Camp Tanzania: In the shadow of Kilimanjaro

 After the sheer bliss of Tanga it was exciting to get back to the highlands and to spend our remaining days in Tanzania based in Moshi, a bustling town at the foot of Kilimanjaro.  The mountain looms over everything, and when the clouds reveal it, you have to crane your neck to look up at the snowy summit, it is so astonishingly high. I'd not expected to find the peak quite so entrancing, associating it with a kind of  challenge based tourism ("doing Kili") that as a climber it is easy to dismiss as being too commercial and accessible (noting that this is an aspect of a tourism industry that I am myself part of!).  However, stood in the shadow of the mountain, watching the rosy tint of the sun's rays setting on her snows, I longed to be up there, in the heavens, high above the dusty, noisy town.  Kili looked so tranquil and beguiling.

Meanwhile, our final project was working in a school in the town, building and renovating desks and benches. Carpentry is not my strong point, and it was hard using cheap tools bought locally to work the dense tropical hardwoods that are the most readily available timber here.  We did a fair job however, and in a couple of days built a stack of benches and some wonderful heavy tables in warm pink wood that would look at home in an antique filled farm kitchen.

Rosie and Robbo, teachers from my school team, hard at work building a table for the school. 

This is the kitchen for the school.  Meals are prepared here not only for the several hundred children at this school, but also two other nearby schools, on a wood burning range visible through the door. 

The school playground. 

It was an interesting way to finish what had been a fantastic experience.  Even though the wildlife, the mountains and the project work had been what I had expected when I agreed to take part in this expedition, Tanzania herself completely surprised me.  I had not expected to encounter so much poverty, and so little infrastructure. It is a peaceful country, with no sense of the violent problems of her neighbours. Everyone we met was kind, generous and welcoming. The only friction we encountered, was in the town of Moshi, where hawkers aggressively ply their trade, harassing unwary tourists.  Here we had some awkward moments, were wary of our valuables, and did not feel welcome in the town as we shopped for souvenirs.  This left me wondering whether it is in areas where there is a great disparity between rich and poor, and in places where tourist dollars are flashed around, but without any visible investment in the community, that conflict and crime are able to flourish.  My hope for Tanzania's future is that the many climbers and trekkers who visit the country, also put something back in to supporting the communities they are staying amongst, choose their trekking companies responsibly, and also travel away from the tourist areas to experience a bit more of wonderful Tanzania.

Camp Tanzania: The warmth of Tanga

After the trials of the mountain, Camp Tanga, situated on the coast 7 hours from Moshi, seemed to us a tropical paradise with a warm welcome and a gentle pace of life. The camp itself is within a small fishing community called Mwambani, outside the main town of Tanga.  At high tide the surf of the Indian Ocean roared up the beach just metres from our tents. All of camp life took place beneath the shelter of an ancient baobab tree.

We stayed at Tanga for a week, and the bulk of our work there was in a primary school a couple of kilometres from the village. We were involved with renovating a dilapidated classroom, laying a new concrete floor, repairing brickwork and whitewashing the walls, as well as having fun with the school children, teaching them English and learning Kiswahili in return.

 

Learning to carry buckets of sand to mix the cement the traditional way!

 Making the concrete mix for the classroom floor.

Whitewashing the walls of the classroom. 

 On either side of our room, noisy lessons were taking place in packed classes of 40 or more children. Education to primary age is a right that all children have in Tanzania, but parents must still pay for books and uniforms and with family incomes desperately low,  the children do not take their education for granted.

Every day, on the walk to and from the school, we were accompanied by inquisitive and friendly children who grabbed our hands and walked with us.  The enthusiastic response we received from the community in Tanga was unlike anything I've ever experienced before.

In Mwambani village we learned how to make chapatis and local sweets called visheti with the Mamas (village mothers). We also laboured on a local building project funded by Camps International, helping to build a traditional house for a family from the village. The house was constructed from timber and a mud mixture that set hard in the sun, before being thatched with woven palm leaves. We found that although village life appeared to be a tranquil paradise, with low incomes and very little in the way of a welfare safety net, life is a daily struggle for the people of Mwambani. 

