Jambo
Published date:
07.29.09
JAMBO
TWO SHOT – Night – Campfire on the African highveld:
Meryl Streep (Karen Blixen) and Robert Redford (Denys Finch Hatton) look dreamily into each other’s eyes. There on the African savannah, you can feel the heat of their passion and the heavy musk in the air as they are about to speak:
Denys (breathing hard): Say, have you heard from Jerry and Bev lately?
Karen (her voice trembling slightly): They left yesterday. By now they are out of Africa.
THEY KISS.
I’m sure you don’t recall that scene because it was cut from the film. Curiously, however, the movie was titled with the last thee words because they speak a profound truth: Bev and I have left Africa. We have been in and out of Africa, and it was one of the great travel experiences of our lives. For twelve days – from the impoverished, overcrowded city of Arusha to the vast plains of the Serengeti – along with thirteen other African explorers, we traversed the land of Tanzania having one fascinating escapade after another. We were out of touch with the world beyond our vision and none of us cared. That’s how immersed we were in our African experience.
I can’t possibly capture it all here, but I’ll try to convey some of the more interesting aspects of our African adventure. I’ll begin with three remarkable people:
JOE
Joe – Joseph – he didn’t care which, from Sacramento, was one of our traveling companions. A man in his mid-seventies, he is portly, and looks his age. Soft-spoken and professorial in his language (to use a popular but useful cliché), extremely well read, he is a genuine intellectual. He doesn’t get around easily, but he has an agile mind, to say the least. As a child he discovered he had a gift for learning languages and it became his passion. When he travels to a foreign country, he learns the language on his own – Chinese, for example – and speaks it when he gets there. He can speak seven or eight languages and will doubtless pick up a few more as he and wife Sharon continue to travel the world.
To exercise his mind these days, he does physics problems before he goes to sleep. For further mental stimulus he recently decided to learn music, a subject that didn’t particularly interest him. That’s why he chose it. He now reads and writes music and plays the flute. Can you guess what his career was? When he was a student at UCLA he became disillusioned with teaching because as a TA he found his passion for learning languages was not exactly shared by his students for whom a required language course was something to suffer through. He couldn’t bear to think of a career where what he loved would be abject boredom to most of his students.
He tried the financial field but that bored him, so he took the next obvious option. He became a California prison guard and remained one for over thirty years, rising to the rank of watch commander, two levels below warden, spending a good deal of his career at Folsom Prison with California’s most hardened criminals. (I had included here an interesting anecdote Joe tells about his prison experience, but Bev thought it gross enough to be offensive. I have voluntarily excised it but will send it to you in a separate email if you promise not to be offended. Let me know.)
Three months before the safari tour, Joe began to learn Swahili, the common language of Tanzania and much of Africa. His mastery was such that he spoke it with a fluency that astonished native speakers. During a visit to a school, in a class of 50 13-15 year olds, we could see their jaws drop, followed by shrieks of gleeful laughter, as this old white man from America spoke to them in Swahili. No one had ever done that before.
Motivated by Joe’s example, Bev and I tried our hand at learning Swahili. Our success is documented in the title of this piece: Jambo. It’s a ubiquitous Swahili word that means something like, “Hi. How’re ya’ doin’?” The proper reply when someone utters, “Jambo,” is, “Jambo,” which then means, “I’m good. Just chillin’. Thanks for asking.” Well, two meanings for one word. What could be linguistically more efficient than that, so we quit learning Swahili while we were ahead. When we told Joe what we had learned, he offered grudging praise and then, under his breath, muttered something vaguely derogatory – in Albanian.
SASKYA
As one of the “learning and discovery” activities (always part of an Overseas Adventure Travel itinerary) of our tour, we visited a coffee plantation, a corner of which was devoted to a bead workshop, jewelry store and restaurant. That small corner was supposed to have been sold, but Saskya, an African native of Swiss descent, had other ideas. When she discovered that Tanzania offered no support to its deaf citizens, discarding them as social outcasts, she was enraged and committed herself to do something about it on her own. Her husband and father-in-law own the plantation, and she persuaded them not to sell that parcel of land but to let her develop a project there.
Beading is a popular African craft, so she decided to open a beading workshop and jewelry store there to be operated by deaf Tanzanian women and eventually other disabled Tanzanians. They now not only bead and create wonderful necklaces, bracelets, earrings and such, but manufacture their own beads (most other Tanzanian beads come from China) and even make the paper the beaded jewelry will be wrapped in. Saskya is a charismatic woman whose passion for what she is doing is inspirational. There is not a whiff of sanctimony about her, no bleeding heart, no self-righteousness, just a powerful spirit that approached the need she perceived with practicality and efficiency. She works tirelessly to keep the workshop and the restaurant that helps support it going. She pays the workers well and treats them with unself-conscious respect and dignity. The financial stability of the enterprise is shaky, but she’s determined to succeed and to spread what she is doing beyond that small corner of the coffee plantation.
