Random Thoughts about Tanzania-

Random Thoughts about Tanzania
 2016

• ·      Cheap gin that tastes awful, absolutely awful
• ·      Red clay roads
• ·      Beat up, old cars and cracked windshields
• ·      Lush green foliage
• ·      Rice fields
  
• ·      “Whip whip woo, whip whip woo, whip whip woo”, sings a bird right outside my window.  He offers this song and then pauses, rests a bit and gives the sequences again and again, all day long.
• ·      “Asante”- thank you
• ·      Constant honking of the horns
• ·      Colorful sarongs and fabric adorn the women
• ·      Crowded markets
• ·      Lots of school children in colorful uniforms, going back and forth to school all day long
• ·      Small public buses, crammed with lots and lots of people
• ·      Gentle breezes of hot air
• ·      “Victoria Lake is twice the size of Switzerland,” our Swiss acquaintance tells me. “It is really quiet a massive lake.”
  
• ·      The ferry ride across Victoria Lake costs 20 cents.
• ·      No street lights make for dark, dark roads once the sun goes down.
• ·      Long-horned bulls that are shepherded by little boys who are no more than four or five years old.
• ·      Beers- Tuskers, Kilimanjaro, Serengeti, Safari, and Balimini (my preferred beer, the beer with the most taste but still not favorable enough for me)
• ·      Dancing, jumping with the Maasi women.  They jump better than I do.  My feet didn’t really leave the ground.
• ·      The Serengeti- the endless plains
  
• ·      Lions, leopards, cheetahs, giraffe, elephants, rhinos, wildebeests, hippos, hyenas, monkeys, baboons, zebras, impalas, gazelles and lots and lots of birds
• ·      Titsey flies and other bugs that bite us all day long
• ·      A once corrupt government trying to right its wrongs
• ·      Umbrella trees
• ·      Mosquito nets
• ·      A sky full of stars
• ·      A people who love to offer greetings to one another: “Hello, welcome. How is your family?  How is your mother? Greetings to you Mama.”
• ·      An obsession with chips.  French fires are served at most meals.
• ·      Emilee, our driver who can maneuver through the rough roads of the Serengeti and still keep an eagle eye out for wildlife. He can spot a cheetah a mile away.
• ·      Safari trucks, caked with mud
  
• ·      Narrow streams of water, filled with hippo dung
• ·      Sparrows coming right up to our plates while we are still at the table
• ·      Endless police cars, stopping drivers along the roads, looking for bribes.
• ·      Massive Balboa trees
• ·      A treacherous hike to the water falls
• ·      Women sitting in a dark bar, drinking banana beer. Their husbands are at another bar with the other “daddas” doing the same thing.  They only drink as a couple on weekends.
• ·      Woodcarvings of elephants, rhinos, giraffes, warriors
  
• ·      Paintings of women, warriors and villages
• ·      Bead work- bracelets, wedding necklaces
• ·      “Karibu”- welcome
• ·      “Jambo”- hello (a greeting used mostly for tourists)
• ·      Street merchants wakening between the cars stuck in traffic, selling everything and anything: popcorn, water, chewing gum, thigh busters, buckets, batteries, candy, flowers, coat hangers, tissues, anything they can handle with ease and exchange quickly so they don’t hold up traffic.
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African Skies http://bkmemoirs.blogspot.com/2016/03/african-skies.html

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