I have to use this term loosely as we were still camping in our tent, but it was in the backyard of a very nice hotel called Fanaka, and had Internet access, a nice pool, warm showers, a restaurant, and no animals to be afraid of!!!! No 5 star hotel looked better!!! It was like camping in your backyard! :-)
We contemplated just staying at the hotel and relaxing, perhaps taking a dip in the pool, when we heard band music. How odd! So... We decided we would walk into town to see where the music came from and then take a swim before dinner. After a short walk, we learned that the band was actually rehearsing for Sunday mass tomorrow. There were a group of children who were finishing up music lessons - our equivalent of the church choir.
The church was part of a Catholic school, and Lukasz and I met Michael, a teacher at the school, who offered to show us around after answering a bunch of questions. We also met a few of the Sisters who taught and ran the school. They showed us the classrooms and what they taught the children.
There was a math room with isosceles triangles and other right triangles teaching sine, cosine, and tangent up on the chalkboard. It was impressive and not at all what I was expecting to see from what appeared to be 7th grade through high school age students in a small town in Africa!
There were also cooking classes (which I should probably have sat in on), teaching teens how to bake and cook. They even made a bunch of lovely looking wedding cakes!!! I can't imagine a 15 year old from the US making something like this, and these came from kids in a 3rd world country. Simply amazing!!!
This was originally a school for only females to attend, so the dormitory is only for girls, and they don't have enough room for everyone (you can see below how many beds are in that small space). However, the school now has both males and females, so boys have to commute. Since they just purchased property to build a new and larger school, they will soon have dorms for both boys and girls.
Although they are a Catholic school, they accept students of all religions (and those who have no religious beliefs), and also have many Maasai students in their classes. Their purpose is to not only educate, but to provide a place to keep young women and others out of trouble and off the streets, and spend their time in a positive environment, being productive, and building their confidence - showing them what they have to offer. There are a lot of young teenagers (13+ years old) who become prostitutes and get married to someone 30-40 years older than them. This is a way to a different and possibly better future for some of them.
It was very inspiring to hear them talk about their school and they showed it off with such pride. Before we left, Lukasz was kind enough to make a donation to their school.
Across the street from the school was their hospital, which was also run by one of the Catholic sisters. She wasn't there at the time, but they took us over to the hospital when we expressed interest in seeing it, and Nurse Mary showed us around. :-)
This hospital was used primarily as a maternity ward, but in addition to delivering babies, they had a bunch of rooms that looked like small apartments circling an outdoor area that served as an inpatient unit.
The picture below is of one of the rooms where they delivered babies. They showed us all of their medicine, needles, and what was interesting, was they were most proud of their cleaning supplies and the process by which they cleaned the room and beds in between patients.
They had no prenatal vitamins, but mothers received vitamin A tablets for 3 months after giving birth. They also had no ultrasound machines or other equipment used to monitor the health of the unborn. (We had also learned that there was only one MRI machine for 40 million people in all of Tanzania, and that it was usually broken.) Let's just say that I'm happy neither of us needed to be hospitalized while in Africa, but given what they had available to them, they did a nice job. There were vaccines to administer once the baby was born, and if a baby was born sick and needed medical attention (such as a NICU), the mother would hold them and ride on the back of a motorcycle 2-3 hours until arriving at a larger hospital where they had specialists.
They did not have access to ambulances. As you can imagine, sick or premature newborns riding on the back of a motorcycle exposed to the elements for a few hours didn't all survive the trip. When she talked about it, I was thinking about Kyla who was born at 23 1/2 weeks. Our NICU was able to give me 6 wonderful weeks with her that I wouldn't have had if she was born in Africa (or many other places). It is sobering to realize what we all have access to that many others don't.
This is the room where mothers went after they had their baby. The white things above the beds are not curtains - they are mosquito nets to put around the bed and protect from bites (malaria is common in Tanzania).
This is me and Nurse Mary. She was a real joy and someone who I had a lot of respect for by the time we left. She showed us how they maintained their logs and medical records, weighed the babies and kept track of their visits and progress, walked us through a typical admission and birth, and answered all of our many questions with a smile. You could tell she not only loved what she did, but had a lot of pride in her work. Her face lit up when she talked about her job and the hospital. It was a beautiful thing to see. We had to cut our tour short as a patient came in, but we were very thankful for her time.