By the way, all of us came away from the tour of the rest of the coffee plantation with renewed respect for Starbucks. Whatever negative thoughts you may have had about Starbucks, banish them from your mind. I’ve been aware that Starbucks treats it employees very well. But Saskya, leading us on a tour of the plantation’s coffee growing and processing operations, explained that when Starbucks expressed interest in buying beans from the plantation, their representatives spent three days there inspecting every aspect of the business (unprecedented for any buyer according to Saskya) focusing on three areas: the quality of the coffee, fair and humane treatment of the plantation’s workers, and the ecological soundness of the growing and processing of the beans. The standards were exacting and the plantation would have been rejected for not meeting any one of them. The plantation met the standards and Starbucks does buy its beans, subject to periodic re-inspections. A gold star for Starbucks.
DAVID
David was our tour leader, heading a group of three drivers of three Land Cruisers that lurched and bounced us across the unforgiving Tanzanian terrain. David was a superb leader: very bright, well-organized, knowledgeable, good humored, cool and in command in stressful situations. At 35 years old he speaks five languages, has two sons, and one wife. Why mention one wife? Because David is a Maasai, East Africa’s most identifiable tribe for the colorful garb of many of its members and the hide-bound old traditions that many subscribe to, one of which is polygamy.
We visited a Maasai village (further “learning and discovery”), a real one, not a facsimile set up for tourists. Maasai villages are family-centered – a husband, his wives, children and cattle. Each wife lives in a round hut made of mud and cow dung walls and a thatched roof. Children stay with their mothers, for the most part, and the husband – village headman – well, he sleeps around. The village Maasai diet is simple, milk, meat from goats, and blood from the cows drunk straight from a gourd after the cow is bled. (We watched as the village head man cut the jugular of a cow, drained some blood, and drank it, an “ugh” experience that we all endured as tolerant folk, respectful of the culture of the others. That thought kept a few of us from throwing up or fainting.)
The Maasai villages are isolated, far from conventional towns and cities. Their culture is full of complicated rules, many of which involve marriage and family relationships. Women do the work in this patriarchal society. They do all domestic chores including building their huts, and initial wives are happy to see more wives added since they will increase the workforce (they work cooperatively), lessen the burden on each wife, and increase family wealth by means of a dowry of cows (the Maasai symbol of wealth) each new bride brings to the family. What’s love got to do with it? Sorry, you’re just too, too contemporary if you think that love and marriage have been related subjects for most of human history.
The men? At puberty they undergo traumatic initiation rites, including circumcision, and emerge as “warriors,” hoping there will be no wars to actually fight. They do tend to the family’s cows until they go off and marry. Around 35 they become elders, at which point their lives are composed of “drinking and thinking” as well-respected wise men whose word is not to be questioned. They also may pick up a few more wives
Because many Maasai are semi-nomadic, it’s hard to determine their Tanzanian population, but current estimates put it at somewhat under a million in a country of 37 million.
David was born in a Maasai village. He is a member of a large family. His grandfathers had fourteen or fifteen wives each, and their progeny now reach into the hundreds, even thousands. He became educated in schools, then a rare occurrence for a Maasai, and left the village for the city, ultimately getting his university degree, and settling in the city of Arusha to establish a career and his own nuclear family.
However, his devotion to his extended family and his village remain steadfast. When one of his sisters married outside the Maasai and had a child, the new tribe wouldn’t accept the child, so David adopted her as his own. She is now fifteen, and he hopes to see her – along with his boys – educated and productive members of Tanzanian society.
David returns to his village frequently. (His wife does not join him often. “She’s a city girl,” he says.) There, with one of his sisters, dressed in colorful traditional Maasai attire, they have taken it upon themselves to try to change some of the more harmful tribal practices. In their meetings with village elders, they have three subjects: the necessity of educating the Maasai village children, the treatment and prevention of malaria using western medicine and health practices, and the elimination of female circumcision. These are difficult tasks, but David and his sister are pledged to succeed. They make some progress each time they return to the village.
FAUNA
As nearly everyone who goes on a safari does, we went to see the animals. On the first day we saw nothing, probably because we were in an airplane, 35,000, feet above the earth and even the biggest elephants are hard to spot from there.
