The Lake Lost in Mists

Nestled in the frozen elevations of the Tanzanian highlands is the small village of Mchanganye.  It is a remarkable village, full of landscaped paths and brightly painted buildings unusual for the typical rustic life of the country.  But perhaps most remarkable is that it thrives in the shadow of an ancient volcano who's caldera now houses a giant lake known in the local language as the Big One [Ngozi] or sometimes Hema Hema [movement] for its habit of shifting its shape.  The wooded slopes of this long-defunct fiery mountain are known for housing primates that were, until quite recently, unknown to the people of science. Being in the area, I was naturally curious about the place, and so I wrote to a lady I know who makes her home there, suggesting an expedition to the lake in the crater.  Receiving a favorable reply, I set out with a few friends in order to investigate.  

At the beginning, spirits were high, nonetheless, from the beginning we were beset by troubling signs of decay.  The path was marked by an ancient, decrepit guardhouse in which we signed our names in an ancient and decrepit gatehouse, under the eye of a tired, unwashed man.  Just outside the guardhouse, the cheerful flowers planted long ago were swarmed with shining voracious insects.

Further down the path we found ourselves enchanted by flashed of color from the many butterflies, but the only specimen we could come close to clutched itself close to the ground, broken wing dangling.

After some fifteen minutes of easy promenade, we found ourselves in dense forest, and the light diminishing into a grey diffuse haze as a cloud bank settled and began to envelope us in dripping fog.

As we penetrated deeper into the gloom we were startled by a sudden hysterical swaying in the treetops above us.  To our surprise and delight, we saw glimpses of a large, black-furred white-faced thing, about the size of a baboon I think, we took for one of the elusive Highland Mangabeys, a recently discovered and named species.  Being Americans, we of course had recourse to our cameras, yet imagine our astonishment when we realized none of our digitized and retrievable images showed any trace of our sighting!  After dispelling my unease with talk of poor photography, the distance from and motion of the subject, I felt sufficiently comfortable to hastily pen the following few lines:

Leaping white-faced friend

High above the dripping path,

We're glad we met you. 

Even my profound optimism began to be shaken as we proceeded into a forest of banana trees.  Cursed trees, doomed to die after their first and only fruiting, leaving their slimy curved rotting trunks in the forest detritus beneath our feet!  Unhappy trees, of a monstrous and forbidding height, that we have no choice but to pass beneath with shudders.

Demonstrating the prodigious size of this
monstrous vegetation. 

These banana trees

Live only to bear fruit once

Before death and rot. 

As we proceeded up the slope of the mountain, the mist set in fast around us, and while I noted with alarm the increased abundance of spiders, I attempted to calm my fears by reflecting on the mist-ensparkled webbing and the perfection of the webs.

As we left the banana trees and entered a bamboo forest, I became thoroughly alarmed by the prevalence of fallen trees forming unnaturally perfect bridges across the path.  Though I jocularly referred to these as troll bridges, I was far from easy in my mind about these strange structures in a forest increasingly misted into darkness.

At last we reached the lip of the crater, and straining, we saw...nothing.  Nothing but a bed of roiling mist, hiding everything in our view.  Peering intently, I thought I saw movement deep within the mists.  I recoiled with a cry, but my companions, seeing nothing, soon convinced me that it was just my old nervous troubles and I should relax and photograph the flowers.

Where the lake would have been could we have seen it.

One of my completely relaxed companions.

I attempted to emulate my more sanguine companions by occupying my mind and my hands to write the following:

Past the mossy dark,

Beneath the arching troll-paths,

A lake lost in mist.

Nonetheless, I urged haste upon my companions and we soon left that place.  Even the most unflappable of my travelling companions grew disturbed as we found sections of the path so recently ascended now swarming with siafu, the marching army ants which are the scourge of the region.  We descended in increasing haste and silence, pausing only to brush the ants from our persons.  In exhausted perturbation from our labors and unspoken fears, we waited for one of the small buses that pass Mchanganye to return us to Mbeya and civilization.  After an unconscionably long time we were finally able to board and sat huddled in our jackets lost in our own thoughts.  Then the bus stopped again and a preacher boarded.

