Lessons from Africa

I started writing this post sometime in August towards the end of my vacation in Tanzania. But somehow, I forgot about it and it was only a couple of days back I happened to open and read the half completed article on my computer. I seemed to be in a writing mood a few hours back and, here’s a new blog post.

I grew up in Tanzania, a country on the east coast of Africa. It was my home for most of my childhood; but I never bothered then, to know more about its political and economic history, let alone that of other countries in Africa. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I could hardly have been bothered by such weighty issues. But, more importantly, I had no easy access to the fourth estate to learn about the latest developments outside my own protected setting.

I was oblivious to every political and economic development or stagnation that happened around me. I missed the Rwandan genocide. I missed the Al-Qaeda bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. I hadn’t even heard of blood diamonds. I was too young to know about the significance of apartheid and of Nelson Mandela’s heroic role in its abolition. I hardly noticed the bad roads, the lack of water and the unrelenting power cuts. But I enjoyed cricket and soccer with my friends, the cartoons and of course the safaris. I was fascinated by the Masai Culture in East Africa and found their tribal dances mesmerizing to watch. I enjoyed my stay there with my friends and had lots of fun.

In hindsight, I guess that was a good thing. If that was the internet age and I had access to different articles on Africa, particularly in the western media, I too would have gained the impression that Africa is a failed continent that requires outsiders to save it, in spite of everything seeming so hunky-dory from my perch. After all, I was at a highly impressionable age then and any opinion that I formed would have stuck with me forever. So as I shifted back to India for my high school I only carried good memories about Africa in general.

Then, the world changed. Access to internet became more of a rule than an exception. I started, casually, reading about the political history of the continent, about Idi Amin and Mugabe, about the mass genocide in Rwanda and I was left wondering if my soft spot for the continent was misplaced. Then in early 2010 I found many articles about the up coming Rwandan elections and through the articles and the various comments following it, the general perception that one could gather was that Rwanda was a failed democracy, not very much unlike Idi Amin’s Uganda and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. It seemed that the incumbent President and his party were politically maneuvering to disbar candidates from opposition parties for the election. This was most disheartening considering that during my recent visit to the country I was most impressed by its development post-1994. That experience coupled with my soft spot for Africa had made me believe that African countries can develop by it’s own merit. Now, that belief was wavering.

Then, sometime in August 2010, a week or so after the Rwandan general elections (no surprises that Paul Kagame was re-elected by a huge margin), I happened to visit my relatives in the country for a few days and had reasonably lengthy conversations, albeit one sided, with my cousin about the ground realities in the country as opposed to the news doing rounds outside. That’s when an opinion started taking seed inside me, something that does not really hold the west in good stead in my mind and of course something that satiates my soft spot for Africa.

I am not going into the details of the conversation I had (to be honest I don’t really remember), but in essence it centered around how the ‘disbarred’ candidate that the western media was so ostentatiously flaunting was inherently playing ethnic politics in the pre-election campaign which in my opinion is detrimental to the interests of any country. (Just to clarify, the fact that this candidate could not contest the 2010 elections, supposedly, has nothing to do with the campaign; but the party just did not meet the deadline to submit election papers. Of course this can be interpreted in multiple ways and I am no expert about the politics of Africa and it would be pretentious on my part to delve into this further).

So, here is my only lesson from my latest visit to the continent during which unfortunately I could go on no safaris and could not enjoy the visual treat that Africa is.

Always take reports in the western media about Africa with a pinch of salt. The stereotype about the place is that of a failed continent that requires outsiders to save it. When any country breaks away from the norm and tries to grow by its own merit, the media prefers to crush it down, to find something to denigrate the success of Africa, whatever little it may have had.

Safari to Selous game Reserve

Part 3: Jungle Safari

Our alarm rang at 5.15 but neither I nor my brother had stirred in our sleep. Dad woke us up at 6.20. We were late. We were supposed to have breakfast at 6.30 and leave for the safari by 7. We quickly had our baths and went for breakfast at 7. We vacated at 7.30 and off we went into the Selous Game Reserve.

