I have found my spirit animal: The Wildebeest. 

It is said that God made the wildebeest out of the left-over parts of the other animals on the Savannah. They have stripes like a zebra, but do not have the same striking white that makes the zebra dazzling;

They have horns, but not large or iconic like the cape buffalo;

They have beards, but nothing compared to the majesty of a lion’s mane.

In general, upon observing them you come away feeling they are not the brightest of animals; It seems that they are just put on this earth to munch grass and be eaten by lions and crocodile.

So, how did I come to choose Wildebeest for my spirit animal? 

This journey – or “Safari,” as they say in Swahili – started from the shore of Tanga “Yatch” Club with our two sailing-buddies Steelie Pete and Sapphire Jen. We don’t go anywhere without them these days, it seems. Or maybe they don’t go anywhere without us, because truth be told, they are always the first to set up the “spreadsheet” of next destinations, and I swear it just so happens we are going the same way they are. May as well make use of that nice spreadsheet! This time, Sapphire Jen took the helm in planning the Safari Spreadsheet, and she even invited us along. They were threatening to make this our “last hoorah” before they sail North through the Red Sea, and we sail South through the Mozambique Channel.

We left Sonrisa, Steel Sapphire, Katherine Hepburn, and her Frenemy Coco in the capable hands of a 13-year-old sailor girl, Violeta, who has sailed more miles in her lifetime than me. Mark from Erie Spirit shuttled us to shore, and we lugged our backpacks up the sandy beach to the van we had ordered with our personal driver(s), Moses and his friend, waiting on the road in the morning twilight.

Moses packed the trunk of the van tight with all our backpacks and gear, then helped us close the door from the outside because it doesn’t quite catch right in the “closed” position, but also sometimes catches too much in the “open” position. Leslie and I tucked ourselves into the rearmost bench seat and shuffled about for seatbelts only to find they’ve long gone out of fashion.

Pete poked at the electric window button, “does this window go up and down?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” our drivers said, wincing from the front seat.

Pete confirmed the window rolls down, but then found it does not roll back up again. We struggle with this for a few blocks, then gave up. We already planned to drive around with the wind in our hair and Serengeti dust in our teeth for the next week, what’s six hours more?

This minor inconvenience did nothing to dash Pete’s enthusiasm for the day, and thus he expended the first forty minutes of the drive taking Moses on the kind of “journey” only Pete can guide through the historical evolution of the Australian phrase “No Wakkas,” which means “no worries” and equates nicely to the Swahili phrase “Hakuna Matata.” 

I watched the scenery creep by. We had plenty of time to absorb the essence of Tanzania’s inland life: men playing chess in the shade of trees, motorcycle taxis waiting to be hired for their next ride, women carrying sticks and jugs of water through their villages, children walking to school in their uniforms or herding cattle in blowing red dust.

The white van sputters as we climb the incline hills. On the descent, Moses lays off the accelerator and we coast. We soon realize our maximum speed is governed by grinding in the rear axle intolerably present anywhere above 50 miles per hour. This was fine and seemed safe enough except when public buses came roaring down upon us at 80 miles per hour or more, with no intention whatsoever to slow down or stop - even if traffic demanded it. The busses would slide sideways into oncoming traffic, blaring their horn and floating blind curves. We almost bought tickets to ride in those buses. 

“Hey Jen, question for you: was the drive to Arusha six hours as calculated by bus speed?”

Jen nods. 

Leslie sneezes.

Was I setting off to find my spirit animal? 

No, these things come to you in their due time. I was setting off to find some big cats.

"What is everyone hoping most to see?" Someone in the car inquired, probably Pete.

“I have been in Africa for over a month now, and I have not yet seen a giraffe!" Jen said.

“Yep, seeing a giraffe in the wild is on my bucket list," Leslie added. Everyone paused to contemplate.

“How do you tell the difference between a Leopard and a Cheetah?” Pete asked.

This question shocked me. "Everyone knows cheetahs have spots." I said, aghast. The van fell silent until all at once, everyone started laughing at me! They all claimed leopards and cheetahs both have spots. “You guys are crazy. Cheetahs have spots, and leopards have leopard print!” With everyone still laughing at me, I pointed out “there is an entire fashion industry built around leopard print pants!”