The African “great white hunters” of a bygone era had a list they dubbed “the big five” of Africa – animals that were tough to hunt and made great trophies on the walls of fusty old men’s clubs and the homes of rich guys who thought they were Hemingway. Hemingway himself was a guy who thought he was Hemingway. Nowadays we quest after these animals in order to photograph them and to boast to the folks at home that (deep voice), “Yeah, we got all five. We didn’t see the leopard until the evening of the last day. Thought we were gonna miss him, but there he was, hangin’ off the branch of a tree. (voice gets higher) There – can’t you see him in the picture? Damn little point and shoot camera. I swear he was there. I swear we saw all five. Got a tee shirt that says so.”
Ahem. We got the five multiple times and three more that make up “the big eight” and more and more including the warthog, one of the ugliest of nature’s creatures.
And I’ve got good pictures of them all.
OK. You’ve only figured out five of the big eight, maybe six, but you yearn to compete the list. Here they are, the big five first:
Elephant
Lion
Leopard
Rhino
Cape buffalo (that’s the one you missed)
Giraffe
Cheetah
Hippo
(How many did you get? Sorry, the tiger is not an African animal.)
Let me set the scene for you: Tanzania is a country in southeast Africa, created through a merging of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, just south of Kenya. It includes some of the greatest concentrations of large mammals on earth in Tarangire National Park, the Ngorongoro Crater, and Serengeti National Park. Our safari covered all of those and more, culminating in four days of tented camping on the Serengeti.
On the first day of the safari we saw zebra, wildebeests (gnus to me), giraffe, elephants, Thompson gazelle (named after some British dude about whom it is claimed that he was the first “person” to have seen the very cute little antelope, as though the Africans who had seen the gazelle for thousands of years – it appears in herds of hundreds - didn’t count), impalas (not the cars), and others. However, at dinner, one of our group declaimed, “Cats. That’s what it’s all about. If we don’t see cats, this safari is a waste of money.”
Not to worry. The next morning, on the game drive (a drive in a vehicle looking for game; different from a cattle drive) our guide spotted two lionesses camouflaged by high grass. They were grooming each other – so cute, and now no refund for the cats complainer. Suddenly a pair of cubs raised their heads, more cuteness – as long as we were in the Land Cruiser. Eventually we saw so many cats – in grass, on rocks, hanging off branches in trees, crossing the road right in front of us (two cheetahs), sleeping, stalking, mating – that Andrew Lloyd Weber could have written a sequel.
Male and female lions, cheetahs in pairs and families, leopards so hidden in trees as to be barely visible: “I don’t see it.” “You see the middle tree among those three ahead of us? Go up the trunk to the first crotch in the tree. Follow the second biggest branch to the left. Then peer carefully into the cluster of leaves at the end of it, and there it is. See it now?” “Yeah, yeah, I think so. Is that its tail hanging down?” “You got it!” “I hope the picture comes out. All I can see in this tiny screen is my own reflection.”
The lions were not that elusive. They couldn’t have cared less that we were just a few feet away from them. They know we won’t harm them, so we are not a threat and vice versa. What lions do best is sleep, maybe eighteen hours a day. We let lots of sleeping lions lie. Luckily we also spotted a male and female not ten feet off the road, awake and horny. Our guide told us that when lions are in the “marrying mood” (a peculiarly awkward euphemism used so as not to offend delicate sensibilities), they mate every fifteen minutes or so for hours. We waited and sure enough, in a few minutes the male became aroused and mounted the female to get on with their business. The romantics among us wanted to hear the string section of the orchestra playing strains of “Born Free”, but lions are notoriously unromantic. The male seemed to be performing according to plan, but suddenly the female rolled over, stood up and walked purposefully away giving a quick contemptuous glance backward, leaving the hapless male bewildered. He actually looked sad.
The guide said that the female senses when the male will not consummate the coupling and will abruptly terminate the proceedings without even a “Sorry, maybe some other time. You have my number, don’t you?” This male would have the last laugh, however, since only the dominant, or alpha, male in the pride can breed with the females, so once the male had regained his composure, he returned the retreating female’s glance, thinking, “I’ll be back.”