Of course, when we left Mary and the hospital, it was raining outside. The sister who worked at the hospital had returned from Arusha and we were invited to visit the sisters' home. There were lovely doilies on the tables, lace coverings on the couches, and pictures of Jesus and the saints on the walls. There was also a nice garden outside that the sisters showed us, and we were offered fruit that was being grown on either a vine or short tree (I can't quite remember). Since I had been sick most of the trip and was finally feeling well, I only pretended to eat it. Of course, Lukasz ate it without a problem (I think he has a bionic stomach), and because it was starting to get late and was raining, we said goodbye and went back to the hotel / campsite.
We charged our cameras and phones, checked our email, and sat down to have dinner at one of the restaurant's tables. The hotel provided mosquito cream to put on our arms, hands, and face as protection, which was nice. And since this was our last night with Ezzie and "Josephina", we invited both of them to join us once dinner was ready, and we bought them a beer. It was a great night coming off of a wonderful day. "Cheers, Na zdrowie, and Ishi Vizuri" from your American, Polish, and African friends!!! :-)
Lukasz wanted to spend some more time with the boys and send some emails. I was tired having gotten only a few hours of sleep, so I said good night, and for once, went to bed before Lukasz. I must have been tired because I don't even remember him coming in!!
In the morning, we were able to sleep in a little bit, had breakfast by 8 am, and were packed and ready to leave for our final game drive by 8:30 am. It didn't take us long to get to Lake Manyara National Park.
While waiting at the entrance gate for Ezzie to secure our permits, the ranger asked us if we knew how Lake Manyara got its name. We both said "Uh... because the lake in the park is named "Lake Manyara"? That's true, but that's not how it got its name... The poisonous plant called "emanyara" (Euphorbia tirucalli ) means "manyara" in the Maasai language. The Maasai put this plant around their villages to use as protection and keep the predators out. This came as a surprise to me, but it is apparently much more effective than using the thorny plants! When the ranger showed us what the plant looked like, Lukasz said he wanted to take it home with him. Good idea buddy! But the poisonous plant that even the lions avoid will stay in your pack... LOL
This park was all about the monkeys. LOL And I have to tell you in advance that it will pale in comparison to the other parks we had been in. This park is known for tree-dwelling lions, but we didn't see any while here. We also had to get back to the Kilimanjaro Airport by 4 pm, so we only had a few hours to spend here, which was (in my opinion) more than enough time.
One notable difference between this park and the others was that this drive was in a forested area surrounded by trees and water. In the past, many of drives had been in the open plains. We had the top up, so we could stand and look out at the animals, but since there were supposedly many tree-climbing lions and the trees were directly above our vehicle, I was slightly concerned that if we saw one, he/she would easily be able to jump down on top of it, leaving us exposed. (I realize I have quite a few fears when it comes to lions...hyenas...cheetahs...leopards...)
There were also supposedly crocodiles in this park which I was hoping to see, but although the first few animals we saw were reptiles, they were much smaller and more harmless than a crocodile. They were called Nile Monitor lizards.
Why not just make it 3? Probably all part of a family, but they were neat because they were so large compared to lizards I'm used to seeing!!
And it was nice to see another hamerkop - the last one we saw was in Serengeti.
After that, we saw our first group of monkeys. These were the Blue monkeys.
Blue monkeys are not blue in color. They are more of an olive-grey color.
Blue monkeys live in forests such as this, and enjoy the shade and protection the trees have to offer.
Sharing the same trees as the Blue monkeys are the black faced Vervet monkeys.
These monkeys can live up to 13,000 ft in altitude.
Similar to the baboon, they can be seen as pests when they come into towns and villages, and unfortunately, they are sometimes caught with traps and killed.
A little ways down the road, we saw many baboons.
This is a video of a few of the baboons. My apologies for the last few seconds of this video as I caught the male baboon procreating with one of his lady friends.
Baboon are considered vermin or pests in Africa all over the place. We witnessed this at camp in Serengeti. However, unlike the mice or raccoon that we have in the states, these guys can reach 100 lbs and 3 feet tall, and have sharp teeth.