Pete circulated a vote, but the accuracy of this debate is not solved by consensus. The facts remain what they are, and this crowd is dead wrong. “Leopard and cheetah look completely different. Completely.” I said, standing firm until I could prove my case with “demonstrative exhibits” as Leslie likes to say. See Exhibit A and Exhibit B, below:

I rest my case.

In addition to our gentle pace, we made a series of stops along the way. We stopped once to buy oranges. We stopped once to partake of Roasted Road Goat when traffic slowed long enough for a horde of men selling goat to thrust a sample into Pete’s face through the permanently open window.

Quite delicious, actually.

We stopped once to take pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance. We stopped once to blow junk out of the fuel filter, the least of this vehicle’s problems. We stopped again to buy fuel in the hopes that new fuel will stave off the complete loss of motive power suffered with growing frequency, forcing Moses to put the vehicle in neutral and rev the engine until it smooths out.

Our “six hour drive” commenced at the early twilight of morning was still ongoing as the sunset dropped behind a rather scenic mountain ridge.

Safari of a Two Legged Wildebeest, Day Two

Day Two, we woke to a breakfast with strange sausage things and a man offering to make us eggs of any sort we would like. We took advantage of this, only to find that same man couldn't remember from one minute to the next who ordered what eggs, and sometimes that eggs had ever been ordered at all. This was probably a sign of things to come I should have heeded, but I dove face first into the strange sausage things, and ate my breakfast with gusto. Then, a new driver named “Machine” arrived to pick us up in a vehicle just short of a tank. It is a Toyota Land Rover that I keep calling a Land Cruiser...or is it the other way around?

It is.  I’m leaving this error here; Pete will appreciate the continuity.

We get picked up in a Toyota Land Cruiser with a roof that pops up for us to stick our heads out.

After a stop in the big city of Arusha to hunt for an espresso maker with grinder that Pete was hankering for, we carried on down the road, ever closer to those Big Cats. But first, we had to stop in a small village to eat a traditional Tanzanian lunch. There, they sold us on a tour of the village, the proceeds of which "help the women.”

I, however, agreed to this tour based on their promise I could sample banana wine and banana beer.

There is no such thing as a home mortgage here. So, we toured the houses they build from mud and sticks, and then we saw the bigger houses they move into after years of working to earn one cinderblock and bag of cement at a time. Our tour guide fed us raw almonds from a tree growing in the neighborhood. We visited the local market much like all the local markets we’ve visited everywhere.

We sat for a presentation by wood carvers who may or may not actually be carving anything. I became a bit suspicious when one man spent the entire time sanding an already smooth bowl, and another one spent his time aimlessly chopping at a log with a big axe. Then, they directed us into the wood carving trinket hut where Leslie, taken in by the wood carvers’ story performance, lost her conviction and had a basket full of carvings foist into her hands. Once it’s in your hands, it’s very challenging to convince them to let anything leave your hands, and some curious mixture of guilt and "no-fatigue" led me to close a sale on a mask I didn't want and a "salt container" that almost certainly was not carved here, quite possibly made of plastic, and likely constructed in China.

We carry on down the road to admire banana trees and visit the “village bar”, which is a small building built in the yard of one family's house where they ferment bananas, sometimes with millet (the beer) or on its own (the wine).

It was drinkable, I had seconds!

No one else in our group did.

And with this observation, my hope that this experience would satisfy Jen's desire to pay $50 US to go on a Maasai tour departed down the road with the man on the banana bike.

“You are becoming old and sour,” Leslie accuses of me. Maybe I am.

I have such mixed feelings. I want to visit these people and experience snippets of their lives. I want to meet people going about their day, and pause to share conversation, a cup of tea, or a mug of banana beer. I don’t like paying money for tourist traps selling me a “human experience” that only loosely exists in reality. Even if every single thing the tour guide shows me is “real” the process eliminates a larger portion of truth in the interaction. A friendship doesn’t develop in that meandering way it can when two people from two different places are mutually curious about each other. And, it seems here, they don’t want to meet me and join me for a mug of beer. It honestly seems they’d rather not. So, when they offer to open their lives and homes to me “for a charge” I feel as if they don’t really want to, but instead the financial realities of their lives say that they must. I don’t like it. I don’t like it for their sake and for mine. It changes our relationship, and it feels like it makes a real friendship impossible.

Nonetheless, we returned to the Land Cruiser to find the “Massai Experience.”

