Travels thru Life: 7/29 -- Village Visit

We got to sleep in for a change (getting up at 5:30am was losing its luster), and while waiting for our late breakfast, I started adding pictures to my blog posts when one of our driver-guides, Bernard, came to see what I was doing. I asked him for help reminding me of the names of the birds and he retrieved his reference book and made sure I used the proper name for everything. He was a tremendous help and I am hoping I can impose upon him again during the trip. On the East Africa part of the trip, instead of the driver-guides being attached to a single park, they are with us throughout our stay in the country, so we will have 10 days with him and Urasse, who also helped.

For a change of pace, we did no game viewing today. Instead we drove to a village about 45 minutes away and got a tour from a resident who works as a tour guide, Pascal. This is an Iraku village, Tloma. The Iraqw were originally Ethiopian but left their lands maybe a thousand years ago and ended up here. The village has about 3000 residents and includes moonshiners, coffee plantations, artists, several churches, schools, and a brick factory, all of which we visited. We met at one of 12 or more water stations across the village. The government builds the wells and water stations. The government also owns all the lands and leases it to people for varying terms. Unfortunately, if something is discovered that the government wants, people are relocated with compensation for whatever improvements (house, farm, etc) they have made.

Village kids with a puppy

Carrying corn stalks

One of the village water stations.

Our first stop was the moonshine house. Some folks sampled it and said it was a bit sweet. Our next stop was called the Tembo (Elephant) Highway Grocery, but it was really a bar. The liquor and clerk were behind a barred area, with several tables taking up most of the space. Pascal showed us the single serve liquor packets and bought a bottle of local beer, labeled as banana wine. In the interest of science, I tried a sip and verified it was more beer than wine.

Moonshine cooking pot

Young woman carrying a baby. She removed
her outer wrap to show us the baby's perch --
just like the demo of the chitengi at Kafue
park in Zambia.


Pascal holds up two single serve liquor packets. They are a dollar each and the mixer is 50 cents.

Really banana beer, not wine.

On our way to the coffee plantation, we passed a wood carver and got a demonstration of how they carve from various woods, including ebony, teak, mahogany. They used shoe polish to shine things up. They seemed to specialize in things that were made from a single piece and hollowed out to show a variety of animals or people.

At the coffee plantation, a grampa and kid who was at most 3 years old were hand-turning a coffee roaster. They showed us how they plant and what they pick and how to get it to the roasting standpoint.

Grandson hand turning the roaster.

The red thing is the coffee berry and the little whitish things
are the seeds. They are sun dried for a week and then pounded
to take of the white husk, leaving the 2 green coffee beans.

As we walked to our next stop, we passed a group of men mechanically shucking corn. This used to be done by hand, but now there is so much corn, a machine was needed. They attach a pulley on the shucking machine to a pulley at the back of a tractor that is powered by the tractor engine. They dump the cobs in and bare cobs come out one side and shucked corn out the other.

The whole dried cob is dumped in the top with the man is
standing and the cobs come out on the bottom right where
the pile is.

The man in the middle of the machine holds the bag that
catches the shucked corn.

Lantana -- but notice how red the leaves are. Everything
within a couple feet of the dirt roads is covered with dust.

Our next stop was a musical performance at the Lutheran Church, both accompanied by guitars and keyboard and a capella. We were invited to join one of the 4 songs and we bought one of their CDs. I had never thought of myself as being into African music, but the voices and the harmonies we have found everywhere are wonderful. I made a short movie with my phone, but the playback doesn't begin to capture the beauty of it.

Then it was down to a brick factory, centered in a clay quarry. They use (very tall??) ladders to reach up to the area they want to work, mix it with water by foot power to ensure there are no rocks, shape it, sun-dry it for seven days before firing it in their kiln. Brick costs 8 cents each and it takes 6000 to build a house. People who want to build can come and make their own bricks to save money.

Clay quarry. Too bad they weren't working to harvest clay that
day. It was difficult to see how they could reach the upper
areas and why they left 'vanes' of unharvested clay.

Back in the vehicles, we went to the Swahili Cantina, to sample typical Tanzanian food for lunch: several kinds of veggies, including a salad of tomatoes, cucumber peels, carrots, and maybe pickled onions; sautéed spinach and carrots; okra and peppers; and cooked peas and carrots (which was surprisingly tasteless). There was also some kind of meat stew (not chicken), white and brown rices, and chapatti. Overall, much better tasting than I expected. Agnes, the proprieter, started this after she took a leave to have her first child and her job was no longer available when she went back. She started small, and now has three employees, a primary location in Arusha, and a subsidiary near Karatu.

Before returning home, we stopped at a large private school run by a man who had been a trip leader on a previous tour Lois (Tanzanian-born Wisconsin resident) had taken to Tanzania. Modest Bayo had been a teacher and started a private school in his home in 2004 with 17 students. He turned to guiding for a while but after he led one trip of a single family, they helped support his true passion of teaching. He now has a well-regarded school of 900 students, including 300 boarders, for the Primary grades (Kindergarten to 8th grade) and just started a high school this year with 45 students. We got a tour of the facility and met a couple students, one of whom, Jacquelyn, took a shine to me and then Karyn and we both let her use our cameras for a while.