Normally, bus preachers are a source of great fascination to me.   Bus preaching is, of course, an activity that is at best rude, but I still find it an amusing novelty.

As I listened to the man, providing a running and somewhat cynical translation (God hates booze is possibly not the best translation for mungu hataki pombe) for one of my companions who is less adept in the language, I realized he was talking about people burning in fire (either historical inhabitants of Sodom or proponents of anal sex in future hell) and he was smiling at me.  I stared in hypnotic fascination as the smile grew ever broader while he spoke of fiery death, and while I stared, his face seemed to morph into the white furred mask of the non-photographable monkey we had encountered on the path to the crater.  A horror of blasphemous things unimaginable filled my soul, and I began, for the first time, to suspect the full truth of the things living on the slopes of a mountain that used to weep fire.  I closed my eyes in horror and waited for the end.  

Voyage of the Peace Corps: The Shiny Rocks of Innovative Living

This past weekend I went to Ihanja, a small village near other small villages that aren't really on maps, to visit a very delightful Peace Corps couple and their puppy.  I am really quite in awe of these volunteers, since without electricity or running water, they live and eat better than I do while having the energy to farm, teach English at the primary school, and organize blanket weaving projects for children who are required to board at a school without any mattresses. They are working on a grant to get a refrigerator for the local clinic/dispensary so that ARVs can be stored there, and they adopted and care for a very energetic dog.

Their house has crossed machetes over the door.  I am
so stealing this idea.

Ihanja grows lots of sunflowers, which are blooming right now, so we went for a walk past fields of sunflowers, with a rainbow, and picked up handfuls of raw amethysts off the road.  Because we can do that!  The (unpaved) road was surfaced with rocks that included tons of quartz-y things.  Katie helped me hit the raw amethyst pieces with a hammer to get decent stones and showed me how to wrap them for necklace pendanting using copper electric wire and a pair of pliers.  Have I mentioned how I am in awe at the abilities of these volunteers?

I like amethysts.  They are pretty rocks that no one dies over.

Other attractions of Ihanja include a tribute to dead white guy who was sainted for something or other, and the shell of a gigantic Catholic church that was begun but never completed.  Acoustically excellent monument to failure!

The unfinished church was surrounded by piles of unused bricks.
Morning glories grow out of the bricks.

It was a weekend of warm showers, because they have a solar heated water bag and a pulley, and breakfasts of warm bread topped with mayonnaise, eggs, cheese, and tomato.  Did I mention they live better than I do despite a lack of electricity and water?  Not to mention being talented enough to make jewelry out of road rocks and leftover electrical wire.  Also, Katie is the Mad Mistress of Pastries who demonstrates excellent usage of food coloring.  I made the green.  I mixed yellow and blue.  I can do things like that.

Apple pie!  Proving we don't hate America.  Or something.

Evenings can be spent playing Munchkin, a Dungeons and Dragons based card game. I didn't win, but I did have a huge rock of +2 to combat, and a hireling to carry my huge rock so I could still use other weapons.  We were serenaded by the drunken ladies of the church choir, who warble their way home from the bar every evening in perfect harmony.  For creepier entertainment, there is a computer charged by solar energy on which can be played HP Lovecraft podcasts, which left us with Unnatural Urges for Unspeakable Sins and a deep abiding love for decadent prose with many adverbs.

I am now back at site and actually have a class schedule a week after the beginning of classes.  But will the students come this week?  I don't know.

Voyage of the Peace Corps: Island of the Megabats

From Unguja, the largest island of Zanzibar, I took a ferry to the next largest island, Pemba.  Unlike Unguja, we have volunteers on Pemba, so that while my accommodations may not be air-conditioned, they are considerably more free than on Unguja.   Getting there was a little involved.  My destination was Wete, up on the north of the island, and the ferry comes in to Mkoani, at the very south of the island.  Normally this would not be an issue.  The island is small enough that going from south to north is about 1.5 hours by dala dala.  However, on Zanzibar, dalas are not the 15 passenger vans I am used to crammed full of 30 people and a chicken.  They are pickup trucks with benches along the side of the bed and an awning over the bed, crammed full of 30 people and a chicken.  Something about the different orientation of the seating, plus being a little dehydrated and hot, made me really motion sick, and I had to turn and throw up off the side a few times.  Throwing up out of the window or side of a moving vehicle should a Peace Corps merit badge.

