Sea Star 7

This morning we got up before dawn for a 7am flight out of Entebbe to a tiny airstrip in the Uganda mountains.

We had been warned that the limit was 15 KG in luggage sum total (baggage and carry on).  But you can buy more luggage weight – space permitting.  We are off season, so we were taking a bit of a chance that the flight wouldn’t be full.  Sure enough they charged us $117 in overweight.  At $3 per KG – so we were 39 KG overweight.  Now, you might wonder why the heck we had so much gear with us.  The answer is https://www.packforapurpose.org.   This organization keeps track of what specific regions of third world countries need at hospitals and schools and other community organizations.  They publish a list of what you can pack with you to those regions and then donate.  Melissa got it into her head that because we were traveling business class, and hence had plenty of luggage space, we should bring a whole suitcase full of donation items.  So we had packed about $1000 worth of gear:

• 4 stethoscopes
• 4 solar powered lights large enough to light up an operating room or other emergency medical site at night
• 2 solar powered device chargers for things like cell phones that need to be kept operational in the field
• A pile of medical books
• 15 solar powered calculators
• A pile of erasers
• A couple of boxes of chalk

All this gear having made it from Seattle to Puerto Vallarta, and then on to Houston, Istanbul, Kilimanjaro, and then across the Serengeti – well, let’s just say we were not leaving it behind even if it cost a few dollars to get it the last leg of the trip.

The landing strip was a “one way” airstrip – meaning it had mountains on one end – so you can only take off and land in one direction.  Flying into a “box canyon” can be tricky so the captain was at the controls.  Dave was monitoring carefully, and the captain was spot on the descent and landing speeds.  This is not the place you really want to make a “go around”.

Our driver picked us up at the airport and was happy to make the stop at the lodge that participates in the Pack for a Purpose (https://www.packforapurpose.org/) program.  The lodges serve as collection points that then distribute the donations where needed.  They were utterly thrilled when we showed up with a full suitcase full of stuff.  We had busted up a suitcase, so we swapped the donation gear into the broken suitcase and left it with them.

After we checked into Clouds Mountain Lodge, we had scheduled for a community tour.  First stop was the community center where they explained that Clouds Mountain Lodge donates about 10% of the lodging fees to community projects.

Then we went for a walk about town.  Uganda has a lot of very rich farmland.  We saw farms growing everything from corn and potatoes to beans and cabbage.  One of the things they grow here is tea.  The tea grows on the side of the mountain. 

They have to harvest it and haul it up roughly 100 meters of 30% grade.  They pay the workers $1 USD to harvest 12 lbs of it.  Let that sink in a minute.  It completely explains why being paid $25 as a porter on the gorilla treks for 6 hours of work is considered a way better job, and why the tourist dollars are so valued.

We walked up to the soccer field and took some photos of the surrounding mountains.

This is the military installation.  We are very close to the boarder with the Congo (which is always at war – mostly with itself) and Rwanda.  The ridge line you see in the background is past the boarder with Congo.

The long ditch you see is a fox hole.  These are the houses that the military lives in.

The schools were doing exams for the end of the school year.

This secondary school was built from the community funds that came from our lodge.

The classrooms are pretty basic.

The class schedule was posted on the wall.

Here is the school kitchen where they cook lunch for the kids and staff.  We wondered with these types of conditions why teachers would be here as they only hire college educated teachers.  That’s dedication.

The kids here are super friendly.  Whenever we walk or drive by, they all wave and cheer.

We saw the local blacksmith who let Dave give the bellows a try.

We could hear singing from the Church from our lodge.

We then went to see the village elder.  We sat with her drinking the local gin and getting her take on life.  She told us she was grateful that we had come.  And that she appreciated the fact that Dave only had one wife.  Advised us to love each other and forgive each other for our mistakes.

We then visited all the “shops” in town.  There is a row of trinket shops – mostly selling the same stuff.  Each has a cause – the first was the orphans group.  Later it was single Moms.  Then poor kid education.  There were about 10 of them.  They opened pretty much just for us on our walk.  It was heart breaking not to buy something at each and every shop.  But we did buy a few items – a bracelet, an apron, some of the local tea, and some coffee beans.