 Mwambani Village. 

 Learning to roll out the visheti before deep frying them and tossing them in caramelised sugar!

A villager's fishing boat.  These beautifully hand made wooden vessels sail in high winds and skip along at speeds that racing catamarans would be proud to attain. The crew must lean out,  unsecured, on the outriggers to prevent the entire set up from cartwheeling.

The tide is in- boats moored along the shore waiting for their crew. 

At low tide the Mamas headed out to tend lines of farmed seaweed.  

Seaweed farming was developed by the village to help dwindling incomes as fishing revenues decline. Most of the seaweed farmers are women, but some of the men from the village have started to get involved too. We helped out with tying fragments of seaweed on to lines and staking them out in the soft mud. It was enjoyable work for us to sit in the warm sea and chat- but a daily chore for the mamas that earns them just a few pence per sack of dried seaweed.  Due to the way that the market is managed, it has not been possible to cut out the middle men who manage the export and reap the profits. Seaweed is an important ingredient used in many shampoos and cosmetics, oriental food and vegetarian gelatin.

The seaweed is dried and bagged, to be sold on the international market. 

The generous welcome and lush tropical setting at Tanga was in sharp contrast to the harsh realities of daily life for the people that we met. Infant mortality is high, when faced with healthcare costs many people would rather feed their family and risk their own health, and household budgets are entirely given over to paying for essential food. However, everyone we met had a gentle and happy philosophical take on life, from which we stressed-out "mzungus" can learn a great deal (literally "aimless wanderers" - white people).  I will take away a happy glow from Tanga that will always be with me, a glow that can be summed up perfectly by just one of the heavenly sunrises that took place every morning over the Indian Ocean.

Camp Tanzania: Success and Failure on Mount Meru

Its been an eventful summer for me, with an expedition in Tanzania, a Cybertracker evaluation, a personal trip to Slovenia plus the usual work and adventures on Arran and beyond.  I've got a fantastic backlog of stuff to get up on the blog, and its tempting to just start with the most recent bits, but bear with me, I've more time on my hands now and I've set myself the target of a feature a day- so hopefully I should be up to date in no time.

Looking back over my Tanzanian pictures, I still have plenty good things to share, and I've not put up the bread and butter stuff- Mount Meru. I'll fess up now, we didn't get to the top (4565m), but in a frustrating, oh so nearly day, we turned around at 300m below, for sensible safety reasons, which I shall explain as we go. It was a great adventure for all of us just the same, and a great success if measured in stunning views, commitment, effort, and the fact that all returned safe and well.

This pic is of Hendrick our trusty ranger, and was pretty much my view on day one of our ascent as he maintained the pace ("pole pole" means slowly in Kiswahili) .  He lead the way as far as the saddle hut, and as well as being there to protect us from buffalo and other potentially dangerous wildlife, was a font of knowledge about the park and its chequered history. We did see plenty of wildlife, particularly on the first day, as we climbed through meadows of buffalo and woodland on the lower slopes of the mountain. 

The higher we climbed, the more verdant and lush the forest became.  We had the whole day to climb from Momella Gate to the Miriakamba hut at 2500m- which is a height gain of about 1,000m. 

Yours truly posing in front of a staggering view of the Meru crater rim and summit at the Miriakamba hut.  You can also make out the shadowy outline of the modern ash cone. Meru is the 10th highest mountain in Africa, but is one of the highest active volcanos in the world. The most recent eruption was in 1910. The hut itself was surprisingly comfortable, with bunks and lockable dorms that sleep 4. Our guide team and their staff provided an excellent meal. We were continuously grateful and astonished by the hard work put in by the porters and cooks to make our journey as comfortable as possible.

Day two, and the climb continues through the forest.  We were beginning to feel the altitude as the forest thinned around the 3,200m mark. 

 This fellow followed us for most of the day, presumably hoping we would drop our sandwiches for him. 

We stopped in at the saddle hut for some tea and biscuits, before continuing with an acclimatisation walk up to the summit of Little Meru, at 3,500m.  The air felt thin and there was a welcome cool breeze above the forest.  Here you can see views of the main summit behind us as we climb. After gaining Little Meru, we returned to the Saddle Hut for dinner and a few hours sleep before beginning our summit climb.Quite a few people were not feeling too great with the altitude at this point.  Its important to hydrate properly as this speeds up acclimatization, so we made the most of the flasks of hot tea given to us by the cooks.

