TAN: Catching Up with the Nomads

We were up at the crack of dawn to be ready for a 7 a.m. rendezvous with Rafael. Given his recent track record, none of us were really surprised when he arrived at 8:15 a.m. I think we were all half expecting more reasons why we would not be able to leave. Amazingly, we were able to pack up the truck and head out.

Getting our gear stowed for the journey to Handeni.

The truck’s fuel gauge had been on empty the previous day and had not gotten any closer to full during the intervening 15 hours. We managed to make it some distance out of town before stopping to fuel up. I misread the price on the pump and ended up giving the attendant $10 too much. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to resolve the difference of opinion of us thinking we had paid too much and the attendant thinking we had not. Much of that time was spent getting the totals off all the pumps and adding up the amount of sales versus the cash the attendant had. She came up $8 short. This further convinced us that we were correct, but the attendant was still insistent. We finally offered to split the difference in order not to spend all day arguing over who was right or wrong.

Strangely, cell phone use near the pump is taboo.

The drive out to Chalinze was familiar territory for Chantal and I. This was our fourth trip out of Dar es Salaam on the road. Instead of continuing west after Chalinze, we headed north. The trip was through lightly forested low hills. Some larger mountains were visible in the distance, including the Uluguru mountains near Mikumi.

Tanzanian fast food.

We finally got into Handeni around 1:30 p.m. Made a quick stop at the house that Rafael and his group are using as an office. It was very bare and sparsely furnished. We grabbed a tent and generator and headed over to get a bite to eat and meet our driver and guide. The restaurant we went to doubled as a stationary store. Here we met with Kuleit (Adam), who would be our guide) and our driver Jerome. Rafael had to go back to Dar and would catch a $3 bus in the morning. We bid goodbye to him and headed out into the bush.

The vista over Handeni town. An interesting flower near Rafael’s office.

“Stop ’n Shop” stationers

We drove for another three hours on a bumpy dirt road through desolate brush scattered with a handful of tiny villages and solitary settlements. We stopped briefly in one larger village that a number of Maasai youth were idling in.

Some houses going up.

Seemingly endless open countryside.

Around 5:30 p.m. we arrived at our destination, a Maasai boma just off the main road. The boma belonged to one of Adam’s relatives. It was currently home to seven people. The aging matriarch, Bookhi, the wife of one the eldest sons, Maiko, Mateo and Monika, the three school aged kids we would film for Sandrine’s project and two younger children. The family had been living in this spot for about a year and would continue on at the location until such time as the natural resources in the surrounding area became to scarce to subsist on. The main problem in the area being water.

After a quick tour of the boma, we picked a place to pitch our tent. Maiko took a hoe to the area and smoothed out the rougher bits. The erection of the tent was a big event, with all of the family and a number of other folks all gathered around to watch the process. We finished up just before it got dark and started in on some of our fresh produce for dinner. Adam and Jerome shied away from our offer of avocado. They preferred to have the milk and ugali that issued from the boma kitchen. A spot of tea was brought out later. We all stayed up talking for a bit around a fire that had been built for us.