These local women were outside one of the shops.  Their dress is fairly traditional, as is the infant on the back.

Take a look at the slope of these hills.  Insert scary foreshadow music here.

The hyenas did a pretty good job of eating their way through the buffalo last night.  He looks about half eaten.

We found ourselves again grateful for the Maasai warriors that provide security here.  The whole gang lined up for a picture with their spears.  They walked us back and forth from the main lodge to our room every night.  In fact we were not allowed to roam about at night without them.  In the picture, note Dave with his more modern “spear”.  Otherwise known as the 360 degree camera stick.

When we started off on Safari today, Dave wanted to see the lodge infrastructure.  So Shabani got permission to take us to see the solar array and electrical system.  Wow.

Being totally off the grid, most lodges in the Serengeti use diesel generators for power. Not here. The Kubu Kubu lodge has a fabulous solar power system. They have a beautifully installed bank consisting of 390 550 watt cells. The cells are connected to large commercial lithium battery banks (400 kilowatt hour total), also excellently installed.

The rule of thumb is that you get 5 hours of rated power per sunny day. That is about 1 megawatt hour of power per day. To put it in perspective, it would take 100 gallons of diesel to produce that much power on generator. I suspect the total power usage is nowhere near that – perhaps 10% - giving them plenty of reserve for cloudy days.

Dave is having power envy. Sea Star 7’s generator can produce only 7% that amount of power and batteries can store only 3%.

Then it was off to see the animals again.  The plains are just filled with zebra, wildebeest, and antelope as far as the eye can see.

We spotted another leopard in a tree.

There was a heard of female elephants under a tree with their young.  They clump together like this because it’s easier for them to protect the young from predators when they can see the predators coming from any direction.

We went to a known hippo watering hole where we got to watch the hippos for a while.  One and only time we got out of the Range Rover to see the wildlife.

We came across a trio of cheetahs – a mom with two young.  The young are just about ready to take off on their own.

Having been on safari for 8 days now, we can say that we have developed a 100% accurate way of finding the big cats.  We call it the RRC method.  That stands for “Range Rover Cluster”.

We had a long chat with Shabani about the trip.  He was looking to summarize the trip and get feedback.  We told him that we LOVED every minute with him.  Most of the lodges are Kibo guide owned though, and the ones with buffet need some help for people with food allergies.  The chef needs to communicate to people what they can eat and what they can't.  Best would be a system whereby people get a "color" and each food is labeled with that color when safe for them.  This would serve two purposes: (1) people would know what is safe for them (and so would the staff), and (2) the chef would have to consider whether there is enough variety for those with allergies.  If only one food has the "blue dot" then they know that "blue" person is not going to be happy.

We also gifted Shabani a Quik Clot.  We told him someday he would save a life with it.  Someone gored by a buffalo perhaps.  But in any case, more likely than us to need it, and we carry them in our packs and in our car glove compartments.  Those of you that follow the blog know.  Don't go anywhere without it.

The Farmhouse where we have been staying has absolutely gorgeous gardens.  They grow the vegetables that they use in the restaurant.  Talk about farm to table!

The staff was all concerned about why we didn’t show up to dinner last night.  The manager and the chef visited our table this morning asking why we didn’t come to dinner.  Didn’t have the heart to tell them that we just couldn’t take another night of over cooked buffet food.  So we leaned on the fact that Dave went to bed early.

Today we made the very long drive across the plains of the Serengeti.  It was rough.  Remind me not to do that again.  Dirt roads in a jeep for 8 hours.  Yes, we took a break for lunch.  But still, enough to pound your teeth out.

The plains of the Serengeti are impressive.  They stretch as far as the eye can see to the horizon and at the horizon there is a mirage that makes you think there might be water, but its just the heat rising from the earth.

Along the way to the lodge we saw more wildlife.  The cats seem to do a lot of snoozing just like your housecat back home.

An old female cheetah snoozing under a tree.

A big male lion snoozing on a rock.

