A Weather Phenomenon and a Walk in the Park

Serval cat at Arusha National Park.

I have recently found that there has been international reporting on the weather phenomenon we are experiencing. I thought it was just some kind of major 'last hurrah' of the short rains--trying to show-off its staying power. But as we have had nearly endless torrential rains in the past 2 weeks, I decided to do some research. In fact, it is part of the pattern that is creating the drought and wildfires in Australia on the Eastern side of the Indian Ocean. A large cyclical current is pulling moisture onto the West side of the Indian Ocean and at least one cyclone has hit over here near Somalia. Farmers are delighted to have some extra rain, but at this point, they are more worried about extensive flooding.

In the midst of this, our MCC team flew to Zanzibar for our annual team retreat. I was worried that it would be pouring here as well, but for some reason, it is quite hot and sunny once you leave the mainland. I will say more about our retreat in a future entry. We are enjoying some free time by the pool and I am taking the opportunity to do an update of the past 10 days.

Actually, the past 10 days seem more like 3 months, with the number of activities that have happened. In the last update, I had said that Grandma Jean had arrived to visit us for a week, and Papa Dave arrived the day before (American) Thanksgiving. I have to say Thanksgiving dinner was one of the best I have had this year. Rebecca and Jean both spent the day at home and prepared very dish one could want for a traditional Thanksgiving, including cranberry sauce (smuggled in a can last summer). We opted for 2 large fresh chickens to trying to track down a turkey, but they were at least as good with the stuffing and gravy that was prepared from drippings.

The greatest improvement to Thanksgiving was an apple rhubarb pie prepared by Rebecca. I don't know why I have not had the before. Strawberry rhubarb, yes, but that is not a good combination in my opinion compared to the texture and tang of apples. It was superb with fresh whipped cream.

The invited guests were the real highlights. Besides our family and Dave and Jean, we invited some members of the MCC team including our YAMENer Jessica, and Lucia, our accountant, with her two daughters Novella and Esperanza. They have become friends of David's from past years of MCC team retreats. We also invited Marie, Jessica's host mother. It is always nice to have guests that are not familiar with American Thanksgiving. (Although it is currently not too politically correct to highlight the mythology behind the celebration, it is interesting to those who are trying to understand American culture. We did also provide some context about the more tragic aspect of relations between native people and Europeans in American history that followed.)

After dinner, the adults chatted and David played some board games with Novella and Esperanza. Since Thursday and Friday are not holidays here, we did end before 9pm so kids could go to school. All in all, it was a memorable Thanksgiving dinner this year and we were happy to have friends from work as well as Dave and Jean here.

Papa Dave's visit seemed especially short, but we did pack a lot in. After a full day of work on Friday, in which Dave, Jean, and Rebecca went to Moshi to see some of his colleagues, we prepared for a safari at Arusha game park on Saturday.

We hired a guide and safari vehicle and our family went with Dave and Jean and Jessica for a day of game viewing at Arusha National Park. This park is about an hour from our house, which is convenient so we left from our house early in the morning and were at the gate by 8am. The Arusha Park has one very nice perk in that they offer a walking safari (with a ranger carrying a loaded gun). It is great to be able to get out of a safari vehicle during a long day.

Because of the extensive rain, we worried that it might be a very wet trip, but somehow the skies cleared when we arrived (in a dense fog), and we had an exceptional day of game viewing.

The walking safari is limited to a small area of the park and as we walked through a very verdant savannah we came upon a herd of Cape Buffalo, considered quite aggressive and dangerous, but only watched us curiously. I got a nice picture of the bull eyeing us lazily with 2 oxpeckers sitting on his head. We also came very close to a pair of giraffes and a number of warthogs.

We ended the walking safari at a beautiful waterfall coming down off Mt. Meru. We stopped for snacks and photos there before continuing in the car. Arusha National Park has other interesting features including a giant parasitic ficus tree that completely suffocated its host and left an enormous hole through which one could drive a landrover. We stopped there for some photos.

We had lunch beside one of a series of 10 very picturesque small lakes. There is a path that weaves through them which we drove and saw many birds including two types of bee-eaters up close, a buzzard, Egyptian geese, and several flocks of flamingoes.

Other animal highlights during the day included many waterbuck with huge horns, dik-dik, zebra, bushbuck, several herds of giraffe, colobus and blue monkeys as well as baboons.  My personal favorite, a serval cat who slinked around not far from our vehicle, jumped on a rodent, then crossed the road in front of us. It was great to get some pictures of that as I have never seen one in the wild. There are no lions in Arusha National Park, but there are leopards and serval cats, so I felt we had a lot of luck that day.

We got home in the evening and felt very good about having a great guide and vehicle at a reasonable price. This is one of the benefits of living in Tanzania.

Dave and Jean left on Sunday after church. We had our small group at our house that day and saw Dave and Jean off as small group guests arrived. We were pretty tired by the end of small group and were not able to start decorating for Christmas, even though doing so on Thanksgiving weekend is a tradition.

Fortunately we did get to it on Monday evening and had a very nice time as family getting out the tree and ornaments, creche set, lights, the advent candle set, and other Christmas paraphernalia. It is hard to believe we are at this point in the year.

The other thing about the end of the year, which can be hard, is saying goodbye to friends. Summer and the end of the year are transition times for many individuals and families who come out for short, or even long-term assignments. This has been particularly true at the Joshua Foundation (the compound where we live) where we just said goodbye to our next-door neighboo\rs who had been here for a decade as members of the Joshua Foundation team. Josiah was a good friend of David's and we went over last Saturday to say our final goodbyes and take a picture with them. It will seem emptier here without them, especially because Josiah and his brother often stopped by at our house unannounced to play with David on the trampoline.

Then, no sooner had we finished saying good-bye to them, we were bidding farewell to our other neighbors, the Thompson's. Andrew and his wife Nicola were regular players of ultimate frisbee with us along with their daughters Lara and Emma. Andrew also did a ton of project management in the short year he was here and built a kitchen and meeting center complex for short term mission teams, as well as remove the old bridge that was washed out earlier this year and install a new one. Things will definitely slow down here without his energy. They were quite a courageous family with all their kids attending the local (English speaking) school here, and them very involved in the life of the local community near the Joshua Foundation compound. They will be missed by us and others.

The weekend before the departure to Zanzibar was as busy as the last one with packing on Saturday. We also picked up a YAMEN volunteer working in Kenya from Laos. His name is Alang. He was going to join us on our Zanzibar retreat. He stayed with us and joined our activities for the weekend.

Rebecca lead music in church on Sunday and me doing Sunday School. Afterwards, we met some friends from our small group and did a day hike at a friend's house on the slopes of Mt. Meru. A small group of adults and large group of kids hiked to a neighboring farm where a guy does beekeeping using local forest bees. He gave us a tour and showed us the tiny bees, who make small pots of honey in beeswax. We got a taste as well, very unique, not really that sweet but strongly floral and citrusy. Afterwards we returned to our friend's house where the kids made 'Chris-tingles' a kind of candy decorated orange for Christmas.

Jessica and Alang both stayed the night at our house on Sunday so we could make a 5am departure to the airport for our Zanzibar flight.

It is very relaxing to have these 4 days in Zanzibar before going back for one more work push (finishing quarterly reports from partners) when we return.

More about that next time.

Bonus Photos of Safari: