| the old pond / frog jumps in / plop! – Matsuo |
In the spring of 2012 I spent a life changing semester in Tanzania, studying ecology and human origins. We explored mountains, walked the paths of the cradle of humanity in the Great Rift Valley, and ate all kinds of good shit.
My girlfriend at the time gave me the perfect gift: a journal! I never had one before and kind of went crazy with it. I used it to chronicle almost every day of my life in Tanzania. That hemorrhagic spewing led to a 65 story blog, all of which is now consolidated here
Some of my best writing from this youthful time:
The Footprints of History, The Mountain of God, Cooking Maasai Food with Maasai People, Animals in a Boma, Giraffe Hunt and Goat Slaughter, Maasai Greetings and Stories, Goat Races and Bob, ‘Kilimanjaro’ and the Fish Market.
Below is the journey in reverse chronological order. Enjoy!
Today was another day of travel! We took the ‘Dar Express’ bus, which was in all seriousness very comfortable and nice, unlike the one that I took to Babati 6 weeks ago. We stopped along the road at around 2:00PM for lunch. The place had a very airport-like quality to it, only with buses. It…
Today we traveled, most of us sore and tired from the expedition, from Lake Natron back to Arusha. It took us nearly 8 hours to get to the Outpost Lodge there, during which time I read and listened to music mostly. I started reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time and found myself to…
Last night we left our campsite near Lake Natron, in far northern Tanzania, at 11:30PM with the mission to climb the volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai aka ‘The Mountain of God’ in Kimaasai. The volcano is active and its last eruption began in September 2007 and continued with intermittent activity for over 11 months. It is…
In the morning we visited another world famous and historically important archaeological site in the NCA: Olduvai Gorge. At the site I learned about the geological layers in the rock and how they indicate different recent epochs in the earth’s history and how the fossils found in those layers demonstrate our intimate and wondrous connection…
Today we once again entered the Ngorongoro Conservation Area (known as the NCA) and made way to our campsite there. It was a beautiful site, green grass and mountainous landscape in the distance. Our line of tents ran along the tail end of the dusty road, which had many ‘Danger! Do Not Go Past This…
This morning we broke camp! It was bittersweet; bitter because we had to say goodbye to our translators Leboy, Samwell, Sarah, Sion and Peter and because we had spent so much time at the site; and sweet because I was ready to actually travel again. We dropped our bags off at the same hostel we…