Another leopard snoozing in a tree.

More Zebra.  There are over a million of them in the Serengeti and I think we saw them all today.

Wildebeest.  Also millions of them.

Antelope as far as the eye can see.

This is a new kind of antelope.  A heart beast based on how its horns are shaped.

And more hippos.  Also snoozing.

Along the way we visited the Olduvai Gorge Museum.  This ridge is where Mary Leakey lived.  She excavated in this valley.  That was a bit of history that was fun to see.

The museums have reproductions of a lot of the important skulls that let the Leakey’s determine that human life originated in Africa not Asia.  This is a reproduction of Lucy.

The view from the museum was incredible.

When we got to the camp for dinner, Melissa asked that the chef come out and tell her what of the buffet she could eat.  Seems the only way to make it safe as the staff doesn’t really know what’s in the food.

After dark you have to be escorted by the Massai warriors (complete with their spears) that guard this place to your room as there can be wildlife wandering about the grounds so it isn’t safe to be out by yourself.

Today we headed off for visits with the Hadzabe Bushmen and Datoga tribes.

The Hadzabe bushmen would have taken us on a hunt, but we decided a few days ago that watching them try to kill a baboon was just a bit more than we would enjoy.  We like seeing how other cultures live but seeing a primate killed would be a bit much.

This is the bushmen’s hut for the rainy season.

This is where a family lives in the dry season.

Its amazing to think how much of the world’s population still lives in this primitive an environment.  Though not wholly unaffected by modern life.  This warrior – who is shaping the feathers on an arrow – is wearing modern day jeans (as were most of them) with sandals made from old tires.  The surface he is using to cut the feathers is the back side of his tire sandal.

This little boy is wearing a top made from animal skin and jeans.  He was cooking a small bird - no larger than his fist over the fire.  He offered Dave a piece to try.  Much to Melissa's shock - he took it and ate it (he hates eating small bony things).  The boy then offered Melissa a bite too.  It was actually pretty juicy and tender.  Not at all gamey the way you would expect.

And these two youngsters wanted our water bottles.  We gave the first to the younger boy (yes I know he is in a dress), and his big brother came and swiped it, so we gave them the second one.  Our guide said that their parents would end up with the bottles eventually and use them to story honey.

The bushman greeting is a fist bump.  Unclear if we got this from them or vice versa.

After a bit, Dave sat down with the men to learn about which types of arrows are used for which type of animal.  If you listen and watch closely you can see the bushman imitating the animals the arrows are intended to kill.  They also made fun of Dave trying to imitate the names of things which include all kinds of clicking sounds that are not part of our language.

Here is a piece of the tree that they make the poisoned arrows from.  There is apparently a local antidote if they stick themselves accidentally.  But its deadly enough to bring down large game animals in about 20 minutes.  They only use the poison arrows on large game because they have to cut the meat out around the arrow.  A small bird would be inedible if shot with a poison arrow.

Then it was time to learn to make a fire.

After which Dave got a lesson in bow and arrow when it was target practice time.

We then bought a hand carved wooden spoon from this lovely lady.  Our guide said it was $5 USD.  So Dave handed her 5 one dollar bills.  She was utterly at a loss and looked at the pieces of paper as though they were, well, foreign.  The guide had enough local currency to make a quick exchange.  It’s the only time thus far where local currency has been needed.  Everyone else loves the USD.

The other women in the tribe were nursing babies or making trinkets.

After this a serenade by the boys on home made instruments.

The boys escorted us back to our jeep and then we were off.

Next stop was a Datoga tribal home.  The Datoga migrated from the middle east thousands of years ago.  They are a polygamous tribe.  We were able to sit in one of their houses and speak to all the women.  We asked if they are always this dressed up, and our guide explained that while they would not dress this way while out tending cattle, they were expected to be dressed up at home.

The thing in the middle of the floor is a couple of stones for grinding corn.

Here is Melissa learning to make corn flour.

We sat and chatted with them for some time.

