Mikumi National Park | Potholes and Pili Pili

Cross one off the bucket list, folks! Today I went on my first safari!

Although I just left for Ifakara last week, I found myself making the trip back to Morogoro two days ago. When I arrived at the language school campus (where they were kind enough to let me stay for a week so I could see friends before heading to my field site) after my stay in the States, I learned that the language school was planning on taking students and teachers on safari the Saturday after I was scheduled to leave. I was majorly disappointed to miss this, not only because I still hadn’t been on safari, but also because going with friends seemed like fun and since the language school was providing transportation, it would be much more affordable than going on my own. Fortunately, the head teacher said that I would be welcome to join them if I wanted to.

And so, exactly one after arriving in Ifakara, I left again. I took the bus six hours back to Morogoro and had another mini reunion with my friends there Friday night. I had no idea what to expect with the safari. There were only about five students and I knew that many of the teachers had opportunities to go with each class, and so I only expected maybe two or three of them to be interested. I assumed we’d take one of the school’s SVUs that has extra folding seats in the back and would just cram in. Well we did cram in. But I drastically underestimated our numbers. When I walked out early Saturday morning after breakfast, a bus stood in the drive. A full-on bus. “Well this is nice in a way,” I thought. “We’ll have room to spread out and everyone will have a window.” I should have known better. After all, this is Tanzania.

Only a few teachers were on the bus, so I and the two students with me entered and took window seats on the left side of the bus. As we waited, more and more people filed in, filling up the single seats on the left and the double seats on the right. Some were teachers. Some were former students like me. Some were family members of teachers. Soon we had a full bus. But we weren’t done yet.

We pulled out from the language school around 7am, an hour later than hoped, but rather than take the highway out of Morogoro as I thought we would, we drove into some of its neighborhoods, picking up even more people that I didn’t recognize from the side of the road. I assume they were more friends and family members of teachers. Soon, all of the fold-down seats in the aisle were full, some with two people squished in, plus a couple more standing up at the front of the bus. It was fairly uncomfortable and I was curious how the safari would work.

The trip to Mikumi National Park was quiet- most of us were catching up on sleep given the early morning. We pulled into the main entrance an hour and half later, and it took some time for us all to pay our entrance fees, use the bathrooms, etc. But eventually we all made it back onto the bus, settled in, and sat waiting patiently for our guide to start.

Let me give you some advice. A packed bus full of people can make for a great experience when you’re talking about a party bus headed to a concert. Or a school field trip. Or a city tour. Even a dilapidated old machine carrying you and several squawking chickens down the mountain on the Most Dangerous Road in the World in Bolivia can be a great time if you have friends who are wise enough to bring Tampico and Singani along. One thing a packed bus is not meant for? Safari. Aside from the obvious pitfalls of trying to take a bus on dirt roads meant for SUVs, you have the noise factor with that many people which distracts the animals. It is likewise awkward to look out the window and try to take pictures or enjoy the scenery when animal spotting brings everyone in the middle of the bus lunging over you. In addition, our guide, who spoke very good English, was excited to have Tanzanian tourists and so kept giving long complicated monologues in Swahili with vocabulary I didn’t know to the teachers and their friends and then, when we would ask him for the English version, would give us one word or one sentence answers. It was clear he knew a fair amount of information on the different animals, so it would have been nice to understand more. Also, someone had taught him that the best word to use to describe animal waste was not scat, feces, excrement, or even poop, but rather “shit.” Which was not only amusing, but somewhat scandalizing to certain missionary members of our party. There is a lot of discussion about animal waste on safari, let me tell you, so the word peppered the conversation frequently.