I finally got to Wete and was collected by the volunteer, who is lucky enough to have a cold shower with good water pressure.  He also introduced me to the wonders of Zanzibari street food.  The fried squid and octopus I knew about.  The sugarcane juice I have been in love with for some time.  I did NOT know about arojo (sp?) this wonderful spicy broth/stew/soup stuff.  People have street stands and you tell them what you want in it (default is everything) and add lots of spices.   Travel guide books will tell you that Zanzibaris are better cooks than their mainland neighbors, and they are absolutely right.  One of the great disappointments of my service was that the food culture of Tanzania I did not find exciting (and in fact, generally comment that Tanzanian cooks are wonderful people who need to be introduced to a spice rack).  Zanzibar, however, lives up to my shallow and glutinous hopes.  Would only had my stomach been feeling a little better during Pemba!  Whatever, there is a movie theater in Wete!  In a town not large enough for a bank, there is a real actual movie theater!  With a balcony! A large, decent screen, a dark theater with chairs, a decent sound system, and different movies every night!  Mostly kung fu and Bollywood.  I am not complaining.  Also, instead of popcorn, right outside you can buy watermelon and fried octopus.  On the night I attended, there was some Wesley Snipes action film featuring Wesley Snipes beating up and shooting various black-clad people.  The action was so important there wasn't even time for a gratuitous sex scene, much less an actual plot.  The audience was into it and cheered when bad guys were shot, gasped when good guys were shot, and I really don't think I've ever had a better theatrical cinematic experience.

Other things to do on Pemba include looking at the Pemba Flying Foxes, a species of giant fruit bat.  You can go down to the pier, watch the sunset over the water, then turn around to see the trees where all the bats nest and watch the bats wake up and fly.

Tree full of bats.

Bird on top of tree full of bats.

I like sunsets.

My camera doesn't do well with darkness or with quick moving objects, picture wise, so here's a low quality video of the bats flying after the sun goes down.

From there, a cute little plane across the water to Tanga!  To date, the only form of transportation I have ever been on in Tanzania that has not included chickens.  Which is just weird.  Also, airport "security" took away my bottled water and left my bottle of rum.

Next: the milkshakes of Moshi.

Voyage of the Peace Corps: Stuck on a Tropical Beach with Too Much Money

When I imagined a tropical island pre-Peace Corps, it looked just about exactly like the coasts of Tanzania and the Zanzibar Archipelago.  One might say that the beaches of Zanzibar are the platonic tropical beaches.  The Indian ocean is very blue and very clear.  The water is warm, the sand is sandy.  If you are a tourist, you can go sit at a resort beach, and they bring you comfy chairs, wine, and sushi, to while away the unbearable idleness of a tropical beach.

I spent a very productive hour trying to make a sandcastle with
neither shovel nor plastic bucket.  Coconut shell halves work sorta ok to dig with.

The crab shell at the top represents Cthulhu.

Jaro and I went on an entire dolphin tour, which involved getting ferried about the Indian ocean on a boat looking for dolphins.  We only got close to one and he didn't appear interested in swimming with people.  Such hardship!

The water actually does have these patches of aquamarine.

Boats full of white people trying to get close to the dolphin.

After chasing the dolphin around for a while we got to snorkel above coral patches.  I don't have pictures, not having an underwater camera, but I was unprepared for how lovely coral is.  There are these little mountains of coral rising above forests of seaweed.  The coral we saw was muted pinks and oranges with lots of little zebra striped or neon-colored fish swimming in and out.

After, we went for a walk on the beach at low tide.

Photogenic dead crab!

Peace Corps is NOT analogous to that stupid story about the
man throwing starfish back into the ocean.  By the time starfish wash
up on a beach, they are dead, and also some of them have poison spines
so you don't really want to touch them.  

Cool cliffs that seem to be formed of dead coral.

Next: we go to a museum and learn things!