Tarangire National Park

My mind has no Swahili greetings so a hearty Hello must suffice. 

I need to start off just stating how blessed I am.  I am in Africa! How many people get that opportunity?  I’m blessed with this experience, with what I have seen, the people I have met, and the beautiful creation I have witnessed.  I’m blessed to live in a base camp with running water, hot showers, electricity, Internet, and a great staff.  My boyfriend, Joel, pointed out to me that while my living standards may be fairly close to the poverty level in America, that in Tanzania I live like a king.  I’m blessed with enough financial means to come here and to buy souvenirs and all that jazz.  I’m blessed to have friends and family back home who are praying for me, who support me, who love me, and who email me encouragements.  I have a God who loves and who created a stunning world.  I have a God who never leaves nor forsakes me or anybody else.  Really, what more could I want?  There may be days that are frustrating and I often times long for my home and people back home, but I am blessed. 

Today we embarked on our second safari! We set off early this morning to go to Tarangire National Park which is about 1.5 hours from our camp.  I can’t tell you much about the ride because I slept both there and on the way back (land rovers just rock me to sleep now), all I know is I fell asleep when we were in the mountains and woke up to wide expansive plains.  Our home in the mountains is gorgeous, but it was not what I was expecting Africa to look like.  Where we were today was the picture of Africa I more expected.  Flat, open grasslands with a few Acacia trees sprouting here and there, it was definitely beautiful but in an obviously different way than the mountains.  In the same way, Lake Manyara National Park is in the mountains so its more woodlands while Tarangire is grassland and open brushland.

In order for the safari to be educational, we spent the morning practicing a method of counting wildlife, which we have been learning about in our Wildlife Management Techniques class.  Every land rover had their own route and would count every animal within 500 meters from the car for a 2 kilometer transect then go 500 meters and start a new transect. 

We saw wildebeest, zebras, impalas, giraffes, and elephants, which we had seen in Lake Manyara ( they were still very cool), but today I saw my first Ostrich! I have decided Ostriches are very ugly creatures though, but they are much larger than I expected.  We also saw warthogs! They were kinda cute, when they run their tails stick straight up and they have this lush, floppy hair starting at their head and running along their back which makes them look like they have mullets!  I also have animal #2 for my Big Five list.  The Big Five animals include, elephants, cape buffalo, lions, leopards, and rhinos.  We saw several herds of cape buffalo, which are huge! I had no clue.  I actually think they look pretty neat, I wish I had gotten better pictures but they were off hiding behind trees. 

Before we left for Tarangire, we were promised by several of our professors that we would “definitely see lions”.  In fact, our site director, Kissui, who I talked about in the last post about being a top lion researcher lived/worked in Tarangire NP for eight years tracking all the lion prides.  Hopes were definitely high.  Needless to say…. My land rover did not see a lion… We did see a cheetah though! Cheetahs, in my opinion, are almost better anyways, they are sleek and have a beautiful coat.  We saw two cheetahs sitting up in the distance and pulled over, then they decided to lay down so we sat for 15 minutes hoping they would sit up again.  Once again my camera failed to get any good pictures, but I saw them through my binoculars! Our professor, Kioko, told us that there is a 100% chance of seeing lions in Ngorongoro Crater NP and in the Serengeti, so we have time to see Simba! “Simba” actually means “lion” in Swahili, Disney was not very original with that name!

After lunch, we headed back out in search of lions, which you know by now was an unsuccessful search.  Instead of finding lions, we found a whole herd of elephants playing in the river and decided to watch them instead.  They were great!  There were two babies, who our professor Kioko (the elephant expert) told us couldn’t be more than two years old.  The babies would take off, running and splashing through the river, chasing birds! It was perhaps one of the most precious things I have witnessed from animals.  Our car was parked right on the embankment of the river and a mature female walked over to the mud maybe 15 meters from us and just collapsed in the mud.  She rolled around in the mud and spread her legs out.  We also heard some bubbling and figured out she was sticking her trunk in the mud and blowing bubbles! It was great!  (This paragraph was dedicated to my Bethel roommate, Kelsey, who loves elephants.)

People always talk about the mammals in Africa, but I think the birds should get more credit.  The birds here are stunning.  They have the most gorgeous feathers of iridescent blues, purples, pinks, and greens.  I wish I could take pictures of all the of birds.  I see the birds sitting in trees and think “Oh, that bird is pretty” then they fly away and open their wings and I just gasp.  I wish I could describe them better. 

Well, I’m pretty tired after spending the day in the sun and I have a cold.  If you could pray for fast healing, that would be great! My roommate, Elaine, is just getting over a cold and now my other roommate, Kiley, and I are coming down with colds!  Its nothing bad, but prayer would be appreciated nonetheless.  Side story about the sun, my Bethel roommates and I were joking around about how dark I will be when I come back from Africa; today I noticed the intense farmers tan I am getting and my professor, Kioko, came up to me and put his arm next to mine and said “You’re getting pretty close, just a few more days and you’ll match me”.  Don’t worry Mom, I am putting on sunscreen, Africa’s sun is just intense.  Good night all!