Questions we asked of them:

• Is the first wife here?  How many children does she have? Answer was 8.
• How old was she when she married?  Unknown.  She has no idea how old she is.  They tried to figure out the answer by figuring out how many generations of women had children.  Answer still unclear, but there were clearly grandchildren.  Some of the women were other wives, and some were daughters, and other ones wives of sons.
• What was the bride price (dowry) when she was married? 10 cows, some goats, tobacco, and honey.  This is average as this was considered a “middle class” family.
• What is an average day for you like?  You get up and grind flour for meals during the day.  Often they grind throughout the day.  They then make breakfast and send the children out to tend the cattle and goat herds.  Then they walk to fetch the water.  Then more tending of the livestock and cooking.
• What do you do when a child misbehaves? You beat them with your stick.  And if that doesn’t work you send them out to tend the cows all day without breakfast.  Same goes for wives that misbehave.  The husband should beat them with his stick.  (They all have walking sticks all the time.)  This was said proudly.  No hint of shame in this – discipline and respect for the elders is a thing that is immutable in this culture.  We went onto explain that this is not allowed in our culture that the police would come and arrest you.  This was met with shock.

Questions they asked of us:

• What was the bride price (dowry) Dave paid for Melissa?  When they learned she was “free” this was met with shock.
• How many children do you have?  When Melissa indicated zero, this too was met with frowns.  Here a woman’s value is tied directly to how many children she has.  Melissa tried to smooth this over by saying that she helped raise Dave’s son and this then was met with smiles and nods.
• What do you do? This was a tough one as it was completely unclear how to explain software engineering to women who have never seen a computer.  Melissa said that Dave makes parts for airplanes and Melissa helps build computers (hoping maybe that was a known word).  The guide struggled with this a bit and it wasn’t clear they comprehended this.
• What is a day in the life like for Melissa?  She gets up and cooks breakfast.  Then works on the computer and phone all day, then makes dinner or we go out to a restaurant.  Follow up question: When does she go get the water?  The guide attempted to explain to them that we live in a house with running water.
• We volunteered that Melissa cooks but Dave does the cleaning.  The response to this was that Dave doesn’t beat Melissa enough.  It was said jokingly with giggles – but surely with amazement that a man would do any cleaning at all.  Later one of the women had set aside her walking stick and Dave jokingly acted like he was going to take it with him and this brought more peals of laughter.
• We also volunteered that the way we get food is we order it on our computer, and then someone brings it.  This was met with clapping.  Though unclear how this actually translated to them - probably something akin to we have servants.

They then showed us the rest of the house.  This was the bedroom.  The bed is made from cow leather.

In the other corner of the room is the kitchen which is no more than some rocks, pans, and a fire.

The one on the left in this photo is the one that told Dave he didn’t beat Melissa enough.

Next it was onto watching the men in their metal work shop.  They make bracelets and other trinkets as well as arrow heads that they sell to the other tribes.

First step in the process is the forge:

Then once melted they quench it in oil:

They are melting down all kinds of scrap.

Once forged they pound it into shapes.  In this video they are pounding steel nails into arrow heads.

And then once rough pounded to shape they do the fine mill work.

Melissa negotiated for 5 of the brass bangles.  The tribeswoman tried to cover her in bracelets and necklaces, but caught on that Melissa liked a matching set of gold colored ones.  The price given was $50 USD ($10 each).  Melissa asked the guide if we were supposed to negotiate but he was of little help saying, “yes you can”.  We had read that sometimes the asking price is as much as 10x the real price.  But of course, the price wasn’t really the point.  But being at a loss, she told the guide to tell the tribeswoman that in our home country of Mexico (yeah ok, sort of true, but not worth trying to explain) it was traditional to offer half of the asking price.  The tribeswoman countered saying that the bracelets involved a lot of detailed work that takes hours.  So she would take $10 each, but if Melissa bought 4 she would throw one in for free.  Sold!

Both the tribes we visited today are paid by the guide company we hired.  Some of the money goes directly to the individual family/groups we interacted with, but not all.  Its too much money to give to them – they would just stop working.  So most of the money goes to local infrastructure such as water and electricity.

We finally settled in for the night at Farmhouse Valley Lodge.