TAN: Lazy Day

Spent another beautiful day in paradise. Had a very slow morning in spite of having gotten up at 6 a.m. I wandered along the beach in front of the banda for a bit before running into Vlad. He had a newspaper article and book about the Maasai that he thought we should read. The article was about the arng’ehe ceremony, the event to mark the passing of young men into elders that happens every fifteen years and had taken place in the last couple of days. Had a good Foxes breakfast of beans and cooked tomatoes with toast, but with an ample serving of beans for once.

Bruno, the crab killer, with his latest victim dismembered and left for dead.

Following breakfast Chantal, Sandrine and I went snorkeling along the landside of the island. Not a whole lot to see unfortunately. The current in the channel is fairly strong, so the water was pretty murky with debris. We called it quits after an hour or so. The ladies sunbathed for a bit afterwards while I poked about the tide pools. It was getting on toward mid-day by this point and it was a little hot to be out in the sun. Got cleaned up in time for a lovely luncheon of potato pancakes and pokharas.

Vlad, Rashid and Julius enjoying the DVD.

After lunch I started to read the book that Vlad had given me earlier, Beating About the Bush by David Read. Got a good ways into the book, but didn’t come across any real Maasai references. A spot of tea was served around 4 p.m. following which we went for a hike down the length of the island. We crossed over at the isthmus and hiked back on the landside. I had done this excursion the last time we were here but Chantal had missed it. I enjoyed being amongst the mangroves again. While we did see some monkeys from a distance, the presence of the camp’s two Dobermans cut down on some of the possibilities for viewing animals.

Sandrine tested the depth of every crab hole on the island (Mean depth was half a stick length.) A sea turtle skull.

Back amongst the mangrove shoots and knees.

In the evening we were joined by Prudence, a student at the sculpture school in Bagamoyo. In the course of the conversation we came to find out that her brother was Godfrey #2 that we had run into in Dar es Salaam on Nov 18th. Prudence was in her second year at the school and upon finishing next year planned to open up a shop for a year before going to school again. We had a delicious supper of ratatouille. The rest of the folks tucked in after dinner and I spent another hour or so watching the night sky.