Ngorongoro and Embakaai

Baboons by the road on the way up to Karatu

I think it must be a sign of aging, that the beginning of a week seems like the distance past. Actually, I feel more the distortion of time when I am traveling. I feel very present wherever I am, but thinking back to a place I recently left, can seem like a memory from a decade ago. Maybe this is some kind of 3rd culture kid survival mechanism--being very present in the moment but having almost an amnesia about other places and relationships.

Long introduction to say that I was traveling between Monday and Wednesday. I was up in the Ngorongoro crater region in a ward called Nainokanoka where I was visiting the project site of a maternal and child health program  one of our partners is kicking off this month. Although I have met with the partner several times in the past in the nearby town of Karatu, I had not had a chance to go up into the Ngorongoro conservation area itself. One reason is that it is fairly expensive to enter as a non-citizen, about $70 per day. The crater itself is a huge tourist attraction, and now having been there I can see why.

love birds on Karatu motel

I left Arusha Monday morning after Swahili and drove up to Karatu a town just outside the conservation area. I stayed the night there at a place called the Karatu Motel, and met Laangakwa, the director of our partner NDI early the next morning. The hotel was OK, looked new, and I seemed to be the only one staying there. One thing I liked about it was all the love birds hanging out on the roof.

I rode in NDI's landrover into the Ngorongoro district, which was good because we drove over 200 km on very rough and sometimes muddy roads over the course of the day. The first part of the drive was spectacular. We climbed to the edge of Ngorongoro crater and drove around the east side, heading north. I have looked into a few craters in my life and thought I knew what I was going to see, but I was not prepared for the sublime vastness of this crater. It looks like it is 50-100 miles across. The amount of terrain one can take in from the lip of the crater is staggering.

Maasi women at Bulati village market

The only people who inhabit the Ngogongoro crater conservation area are Maasai. They are the only ones allowed to live in here, and they have to agree not to have any permanent dwellings or do any farming. (They live on the outside of the crater itself.) They receive food supplements from the government and get milk and meat from their cows and goats. Our program is meant to help 3 Maasai villages in the ward improve their maternal and child health outcomes. The purpose of the visit was orientation to the 3 villages where the project would be based. I especially wanted to see the 2 dispensaries and health center that were located in the villages. (One of our program activities is to help prevent stock-out of ante-natal vitamin supplements such as folic acid, iron, and vitamin A, so I was curious to see what kind of supply was kept on site at the clinics.)

Frederica, a midwife at Kerpusi dispensary

Over the course of the day, we visited all 3 villages. I was encouraged to see that all 3 clinics offered antenatal care services, although I found one of them had no vitamin supplements in stock. The nurse midwives at the dispensaries and the doctor at the health center were all very interested in the project and were happy to share information on challenges they face in providing antenatal and delivery services. They did say that women often do come to antenatal care visits but most will not come in for a delivery. (Our project supports neighborhood care groups that encourage women to have facility-asisted deliveries). They also told me that women do not normally exclusively breastfeed for 6 months. From what I learned, I felt encouraged about the objectives of our program.

pharmacy at health center

I was also impressed to see, despite very minimal offerings, that there were some alternative technologies that greatly improved their capacity. 2 of the 3 facilities had solar powered refrigerators where vaccines were stored. (There is no electricity available through the grid in the ward.)

delivery room at Kerpusi dispensary

The delivery facilities were very minimal, although they all had oxytocin on site. I have a picture of one of the rooms--no specialized delivery bed, or any electronic monitoring equipment.

Besides visiting the facilities I was quite struck by the landscape of the place where these villages were located. It was not like anything I have ever seen, but might compare somewhat to Montana. The vastness of space was remarkable, but it was not flat open savannah, it was mountainous with pastureland in vast impressions 20 or more miles across, like someone had dropped a gigantic bowling ball in the region which had left concave valleys and raised jagged hills.

I did see some wild animals--baboon, zebra, ostrich, but most of the animals are in the crater. At the end of the visit to the villages we were deep in the ward and Laangakwa (NDI director) took me an extra 10km to see another crater called Embakaai. It was like nothing I have ever seen as well. Not as big as Ngorongoro, but filled with water! a giant lake, far below the ridge where we stood. I noticed that the water all around was trimmed in pink dots. Then I realized they were millions of flamingoes! I tried to take a few pictures to capture this, The second picture is a close up of the bottom right corner of the first picture.

flamingoes, close up of lower right of previous photo

It was a perfect end to a great day. From there we drove the 100km back to Karatu where Laangakwa left me for the night. I went back the next morning to Arusha, in time for Swahili. Admittedly driving off at 6:00am made the rest of the day at work seem quite long.

Since I got back on Wednesday, Rebecca, the kids, and I went to our Christmas choir practice. We have been enjoying being part of this the past few weeks, rehearsing about an hour and a half once per week for special music at Christmas. The choir director is a very nice woman who doubles as a surgeon. (Actually that is her real job.) We had just started rehearsing when she got a text saying there had been a small plane crash that killed 11 people. Two of the choir members turned white with fear and immediately got on their phones because they had loved ones flying at that moment.

We were relieved to hear that no one connected with the choir had been on that plane (Coastal Air), which was traveling from Arusha to the small airfield in the Serengetti. It sounded like a tourist flight.

The next day Rebecca and I went to the pool to find one of the old women who works as a cleaner there weeping (We often chat with her when we see her in the morning). She had lost 3 family members on the flight. Then the man who usually swims in the pool with us who drove for the safari company said he knew 3 people who were lost. When we left the pool and got to the office, our Swahili teacher cancelled our lesson because he was going to the funeral of one of the victims-- a friend and classmate of his.

As it turned out, 7 of the people on the flight were Tanzanians who worked as staff at some of the Serengetti hotels and were returning form Arusha (There were 2 Germans and 2 Americans on the flight as well). I also learned the following day, from news reports, that the plane had crashed in Ngorongoro region into a mountain at Embakaai because it was flying low.

It was very sad and sobering to think that only hours after I had stood looking at that staggering beautiful and sublime venue, it had become the scene of such tragedy for several friends and acquaintances we have come to know and care for here.