The first animal that greeted us into the Game Reserve was the Giraffe, the National Animal of Tanzania. It ran behind the trees as the vehicle approached and thus I could not a get a clear snap of the giraffe. No regrets though, for we would anyway run into more giraffes later. Moreover, I have understood that the best way to go about photography during a safari is to focus on any given animal on each trip into the jungle, for you need plenty of luck and patience to find the right creature at the right spot in the best pose possible. A good guide might be enough for you to spot the animals but a good snap is a different thing all together. If you focus on one animal per trip you get more time with the creature of your choice, which is once you find it, to test your patience to the limit with incessant clicks of your cam waiting for that elusive avant-garde pose.

But again, we can't do it that way. We have just one 5 hour trip into the jungle. So the only compromise is to try to get snaps of whatever creature we see and deem important enough to capture on a frame. Others we just spot and then ignore like we did with the photo calls of many birds and baboons. One thing about the Selous Game Reserve compared to the more famous National Parks in Tanzania like the Ngorongoro, Mikumi, etc. is that owing to a difficult road access, in spite of it being designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 due to its diversity of its wildlife and undisturbed nature, tourists are fewer and thus the animals are less accustomed to the low rumble of jeeps. Unlike in Ngorongoro where the animals practically pose for photographs, here they at the slightest disturbance run off into the bushes. That makes photography even more challenging.

Anyway, into the trip we ran into crocs, gazelles, more giraffes, zebras, antelopes, wild boars, the golden baboons, wildebeest, hippos and water birds, all of which we tried to get at least one snap of. We were unlucky with the African elephants though. We did spot two of them running into the foliage but could not get any snaps of them.

However, it was almost 10 and we still hadn't got a glimpse of the only animal of importance to anyone embarking on a safari in Africa, the elusive lions. It is easy to say "Follow the vultures, you will find the lions", but what if even vultures are hard to come by? I knew that the Canon in my hand had already made this trip more than worth it, but I still desperately wanted to catch the lions.

If I remember right, this was my sixth safari in Tanzania, though the first to Selous. In spite of five safaris I have been lucky to take back moments of awe only in my 1996 Safari to the Ngorongoro Crater. The other trips just don't easily come into my memory, which clearly depicts why luck is such a major factor in determining the long term nostalgic quotient of a safari. Back in 1996, since I was little and had no cam, I could not capture those precious moments as digitized information or even onto a film. But those moments are vividly etched into my mind. The best ones are undoubtedly a lioness licking the hands of a foreign tourist in a vehicle in front of ours and the sighting of a leopard on a branch right above our open top 4 wheeler. The latter was one spooky moment. The leopard could have jumped onto us if it wanted to. We didn't budge nor did the leopard. After a surreal half a minute of frisson the leopard was scampering away scared by an oncoming tractor.

Now, I wanted this trip to beat that in all respects and so in spite of great moments like witnessing the sublime athleticism and crisp muscle movement of the swift gazelles and even the ugly, yet strangely alluring writhing motion of the giraffes' necks while they scamper for cover, I wanted to spot a majestic lion making short work of its prey. But by 11 I had started accepting that "no lion" was not a loss. I had started resigning to the fact that we had already seen the best on offer.

That didn't bog our guide and driver down, did it? He desperately wanted to show us the lions and it was his undying persistence that finally got us to the elusive lion at 11.30, well technically, not exactly. We rather saw three lionesses still panting after making short work of their prey, a wildebeest. But will do. Something is better than nothing. The sighting of a majestic lion feeding on its prey probably will come true in some future safari of mine.

We were back at the Mtemere gate at 12 where we took a few photos and then once out of the reserve boundary we had lunch, courtesy the Mbega Camp where we stayed last night. They had packed for us lunch boxes. Nice chicken and sandwich. At 1 we started our return journey to Dar, where we were back by around 6.30 slowed slightly by the heavy traffic once in Mbagala.