Enough complaining though. Although it was not ideal circumstances, it was still a great experience and a fun introduction to the world of Tanzanian safaris. It was low season, so we did not see the huge numbers of animals that you see during high season, but in terms of species I felt fortunate in the variety. As soon as we left the front gates, we were treated to a small herd of elephants (Tembo), complete with two elephant calves. I’ve been a bit of a fan of elephants since I was a child (first just because I liked my issue of Zoobooks on them, but later because I found out about their matriarchal family structure which appeals to the feminist in me). Three warthogs (Pumba) grazed nearby. As we traveled on, we encountered numerous giraffes (Twiga), zebras (Punda milia), a large heard of gazelles (Swala), hippos (Kiboko), wildebeests (Nyumbu), and water buffalo (Nyati). Unfortunately I was working with a pretty cheap camera, a moving vehicle, and foggy windows, so my pictures leave something to be desired.

But the real highlight of the day came midway through the drive. We had stopped to look at a lone water buffalo grazing in a field. He wasn’t doing much and really you can only watch what is essentially a large cow eat grass for so long, so we started to creep forward in the bus to continue our journey. Suddenly, someone spotted something in the grass nearby. We weren’t sure what it was at first, but suspected the slightly darker spot in the grass might be a lion (Simba). We sat as quietly as thirty people on a bus can sit (in other words, not that quietly) while we debated what it was and tried to zoom in with our cameras to get a better view. For a while it was crouched too low in the grass to see, but eventually it raised its head enough for us to verify that it was indeed a large cat. Our guide told us it was a lioness, others in the group thought it might be a leopard (Chui). Our guide shook his head. “You almost never see leopards,” he told us. “It never happens. It is definitely a lion.” But eventually the cat sat up enough and we were able to use binoculars to determine that indeed, we were looking at Chui! It was incredible how well it blended in with the surroundings, and that we even caught a glimpse of it in the first place. We sat for a long time watching, hoping that the cat would make its move on the buffalo but it was obviously bothered by us. It kept looking back and forth between our bus and the buffalo. Not wanting to interfere longer, we moved on.

All in all, I felt pretty incredibly lucky to see what we did, and also just to get to enjoy the stunning landscape. I would still like to do a safari the more traditional way, with just a handful of people in an open air vehicle, but I feel like I at least got to experience it once. A safari involves a lot of just driving, so there isn’t much else to share about the day, but I wanted to share a few pictures and highlights!

There is a delightful creature here in Tanzania that makes one of the simplest tasks- doing laundry- quite the adventure. Called the mango fly, or sometimes the tumba or putzi fly, it likes to lay its eggs in wet laundry hanging out to dry. Once put on, the eggs in the clothing hatch and the larvae burrow into the wearer’s skin, form itchy painful bumps while they incubate, and eventually erupt from the skin like your worst childhood nightmare. Apparently you know that it’s one of these charming little monsters because you can see the little black dot of the larvae’s eye under the skin and a tiny hole through which it breathes. Go ahead; you know you want to Google it.

I have been given numerous pieces of information and advice- of varying degrees of usefulness- on how to avoid this charming little hiccup of an infestation: Flies only lay eggs in clothes that are laid out on the grass to dry, not in those on the line (false). Only hang your clothes up during the day because the flies are dormant during nighttime (false). It’s fine to hang your clothes outside as long as you don’t wear them for two days afterwards because the eggs hatch within two days (partly false). As long as you iron your clothes before you wear them to kill all of the eggs, you won’t have problems (true, but less useful if you do not own an iron).

If, however, you find yourself in the unenviable situation of playing host, there are a few options open to you. Cover the air hole of the larvae with one of any number of substances- clear nail polish, Vaseline, lip balm, thick lotion; all have been suggested. This causes the larvae to come up to the surface to try to breathe, at which point you can grab it with a tweezers and pull it out (a painful process). Or they may suffocate and then you can *pop* them out (also uncomfortable). Here is the problem though…they incubate at different rates, so while you may be able to do this with one, you may have to wait days while you watch for the other larvae to be ready. You can also go in after it and try to excise it from your skin. Or you can let it run through its life cycle and erupt on its own. However, since each of these options still involves a small worm making its way from under my skin to its surface, you can understand that I have been eager to avoid any acquaintance, however passing, with the critters. I therefore choose to wash all of my laundry in the sink and hang it up to dry in my room.