We woke at midnight, and after a light breakfast set off towards the summit at 1am.  Two students opted to stay at the Saddle Hut with a teacher, a guide, and Hendrick the ranger, whose concern and kindness is worth recording here. This picture is of dawn beginning to break over Kilimanjaro, some 70km away.  The first part of the climb takes you steeply up to Rhino Point at 3800m. After that, there is some rocky scrambling over blocks and around gullies to overcome, before the ridge narrows to a dusty ash rim with a fine arete above the crater. Unfortunately not long after Rhino Point a number of our team members felt too unwell with the altitude to continue, so they descended with the help of a teacher and guides, who produced a cylinder of oxygen to aid the most unwell team member.

 When day came properly, we had spectacular views of the ash cone from above, and a beautiful temperature inversion brought clouds lapping at the edge of the crater below us. 

Looking ahead to the summit.   The ridge was a strange lunar landscape of dust and blocks of volcanic rock. Nothing grew on the upper slopes, and a cold wind bit through our layers. Shades are a must up here to keep the dust out, and my top tip to future Meru climbers is to take snow goggles to wear at night, to protect your eyes when it is too dark to wear sunglasses. 

The going was hard, and almost everyone was feeling the altitude to some extent.  Unfortunately not far beyond this point, at about 4,200m, we took the difficult decision to descend, as the thin air became too much for one more member of our team, and they were not able to continue.  This was a hard safety call to make, but our group was comprised almost entirely of minors, and safety protocols rightly mean that they must be supervised by UK CRB checked staff.  We had been unlucky with the rate of altitude sickness amongst our team members and did not have enough staff to allow a small team to continue safely. Once we had descended below about 3,500m, those who had been suffering quickly perked up. It was a good learning point for the students, who came to understand how it is that when mountaineering, it is the safety of the whole team that comes first.  Failing to summit is not to be counted as a failure of the team- when all give their utmost and the team returns intact and unharmed. These young people certainly gave their utmost.  It was an amazing adventure, and all exceeded their expectations of how much they could commit themselves physically to a challenge.  They have much to be proud of!

On descent, we took it slowly, and continued all the way from the summit ridge down to the Miriakamba hut for a well earned dinner and rest before continuing the descent on the fourth day. Meru is a beautiful mountain, well cared for by the rangers with plenty of wildlife.  If anyone fancies trekking in Tanzania and is unsure about the altitude, crowds and rubbish on Kili, then I would really recommend this smaller but perfectly formed (and excitingly still active) neighbour.

Camp Tanzania: Coffee, school and daily life...

After a couple of days on Safari, our Tanzania expedition was about to get a bit more emotionally challenging.  We headed for Meru Camp, a small semi permanent camp in a village at the foothills of Mt Meru. We had already done plenty of hard physical work at Ndarakwai wildlife reserve, so it wasn't the physicality of the project work that caught me off guard, it was the realities of daily life for our village neighbours. The camp was located on a plot of land owned by a local elder who also had a small coffee plantation.  The community was surrounded on all sides by fields of maize, bannanas and other cash crops that were being produced on a small scale to sell locally and also further afield. There is no running water in the village, and we soon got over our initial shock at being allowed just 3 litres a day to wash in, when we realised how precious a resource water is in the area.  Children and women walked passed our gate carrying buckets of water on their heads up from the river at the bottom of a steep hill. It was back breaking work, and the water is not clean or safe to drink, with other villages both up and down stream. 

We were able to see first hand how Jackson, the youngest son of the landowner, picks his father's coffee beans and processes them to be sold at market (and to Camps volunteers!).  This was very exciting to me- I'd already noticed how good the coffee was at breakfast, and to see the production of one of my favourite weaknesses from start to finish was magical. Tanzanian highland coffee was always one of my favourite blends but now that aroma is even more evocative.  

 The beans are picked by hand as they ripen. 

 Ripe coffee beans look like red berries. 