The total cost of trip came to around 350$ per head. Considering that included the 5 hour ride to Selous and back, complimentary breakfast, great food and accommodation in Mbega Camp, a boat ride that gave me some of my best photos and a memorable 5 hour safari through the Game Reserve, I would say, worth it!!!

Safari to Selous Game Reserve

Part 2: The Boat Trip

We had already paid in advance and thus there was not much delay at the reception. We were shown our way to tents 7 and 8, me and brother in tent 8. I don't know whether you will call it a "tent". It was a cloth covered raised platform with facilities inside resembling any hotel room, definitely not a five star hotel in a city but certainly the best you can get in a jungle.

As we went inside the first thing I checked was the toilet. Toilet paper!!! Nothing even remotely resembling a mug! It felt like the universe was conspiring to toilet train me before my 4 year stint in the US. Anyways, Rufiji River was in my sight from inside the tent. A few hippos were visible too. While we were waiting in the tent for lunch to get ready, dad spotted a baby croc beside the Rufiji River. As I got there with the camera, it had well, vanished back into the river's depths. We had lunch at 1. Fried chicken and French Fries! 4 other foreigners were also there. Not English. In tents 5 and 6! There was no one else in this camp. After lunch, we spent our time in the tent till 4 waiting in anticipation for the boat ride.

In the boat we met the 4 foreigners again. They were Dutch. Couldn't get their names properly though. The young lady in the group has a name Figo or something but isn't that a guy's name? Anyways she's quite good looking and her partner very tall. The other 2 are a relatively elderly couple. The elderly guy seems to be a good photographer. He had a DSLR with zoom lens. Apparently he has also been on safaris in Zimbabwe and all of them have been here at least for 3 days now. Anyways, Kaseem, the boat guy and guide was extremely helpful. Actually if it weren't for him the boat ride wouldn't have been that interesting. He gave us a 2 and half hour ride and gave us details about the water birds and the flora we saw and even narrated interesting anecdotes about life beside the Rufiji River. But the best thing was that he was adept at taking the boat as close to the birds as possible without scaring them which was what created opportunities to get some great snaps. The sunset was beautiful and the only regret I have about the boat ride is that I was not able to capture a heron in flight though I got 2 chances.

Anyway, there are a few villages beside the Rufiji River some distance away from the Game Reserve but still within a forested area. We saw people swimming in the river, though it is highly dangerous with the Great Nile Crocodiles that call this river home being the most ferocious of all the 4 kinds of crocs you find in Africa. Kaseem time and again repeated that though the game reserve had a marked boundary as far as the humans are concerned, free animals don't necessarily have any boundaries.

During the final return, there was a bump below the boat. I thought it was a hippo but couldn't have been. Kaseem explained that the canoe the villagers use was once overturned by a hippo and a guy eaten by a croc. But hippos are scared of the motor boat. So well, a hippo bumping our boat is one of the things that just couldn't be true, irrespective of how much I would like it to be.

It was dark by the time we were back in the tent. The generator in the camp is operated only between 6 in the evening and 10 pm. So that is the only time when there would be electricity supply and only time when we could recharge our cam batteries. So we had to ration the charger for mine and Arun's cam batteries. Fortunately there was no untimely die-off during the entire trip.

Anyways we went for dinner at 8. The process of taking the 1st step out of a small gap in the tent with only torchlight to show the way had a magical feeling to it. Don't know why and also tried it out twice. The dinner was sumptuous. Great soup and beef curry. Ended with fruit salad! Finally as I drifted off to sleep at 9 with the Apple singing in my ears, I felt strangely sanguine that though this day alone had made my trip, the next one was going to better it still.

Safari to Selous Game Reserve

Part 1: The long drive to Selous (pronounced “Seloo”)

Saturday, August the First! The day I had been waiting for ever since I landed in Tanzania, for this would be my best opportunity to really experiment with my new camera, the Canon SX10IS. My watch read 6.20 am when we started off in a Toyota Prado just as the darkness was lifting off. There wasn't much traffic on the road this early in the day and we were moving pretty fast. Within 15 minutes we went past my brother's school. The road turning left to his campus is completely dirt laden. I remember thinking if it had ever been tarred. However we were on a pretty good stretch of a 4 lane road. Though once out of the outskirts of Dar-es-Salaam the road narrowed to 2 lanes, the road was good and we were covering a lot of distance in little time.