Until this week, that is. I was trying to frantically pack up my room for the big move to Ifakara, my field site. I had a couple of things that desperately needed to be washed, but the only way they were going to dry fast enough for me to finish packing was if I hung them outside. So I did. Not thinking, two days later I wore one of them. Didn’t even cross my mind until last night…when I noticed a weird itchy red bump on my knee.

I should backtrack a bit. Yesterday was the day of the move. Boarding the bus at 6:45am, we sat at the bus station until 9am before finally pulling out on the road to Ifakara. I had last made this journey in 2011 and I remember as a 10 hour long arduous nightmare with no bathroom breaks. Fortunately this time I was leaving from Morogoro rather than Dar, which shaves 3-4 hours off the trip. Unfortunately, my memory of no bathroom breaks appeared to be accurate. My solution was to eat and drink nothing from the time I woke up to the time I arrived in Ifakara nearly eleven hours later.

We left Morogoro and headed west on the Dar road. As I watched the mountains surrounding the town fall behind I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad, despite my new adventure. I had really fallen a little in love with Morogoro while I lived there and felt I had made a wonderful group of friends. It seemed a bit cruel that I had to leave again so soon after returning from the States and that after spending three months in one social circle, I had to start again in a new place. But that conflicted with my other major feeling, which was of excitement. I love to travel and I love to go somewhere new. Even more importantly, I was finally going to be able to start my research, the culmination of years of work to this point.

The trip was long and fairly uneventful. The scenery was beautiful in many places because you pass through Mikumi National Park and by the Udzungwa Mountains on the way. I had a front row seat on the bus, and so was able to look out the large windshield and had a bit more leg room than usual. In Mikumi, I saw the same baboons, gazelles, and giraffes as usual (yes, I have progressed to the point where seeing giraffes is now like seeing deer in the US), but also this time caught a glimpse of zebras and wildebeasts. Unfortunately we were moving too quickly for pictures, so those will have to wait until my safari next weekend. The mountains were also beautiful, and I’m hoping to have a chance to explore them while I’m in Ifakara.

I pulled into Ifakara around three in the afternoon and found a taxi to take me to the guest house the professor I am working with suggested. It is nothing fancy but it was clean and had a ceiling fan and I plan to only be here a couple days or so. Of course the shower doesn’t work, so I am using a small spigot a foot and a half off the ground for washing. Still, overall happy.

Except for the red, itchy bump that I noticed on my knee as I was getting ready for bed last night. Usually I would assume mosquito bite, but this didn’t look like the typical bite and had what looked like a white patch forming on its head. Now if you know me at all, you know that I am often a bit obsessive about health issues, and it is not unusual for me to diagnose myself with the help of my dangerous amount of health knowledge and my intimate relationship with WebMD. I fired up the computer and began comparing pictures of mango fly bites with my knee. They looked similar. I poked, I prodded. I went to bed and tried to sleep, but every hour or so, I would turn on my flashlight and take another look. The white part was getting larger, and a black speck appeared in the middle of it. “Here we go,” “I thought, “my first time.” Was there a breathing hole? Maybe? Sometimes it looked like it. Sometimes not. I poked and prodded some more. I covered it repeatedly in Vaseline. I don’t know why I thought it would be better to see the worm come out than to have it come out in my sleep if it chose to do so, but what can I say, I have a morbid curiosity. The white part bulged and the black speck appeared closer to the surface. I couldn’t sleep. I tried to read. I forced myself to wait another hour before checking again. Finally around 3am, as I poked it some more, the bump came to a head and burst open, releasing….

….pus. A whole lot of pus. We’re talking an unreasonable amount, actually, for such a small bump. Apparently I simply had a badly infected mosquito bite. So sadly, dear reader, you will have to wait a bit longer until I experience my first mango fly.

Potholes and Pili Pili

Tag Archives: Mikumi National Park

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