Safari PartI: Ngorongoro Crater, TZ

Allaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh u Akbar!

Groan.

Alaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh u Akbar!

Double Groan.

Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah

What time is it? Where is my phone?

Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah

Seriously?

Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah

Okay, fine. I’m up. It’s 5:15, but I’m up.

I’m pretty sure this takes place every morning. 5 times a day in fact. But for some reason today is the day it wakes me up like a rooster crowing in my ear. I guess it’s really just bloggers guilt, so I will spend these early hours telling you about my safari yesterday. I just hope that as I am sitting at this restaurant table in the dark, unable to find the light switch, the night guard won’t come try and kill me and I won’t have a heart attack with all these cats crawling around causing mischief. Anyway, back to yesterday...


Part I: Getting Started

We woke up not-so-bright-and-early at 7am and hit the parks by 8:30. The parks open at 6am, but whatever, we’re going to have a full day of it, right? Wrong.

While Victoria and Godfrey have been extremely generous in taking me into their home and making me a part of their family, and while the sun has given me my fair share of burns and darkened my skin a few shades, I have unfortunately not gotten any closer to looking like an African. Not even an albino African. I have done my best to be a chameleon and fit in with things, but there is no denying my mzungu status.

So, while it is very nice that Godfrey insists I am his daughter, there was just about no way the park guards would let me get through by paying the rates of the locals. Were I to have passed the test (and believe me, I had been fully warned to speak only Swahili and to be charming…) the cost of the trip would have been an entrance fee of 10,000 TZ Shillings. Unsurprisingly, however, we had to pay the white-tax of $250 just for having me in the car. (The psychology of listing local prices in shillings and white prices in dollars I found to be very interesting. I’ll let you convert the different prices for yourself. It’s impressive!)

Anyway, we made the bold move of paying for me as a local at the office and then trying to talk our way through the gates. When we were turned away, we not only had fork up the money, but also go to the back of the ever-building line, wasting even more time. I was very entertained by going into the gift shop and walking through the mini museum reading all about the park and its history, but our car just kept getting more impatient imagining the morning prowlers taking refuge out of sight range as the sun got higher.

By 10:00 am we finally made it through the gates and began our journey into Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It’s actually not a national park because people are allowed to live within its borders if they are able to live in harmony with the ecosystem. This really just means that the Masaai tribe and maybe one or two other nomadic groups is free to continue their lifestyle within the park. As we drove up, up, up to the rim of the crater we passed many Masaai herding their cattle and around their unique homes, just going about their lives. We also got to see a chui (leopard) walking along the road but he jumped out of sight before anyone had a chance to snap a pic.

At the top of the crater we stopped for a bathroom break while 3 Masaai men came over to sell me beautiful handcrafted necklaces. Being white, the price for each was 5,000/= (TZ shillings). I really wanted to buy them, but the disgusted reaction of my Swahili family made me feel far too guilty to cave at the apparently egregious price. I decided to get my Swahili on and use my superb language skills and irresistible charm to bring down the price. Yeah right.

To be honest, I’d be happy paying their asking price and supporting local tribes and art and all that other good stuff. My goal was just to get it down to a level that I wouldn’t look like a total fool to my entire family when I agreed to the price. The only problem was that they told me they could find the necklaces at other places for just 1,000/=. This is highly unlikely and most probably just dramatic banter in an attempt to get me to hike them to hike down the price. But nonetheless, having to talk them down by 4,000/= shillings is no small feat!

In any case, after a sufficient amount of getting hot and cold and chit-chatting about things completely unrelated to the necklaces I finally got them to agree to 2 necklaces for 5,000. Not bad, right? Wrong. Still not good enough. I was all set to give up as our Land Cruiser started back up and everyone started loading back into the vehicle. At the last minute one of the Masaai decided to drop to 4,000/= for two necklaces! This sounded totally reasonable to me and I mentally decided to commit. But just for kicks I looked at him and said, “3,000/=, that’s it. Good-bye!” I walked away as if I was totally serious (which I was not) and low and behold he made the deal!

I had to ask Victoria to spot me the money since I only had larger bills and felt very guilty asking him for change after pretending as if I didn’t have the money to pay for it. She was still disappointed by the extra 500/= per necklace, but I swear I saw a small smile of pride appear at the corner of her mouth that her mzungu daughter was able to talk her way into Swahili prices. I paid the man the money and was very pleased with the necklaces, but still felt very guilty about ripping him off. I wonder how much they cost him to make…


Part II: Into the Crater

By 10:30 am we were finally beginning our steep decent down into the crater. I had to fight my trigger-happy urges with my camera in the interest of preserving the battery for the things to come, but couldn’t help taking a few pictures of the lush, green plains and the amazing cotton-candy clouds that looked like they came straight out of a Philadelphia cream cheese commercial.

When we reached the bottom we lifted up the roof of our vehicle and stood with our heads peaking out the top, taking it all in. First sighting? Zebras! I swear these guys look like painted horses and couldn’t possibly be born like that. As I snapped about a million pics and short video clips of their grass munching I couldn’t help but wonder if their stripes are like fingerprints and snowflakes or if it's possible to have two-of-a-kind or more.


Temporary Wrap Up:

I have to go eat breakfast now and get ready for today’s adventure. The only animals I haven’t seen of note are giraffes and rhinoceros, so we’re off to try and find at least a giraffe or two today.

My summary notes from yesterday:

- It’s the rainy season, so the safari is apparently not as cool as it has the potential of being. This means my host family was a little less than impressed, but I made up for it with my extaticness.
- The driver seemed to be in some sort of rush and had a big case of the impatients. I tried my best to snap bumpy pics and videos when he wouldn't stop and usually only had time just for a shot or two if he did. It was a bit of a bummer because I saw most of the wildlife through the lens of my digital camera, hoping that I’d be able to appreciate it more when I uploaded them onto my computer…..that turned out to be a good call.
- Baboon butts, elephant graveyards, and gazelles teasing lions……that’s it for now….