, I have learned a lot here and hope to come home a better person—well at least for a week.

More cheetah.





The lodge.









To, or at, Lake Natron...

More Masai boys, post-circumcision.


The women at the small crater.


More volcano!! A river of ash.


Pumice.


My tent at Lake Natron (bug villa).





Some of the wonderful staff. This is Amali who is THE most gracious and warm host.


Barack, the boss man.

Location:Shangani St,Zanzibar Town,Tanzania

Catching Up #1

I a rush to post in Arusha, I skipped some photos so I want to back up a little for just a few the illustrate some points I made in the text of past posts.

To, or at, Lake Victoria...

Some of the grasses that amazed me on the plain.





The small Acacia trees that were almost glowing silver.


The birds at dusk on a small island at Speke Bay.


The monster sisal.


To, or at, Serengeti Medium Camp (Kati Kati)...

The absolutely ENDLESS 360 flat horizon.