 The crop is tipped in to a machine that pulverizes the soft outer flesh, revealing a small light brown hard bean. 

The beans are dried for several weeks, before being ground again to remove a thin outer skin.  

 The outer skin is seperated from the beans by hand. 

 The beans are roasted over an open fire, before being ground up by hand in a pestle and mortar. 

 The finished product, organic, fairtrade coffee. 

Our community work for this part of our expedition was in the local primary school.  Camps Interntational have a longstanding relationship with this community and it was great to see the work done by previous students over the last decade. The school itself is a far cry from European schools, but it is impressive that in Tanzania which is a very poor country by any measurement,  most children attend primary school (apart from the Masai, who are often reluctant to send their children to state school). Classes are huge, with 40 children being the norm. Classrooms are dark, crumbling and leaky and there is no glass in the windows. Paper and pencils are in short supply.  Basic primary education is funded by the government, but is desperately under resourced.  Parents must find the money for school dinners, books and uniforms, and this can be prohibitively expensive for the average family.  When we were there, the harvest had not been gathered and a lot of the village children were on free school meals.  I didn't get to see this, but our students reported that they were shocked by how small the portions were. 

 The school playground.

 Classrooms- we were building the foundations of a verandah outside the front of one of these classrooms, to allow students and teachers to work outside on hot days. 

Everywhere we went in the village, the local kids greeted us with a mixture of curiosity and excitement.   A strangely lovely experience. 

Camp Tanzania: Safari!

After four days of getting muddy, sweaty and dusty working at Ndarakwai wildlife reserve with Camps International we were in for a bit of a treat. Two days on Safari. Not only that, but we would be visiting the world famous Ngorogoro Crater.  Its like disneyland for wildlife geeks, only more so. First of all however, we went to Tarangire National Park, home of the elephant, and the baobab tree, which is basically an elephant in tree format. Tarangire is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, and within minutes of entering the park we were surrounded by elephants.

Ancient Baobab tree.  The swollen trunk stores water and is a magnet for elephants who use their mighty strength to rip open the bark and access moisture. 

The first group of elephants we encountered was a large herd of females and calves, slipping in to a waterhole to cool off.

From a perch in a nearby tree, a greyheaded kingfisher looks on. 

Not much further up the trail, we met a vast herd of about 30 young bulls who silenty lumbered past our vehicle on their way to the waterhole. They passed close enough that we could have reached out and touched them, and despite their huge size, they didn't make a sound. 

Tarangire is also home to giraffes. 

This could be my favourite photo from the entire trip.  A beautiful elephant creche, with sleeping babies in the shade of their older relatives, who carefully guard them. 

The next day it was onwards to the Ngorogoro Crater.  I hate the term bucket list, but if Dr Who had ever turned up in my life and said he could take me to one place in the universe of my choosing, this would have been it. I had to keep pinching myself and reminding myself that this was "work".

The crater is a giant caldera formed when an enormous volcano erupted and collapsed in on itself between 2 and 3 million years ago. 

 There is a phenomenal amount of larger game in the crater. Everywhere we looked, herds of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo grazed the plains. 

Even though I spent 4 years researching these unusual animals in my previous incarnation as a palaeolithic archaologist, I'd never seen a spotted hyaena before. I saw more than expected-  I'm told that mating is rarely photographed behaviour....

 There were plenty of other spotted hyaenas loping aorund the crater too. Many were on their way to a lion kill that we came across later in the day. 

 Hippos keeping cool.

Young wildebeast bull. 

Because of the geography of the crater, the lion population is vulnerable to inbreeding and disease. Nevertheless, we saw several that day lounging about in the sun. In the distance you can see a male lion guarding a zebra kill he has made.  He is surrounded by about 30 spotted hyaenas. The standoff was still going when we left the crater late in the day.

As a feline fan my favourite animal to see was the serval. I've been on safari a few times before but never tracked down this elusive and charming little cat.  Its not the best photo, the serval is hunting so under cover as much as possible. Sitting and watching it stalking through the long grass was completely thrilling, with stripey ears cocked forward, and spotty back slinking through the brush. What a cat! I'm in love.