Nyani means baboon in Swahili. They stay in groups called "troups", which can overlap with other baboon troups, but they stay out of each others way. They are also similar in many ways to humans and mimic many human behaviors.
Monkey crossing...
After passing the monkeys, we ran into marshlands. There are 36 different types of waterfowl in this section of the park. According to their sign, the birds winter by the hippo pool from September to April (during the time we were there), and includes birds that migrated from Europe and Asia, as well as other parts of Africa.
This bird is a Grey Heron.
And a few more fat Egyptian Geese.
This is a Great White Egret Stork.
And here we have a white-faced whistling duck who is shying away from the camera. :-)
There were also a few wildebeest grazing throughout the park near the hippo pool.
Considering some of the hippo activity we saw in other parks, the Lake Manyara hippo pool was anti-climatic, and the hippo were not very close, but it's always fun to see hippo regardless and there were plenty of them!
Here is a classic shot of Lukasz taking photos of the pretty birds. :-)
And this is a cattle egret. There were many egrets by the hippo.
Many of the hippo at this park were either in the mud or on the grass, which surprised me since it was the middle of the day. I had expected them all to be in the water.
Stork, geese, and egret all mingle happily by the hippos.
As we left the hippo pool, we passed a herd of Cape buffalo. (This picture shows a yellow-billed stork to the left of the buffalo.)
And just past the buffalo, we once again were in monkey land, only this time they were all over the plains!
These are more baboon.
A difference between the baboons and humans? We avoid trees and bushes full of inch long thorns. These guys got food, probably berries, from them.
They got in the car and one even went down my pants and was crawling up my leg. It freaked me out until I figured out what it was and got rid of it.
As we drove on past the baboon fields, while I watched the bugs scurry across the front of the Land Rover, we made our way to another area with Vermet monkeys.
I would have thought that these were a different type of blue monkey because the males had bright blue balls, but these are actually the Vermet monkeys, similar to the ones we saw previously.
And past the blue balled Vermet monkeys was a saddle-billed stork.
As well as a Southern ground hornbill.
Lake Manyara was similar to the lake in the bottom of the Ngorongoro Crater, except this one had giraffes and baboon along with the flamingo.
The giraffe's skin reminds me of snowflakes. :-) Very beautiful design!
Just when I thought we were done with monkeys... There were a whole bunch of the Vermet monkeys by the dirt road having a party!
Here, let me fix your hair for you. :-) I love the baby pouch!
Lunch time for us as well.
Do you think I can pass for a human if I walk on 2 feet?
The grey-headed kingfisher is a very colorful bird!
Further into the forest we saw a herd of of impala.
And the last animal we saw at Lake Manyara was Nyala. This is a new type of antelope for us and the ladies below are very beautiful with their white lines and spots!!
Although we didn't see any tree-climbing lions or crocodiles, we did see several animals and birds that we hadn't seen before and enjoyed watching the monkeys. We left the park happy and ready to go to the airport for the final leg of our trip - Zanzibar!!
On the way back, we passed many of these trees with beautiful orange flowers that reminded me of my good friend Ewa.
I wanted to take a photo of this as well, seeing as all 4 vehicles in the picture are 3-wheelers!!
And bananas were everywhere in Africa! Lots of banana trees and ladies selling bananas by the side of the road or at the markets. Here was an African transporting bananas that were freshly cut from the banana trees.
While in Arusha on the way to the airport, we stopped at the bank to exchange more dollars for shillings. There was a decent sized traffic jam, which was odd as there weren't that many cars, but cars were waiting for someone to move out of a parking spot or wanted to pull out or turn around in the middle of the road. They didn't seem to care about how it affected any of the other cars on the road.
Once we escaped the traffic and were back to driving at highway speeds, it started to rain again. (Everywhere we went, the rain followed us.) The Land Rover's windshield wipers decided they didn't want to work anymore. We pulled over a few times to try to fix them and clear the windows, but they refused to work, so we ended up just having to drive through the rain without wipers.
But thanks to Ezzie, we had more than enough time to get to the airport for our flight and arrived safely! Goodbye Ezekiel and Joseph! We will miss you!!
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