The Maasai are a tribe of nomadic cattle herders living on land that stretches from Tanzania to Kenya. They believe all cattle, everywhere, belong to them. They survive solely off the cows they keep. This means, traditionally, they eat nothing but cow milk, cow blood, and occasionally cow meat. They herd these cattle on a moonscape, and have made ingenious shoes from old tires. What other footwear could stand up to these conditions?

As we drive across the countryside, we see Masaai walking miles and miles across desert that is every bit as dry as anything I've seen in Death Valley, California, with not much more than thorny acacia and brown dust. The landscape is so stark, they are the most colorful thing about it.  They dress in bright colored fabrics they tie around themselves. They also wear handmade jewelry from beads and silver flashing coins adorning every possible limb, waist, neck, ears, bracelets, necklaces, anklets. All.

I had my "Maasai Experience" on a beach in Zanzibar. The Maasai sometimes come to Zanzibar to sell crafts they make to add some money to the Maasai Tribe coffers. Leslie and I were walking, looking for lunch, when accosted by four exotically dressed young men. They were eager to talk with us, and so I was happy to talk with them. Then, they wanted to teach me to jump.

Maasai love to jump, or maybe they bounce, while making traditional Maasai music together with their mouths and hands. The way they jump is not like the way I jump. They step forward and get some vertical momentum going, somehow springing over and over again, multiple feet into the air, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. It's part of their tribal culture/tradition, I think they do it at family parties.

The kids at the beach were nice kids. They wanted to sell us trinkets, and of course we bought some. But, what I really wanted was one of their knives. The Maasai are not just herders, but also warriors. You will never see a Maasai without his knife hanging from his belt.

"You want to buy my knife?" William asked, puzzled. What does a tourist want with a big Maasai warrior knife? I don’t need or want carvings of little giraffe, and I don’t really wear jewelry. So, for me, the trinkets available to buy didn’t serve. I wanted to buy something practical. It means something to me to buy something from him he enjoys and uses, so that I may also enjoy and use it. We didn’t have enough common language for me to explain this, so instead I said: “I need a knife to open coconuts.”

He smiled at this. He dressed me in his Maasai clothes, cleaned off his knife, and sold it to me with a smile. Its sheath is one of my favorite parts: definitely handmade from the leather of one of their cows and dyed blood red in homage to the cattle blood that keeps the Maasai alive.

I felt happy about this interaction; I felt like we connected, each in some strange version of our real selves - I as a sailor visiting a touristy beach momentarily, and these nomadic desert cattle herders visiting a touristy beach to make a portion of their living. William gave me his WhatsApp number, and we still say hello from time to time.

I know meeting a Maasai person in Zanzibar omits a portion of what their lives are actually like. Islands and places by the sea are not the traditional backdrop in which they make their lives. In fact, I’ve heard it told that they are quite afraid of the sea in general, and this is why they “always wear their shoes on the beach." I have no way of confirming this, but they did keep their shoes on at the beach. I also know that the main reason they talked to me WAS to sell me something at the end of the day. But, we connected. For a minute at least, we had fun together jumping. It felt different to me.

Nonetheless, given the role the desert landscape plays in their nomadic, cattle herding tradition, we would be missing out if we didn’t see a bit more. And so, I accepted my fate and we diverted into a Maasai Village offering tourist performances where of course, we watched them jump;

We watched them light fire with sticks;

We went inside the homes they build with a combination of mud and cow dung, a hard “bed” made of the same materials, covered by a blanket of leather to lay upon.

We met the children in their school room, who were happy to befriend us and simultaneously tried to strip Leslie of any jewelry she happened to be wearing based on their deep, abiding love of all things pretty.

And of course, we bought some trinkets. Leslie regretted being shy about it on the beach and asked if it would be okay to buy not one of their small bracelets offered to tourists, but a full arm cuff like they wear. They peeled one off one of the men and happily sold it to her, laughing that a woman would want one of their warrior arm cuffs. It did not fit her at all, her forearm being three times bigger around than even the men’s.

They were nice people, too, of course. As we left “gift shop” with the tables built of sticks and leather cow hide, a new car of Safari travelers stopped in, and the whole performance started again. I hope they enjoy the interaction. I hope it isn’t taking from them the joy they get jumping with their friends and family when it’s time to do it at family parties. They are, however, an interesting crowd to meet.

Safari adventure posts to be continued…