Culture, Then and Now

I’m not a big fan of ‘tourist attractions’ but… We visit Boma’s of Kenya in Nairobi, a museum offering ‘traditional dance” performances, a restaurant and a number of recreated family clusters from many of the traditional tribal groups. Multiple wives need multiple residences, at least in this country. They also have multiple granaries and some have an inner wall to keep the livestock out of their bed. All made of mud with thatched roofs. The granaries were mostly very large baskets, some also plastered with mud and all belonging to the women.Visiting these little groupings was almost like a trip around the country, somewhere around 30 of them; although by the end there were not so much groupings as examples of slightly different construction.
Speedily walking past the inevitable venders we continued on into the main hall to watch the dancing. Many of the seats in the large circular auditorium were lined with school children in uniform. Rows of red, yellow, brown, green and blue with tourists in groups breaking up the random colour schemes. That was worth a picture and I spotted a few tourists filming the audience although I chose not to.
The dancing was fairly vigorous  and entertaining. I cannot speak to it’s authenticity although the costumes were well made and dancers enthusiastic. A couple of the males would pull individuals out of the stands (mostly female) to the immense appreciation of the rest of us and in some cases embarrassment of the ‘volunteers’. After a number of these performances we made our way off the site walking  towards a nearby shopping centre, passing by a group of baboons nonchalantly checking out the garbage bins around the perimeter.
Another entertaining environment! I hadn’t seen so many white people since Europe, once we got past the security check and into the mall. I scored big, finding a number of packages of my favourite chocolate… no longer available back home, I bought all  they had assuming it was the end of the stock. (Days later in another mall I saw more but I restrained myself).
We sat and had a hot drink  watching the parade of blondes and men in shorts, the occasional Africans with higher status and money hanging out with the colonials and tourists. Yes extremely judgemental but there we were and thats what I saw, or at least make up about what I saw. Your experience may be, no, will be different. It was quite pleasant, civil and enlightening and after looking through the arts and crafts market (where the vendors made complimentary comments about my Tanzanian shirt) we called ‘Little’ an Uber/taxi service and made our way through the traffic back to our friends’ residence for sundowners, conversation and dinner.

Deep in the heart of Tanzania

Tsetse flies and rock art.  One morning we left Amarula camp  and headed south to Kondoa where we did a bit of shopping; ginger, bananas and some fabric… somehow I’m unable to resist, I did however limit my purchase to one. We sat in a small “tea shop” beneath the now leafless Baobab at the centre of town and Elke chatted with a fellow who turned out to be a teacher, hence his relatively passable English. The town has grown, prospered even, since or during the time the Chinese were here building the highways. When they left I’ve heard, they took most of the donkeys and dogs in the vicinity, After two years there are no shortage of loose dogs scrounging around  and I saw plenty of donkeys being herded by Maasai.
After Kondoa we headed west into the terrain of red dirt roads. Not far out of town we came across masses and I mean masses of plastic bags and bottles where it’s been dumped and is now being (you don’t want to hear this) burned. Thankfully we soon left that behind, passing through dry, farmland interspersed with majestic Baobabs.

Crossing a dry river bed on a bridge with schoolgirls playing some game we began to climb through Miombo bush, the leaves on many trees crisp and folded. Surprisingly (at least to me) there are numerous trees blooming at this time, beautiful purple blossoms, puffed out clusters of white and yellow on a type of Acacia along with some other shrubby looking tree coming out with tiny  red flowers that I took to be fuzzy caterpillars as we hurtled along. And we were because the Tsetse flies were doing the damnedest to get inside the vehicle. Many of them. Their bite is rather vicious, I felt one through my sock. They were maintaining speed with the vehicle, landing on the windows, the hood of the Landrover and searching out all the openings we hadn’t been able to plug with tape or cardboard. Once inside they buzzed around the driver especially but I had my share. The women in the back were swatting them as they landed on us, against the windows and whenever they landed.
Today we returned to the edge of their range and drove up through a burnt landscape, the trees scorched, the grass gone and soot and ashes among the fallen leaves swirling in little whirlwinds as we picked our way towards some grand looking rocky outcrops. Earlier we had collected a Ranger from the Game Reserve office to accompany us. He carried an automatic carbine rifle for our safety inside the Swagaswaga reserve.

 Eventually he directed us onto a side road then up the slope to where a few examples of Rock Art were visible on the massive boulders perched there.
 Red ochre paintings of humanistic figures stretching the imagination as to why and when.
 The local residents, Hyrax, apparently appreciate the spot as the ground was deeply littered with their ‘berries’. An occasional fly managed to make itself known  as we made our way back to the vehicle but they were hardly a concern, until we began driving. Did they think the vehicle was an elephant? Although we were in the game reserve all we saw were a number of exotic looking birds a family of baboons, a few monkeys, and one Hyrax up on a branch as we drove by underneath.