Tungamalenga and Ruaha

Saturday. 

It was a pretty long day.  We started by getting Dr. John off to the bus to Dar.  We heard later he arrived without a problem and I am guessing now, 9 PM and after a nice dinner at Sea Cliff, he is at the airport, awaiting the 12:30 AM departure.

We went into Iringa and had time to go to the internet café, then a nice lunch at Neema Crafts.  We had hoped to get drugs for the dispensary at Tungamalenga, but were unable to.  Also, our intent was to survey a few large pharmacies to find out what kind of resources they have and what education they provide their customer-patients.  That didn’t work out either.  Perhaps Kelsey and I will be able to do that in the next couple weeks.

It is easy to live here for a few weeks with the inconveniences our Tanzanian brethren live with every day, all the time.  Ilula has electricity and they will be getting another line in sometime in the near future (African time).  The water is cold for showers and the drinks are warm.  Much of the cooking is done over charcoal fires, so they live with smoke.  The food is just fine, though limited in variety: rice, cabbage, plenty of fruit, a few veggies and lots of potatoes.  The meet dishes are mostly chicken, some pork, although we have had mostly beef. 

Tonight we are at a “camp,” although we haven’t seen any campers.  It is a hotel with tent spaces.  Dinner was fine.  See the menu above!  They charge quite a bit for what you get (we think), what the wazungu market will bear I suppose.

We went for a walk through the small Tunga market and several of us tried pombe, a local fermented brew from corn and perhaps millet.  Tasty!  Well, it did have the faint odor of beer, call it more an odor than a “bouquet,” and gritty.  A beer a real man could get his teeth into.  There was a place that sold hors d’ourves to the, uh, drinkers.  They would come to the take-out, order a kilo of pork, which then was sliced off the leg or shank (I’m not familiar with the butchery terms).  The client pays, then the pork is chopped into bite-size pieces and barbequed on the spot.  When the customer is sated, it’s back to the club for more pombe.

It is Sunday now.  We had a leisurely morning, with a nice Spanish omelet, a sausage of some kind and fruit juice.  We put in some practice time on the song we knew we would be expected to sing, “We are Marching.”  To add even more humility to our endeavor, we sang a verse in Hehe, the local dialect:

Ndigendela lumli lwa mtwa,

Ndigendela lumli iwake

Worship was very nice.  We kept expecting to see the Augustana bunch arrive.  We thought we were racing them to Mwagusi Camp.  As it turned out, we met them coming away from the camp.  They had spent only one night here and were leaving.  They had spent some time in a park in the north, perhaps Serengeti.

So after a round about trip, we are now here.  We had a tasty and filling lunch: beef strips, chips, guacamole, tomatoes, tossed salad, cold fried eggplant with honey, soda pop, including “Coke Light.”  This camp is nearly heaven.  Spend a few days here as soon as you can!  Chris Fox is a wonderful host and the staff is top notch.

Momentarily, we are off to the afternoon game drive, so I will close now and gush about the animals when we get back.

Whoa!  I did not think we would be able to beat the previous drives I have been on, but I think we did.  I don’t intend to catalog the animals on the blog since it would take all day.  I will include a few special photos, so you will believe my stories when I get home.  We found ourselves with no one else on the drives.  In the Serengeti, sometimes queues line up for an hour to see two lions.  We saw five or six from twenty feet.  This is the place to be.  Explore the Mwagusi web site!

At dusk, we got back to camp for another delicious meal, this one on the dry river bed.  They do need rain here, so I wouldn’t mind if it did; like in the BWCA, rain is the dues you pay for the wondrous pleasure of God’s earth.

Wow!  Another couple of game drives!  I think I will try to impress my grandson with a couple.  We were 10 feet or so away from the lions, maybe 15 from elephants.  Giraffes are beautiful but not as plentiful as I remember.  Becky Koerner wanted a photo of a Dung Beetle.  We have them in action.  She will make several enlargements for her office day, including the Dung beetle as a pictorial representation as to what kind of day it might be.  Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield. 

David Page and Scott Lien have joined us.  We picked them up at Ruaha International Airstrip and they stayed with us on the game drive.  To our delight, we have another game drive in the morning, then back to Tunga to pick up Amy and Randy, then Iringa and Ilula.  They stayed back to be around Tunga.  Amy wasn’t feeling well and it was her birthday too.

She is recovered now.  She had a good time in Tunga, if disturbing in some ways.  She is keeping a blog too, so visit: http://safarinjema2011.blogspot.com/ , she’ll tell you more!