This dominant male thing is prevalent among many species. Out there on the Serengeti it is true of elephants, lions, impalas and others. At least our inadequate friend above was gettin’ some. For non-dominant lions, impalas, elephants, etc., zilch (a technical biological term). On our way to Africa, we spent some time in New York, where we saw the revival of “South Pacific,” and I was reminded of one of the most popular numbers in the show vis a vis the dominant male and his exclusive access to the female of the species. I can picture a chorus of beta lions, elephants and impalas, forever deprived of female “companionship,” gathered on the African plain belting out a chorus or two of “There Is Nothing Like a Dame”:
“There is nothing like a dame. Nothing in the world. There is nothing you can name that is anything like a dame. We feel restless. We feel blue. We feel hungry and in brief. We feel every kind of feeling but the feeling of relief. We feel hungry as the wolf felt when he met Red Riding Hood. What don't we feel? We don't feel good.
There ain't a thing that's wrong with any lion, elephant, impala here that can't be cured by putting him near A girly female womanly feminine lion, elephant, impala.”
I admit it is a weird conceit. Maybe the x-rated division of Disney can make an animated film of it.
THE SERENGETI
In Maasai, Serengeti means endless plain. As far as the eye can see, the Serengeti is primarily flat grassland, punctuated by a tree here and there or an outcropping of rock that forms a small hill. Dirt roads no wider than the vehicle you’re driving in crisscross the plain, and you have no idea how the guides know where they are as they navigate the terrain trolling for wildlife for us to see and photograph. Yet on this endless plain there is a staggering abundance of wildlife. Zebras? Forget about it. After the first hour of the first game drive, those beautiful “striped horses” became a nuisance, so numerous were they, herds of hundreds hanging out near the roads and beyond. Wildebeests? Ditto. They pal around with the zebras in a kind of mutual defense arrangement, alerting each other to the presence of predators. When zebras start to run, wildebeests follow.
Dozens of elephant families roam the Serengeti looking for food and water. Solitary giraffe, seemingly ungainly, but truly graceful in their movements, browse the tree tops. Cape buffalo, perhaps the strongest animal of the area, and the most dangerous when threatened, wander in peaceful herds munching on the vast area of grass. (It takes several lions to bring down a single cape buffalo. A single lion attacking one would end up meat for hyenas and vultures.) Various species of antelope – gazelle, impala, and kudu – graze and cavort, appearing to be oblivious to possible danger.
The cats are the predators. All the rest are herbivores or scavengers (jackals, hyenas, vultures). The cats (lions, cheetahs, leopards) are stealthy and clever in their hunting, but often their prey is more clever at defensive tactics and escape. Lions, for example, catch their intended meal only one third of the time. By the way, that King of Beasts rep for lions. Forget about that, too. The females do most of the hunting, but the males get to eat first, then the females, and finally, if there’s anything left, the cubs. Hardly our idea of noble. Lions are not above scavenging, chasing off hyenas and jackals if they come across carrion. Then there’s all that sleep. King of what? Because of the mane and the roar? Not in my book.
We traveled the Serengeti in three Toyota Land Cruisers, 4-6 passengers in each. The roof of the Land Cruiser has three open hatches, so we could stand up for an unimpeded view and take pictures. No one is allowed to get out of the vehicle while in Serengeti National Park, so we spent hours on roads bumpier than anything we’ve ever experienced, by a factor of three – make that four. We bounced, rolled, heaved to and fro, and at one point the term “through the roof” took on a new meaning as my head actually went above the ceiling. Thank goodness the hatches were open.
Our camp was miles and hours away from anything remotely resembling human habitation, but each of the large tents had beds, a shower, and a flush toilet! Talk about the comforts of home! Minimal electricity was provided by small solar panels. The light they produced was only strong enough to let you see where you left the flashlight. The miracle of the camp was the food. We ate better in the Serengeti than we would have at home. The cooks created meals that good restaurants would envy. One couple had an anniversary, and the cooks whipped up a full-fledged anniversary cake for them, eaten to the strains of a Tanzanian anniversary song, rendered by the guides and camp staff. And they actually do say, “Hakuna matata.”
TWO SHOT - Night – Campfire on the African midveld.
Streep (Karen Blixen) and Redford (Denys Finch Hatton) look moonily into each other’s eyes as the embers from the dying fire pulsate with heat matched by that of the lovers.
Denys (face dimly lit by the embers): How did you know Jerry and Bev were out of Africa?
Karen (love light shining from her eyes): I didn’t. I don’t even know them. For God’s sake, the movie was made thirty years before they took the trip.
Denys (breathing hard): You mean…….
Karen (an enigmatic smile on her face): Yes, it was only a cheap joke – a play on “out of Africa.”
Denys (quizzically): Did they laugh?
Karen (triumphantly): The smart ones did.
THEY KISS
In the background can be heard the magnificent roar of a lion, most likely depriving its young from eating.
THE END
Traveler: Jerry Herman from El Cerrito, CA traveled
on June 13, 2009
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