En-route to Mbagala, a nice photo opportunity arose - the rising sun, nice bright red in colour, half hidden behind a cloud rendering the sky around in a nice orange-ish shade. We were moving pretty fast and thus we were pretty late to react to it and couldn't ask the driver to stop. That would be pretty much the only regret I have in the first part of the trip, though the view of an even more beautiful sunset later in the day would more than make up for it. There was also plenty of mist around during the first hour of the ride with the visibility being less than 15 metres. Looking out of the left car window we could see a sea of mist thickly covering a low lying area revealing only the top of coconut trees. The temperature had also dropped to 21^oC. It was 25^oC back in Dar.

Anyway, we were moving at over 100kmph and the vehicle's suspension seemed to be a little soft. There were also some minor tuning problems with the engine. There was an obvious, though minor reluctance on the engine's part to rev up. Otherwise, it was a really smooth journey thus far. We pulled left into a Panpol petrol bunk at Mbagala. The driver Shabana, who has been in this job for over 14 years now remarked that this would be the cheapest bunk on this route.

We filled up full tank and hadn't gone for over a kilometer when there they were, the policemen! One officer was standing right in the middle of the road and waving frantically. There was no option but to stop or else we would have to run him over. This was one thing we were hoping to avoid. Very naive of us considering it was a Saturday morning. They first asked us for our passports in which everything was all hunky-dory. Still, would you believe it that they asked for 300$ and for no reason what-so-ever? We don't pay, we don't move an inch further, simple as that.

Corruption, rather official extortion is one thing any visitor to Tanzania who plans to embark on a drive must be prepared for. One thing to remember is that they are just shooting into the dark. If you keep looking into their eye, know a bit of Swahili and politely question them back, you could if you are lucky see another side of these officers. The officer in question in our case basically started begging, in whispers though. Based on my mother's and brother's translation he was asking for at least 10000tshs since Sunday was coming up and he needed a little loose change for booze. Would be visitors; keep one more thing in mind. Just because you now think you have the upper hand in argument and thus get away without even paying the 10k, then God Bless You. If you value your time and do not have a photo of you standing next to the Tanzanian President in your car, pay the 10k and leave. (Note: Around 1300tshs would correspond to 1$). As we reached Mkuranga, there was another police roadblock. This time it was Traffic. Traffic officers are comparatively less indulgent in official extortion and so they left us after asking a couple of questions.

Now, the foliage in Tanzania would remind anyone from Kerala of his home state. Beyond the road you could see plenty of plantains, coconut and mango trees. We had to reach Faribu, before the first visible signs of Africa in its Savanna like grasses started to appear. We had burgers at 8, complementary from the travel guys. After a while there were remnants of a dead animal on the road. If we were in the jungle, I would have said it was a hyena. It had the same colour, stripes and size.

By 8 in the morning we had already completed almost 150kms of the total 250km stretch to Selous. We had reached Kibiti by then, where we stopped for tea near a Gapco Petrol Bunk. As we restarted the journey at 8.30, I was sitting in the car and wondering why my father had said this would a 5 hour drive. We had already completed more than half the distance! That was when I was in for a big surprise as we veered right onto a dirt road with a signboard showing 94 kms to Selous. Well, great!!! At least we could start the drive-in-the-jungle experience earlier than expected.

We were leaving a heavy dust trail as we were still moving at around 80kmph though after we almost jumped off the road, the driver decelerated to a more decent 50. First signs of the wild were visible on the sides of the road. Though it were just monkeys that made the bumpy 3 hour ride worth it! We reached Mtemere Gate at 11.30 am where we finished the formalities for entering Selous Game Reserve and then signed in at the Mbega Camp where we would be spending our next 18 hours. A decent journey so far but in no way did I anticipate that the next 24 hours of my life would be one of my best.