Serengeti July 16

Tanzania

Thursday, July 16

Serengeti

What a day! We traveled over 130 miles on rough, bumpy dirt roads leaving the cold Ngorongoro Crater wearing our mittens and jackets in the morning and arriving in the hot, dry, dusty Serengeti in the late afternoon. On our way to the Serengeti we visited a Maasai village that is part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Project. Normally you are not allowed to take pictures of the Maasai. But there are a couple of villages where, for a fee, you are treated to singing and dancing and are able to go into the village, called a boma, and take pictures.

I was led into the second chief's house which had three rooms. The houses are all made from cow dung and are called manyatas if the roofs are also made from dung. When the houses have thatched roofs they are then called bandas. His wife had a small fire going in the bedroom where she was cooking beans. There was a very small hole in the wall for the smoke to escape.

They were drying gourds on top of the roof. The roof also had a plastic covering over part of it because El Nino had been hard on the cow dung roof!

Maasai men are generally very tall and thin. They spent some time pointing to Scott because he is also very tall. At one point they asked him to jump for them because they had shown us their ability to jump high when we first arrived while the women were singing. Scott showed them how high he jumped lending support to the theory that "white men can't jump"!

I gave the children some of my extra paper and pens. They were happy to have materials for writing.

After we shopped at the Maasai village purchasing some beaded necklaces and ceremonial meeting sticks called Orinkos (in Maasai language), we drove to Olduvai Gorge for lunch. It was discovered by a German scientist who, when collecting butterflies, fell into the gorge. The Leakeys became interested when they saw some of the fossils that the German scientist had discovered. It is really called Oldupai after the Swahili name for the sisal plant but was written incorrectly by the Germans. We toured the small museum and took pictures of some of the fossils as well as of the gorge below us.

The vast Serengeti plain is home to thousands of zebras, gazelles and wildebeest. We were lucky to come upon several small prides of lions, one of which had two cubs about three months old. It was fun to watch the cubs relax, play and yawn so close to us.

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What a day! We traveled over 130 miles on rough, bumpy dirt roads leaving the cold Ngorongoro Crater wearing our mittens and jackets in the morning and arriving in the hot, dry, dusty Serengeti in the late afternoon. On our way to the Serengeti we visited a Maasai village that is part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Project. Normally you are not allowed to take pictures of the Maasai. But there are a couple of villages where, for a fee, you are treated to singing and dancing and are able to go into the village, called a boma, and take pictures.	I was led into the second chief's house which had three rooms. The houses are all made from cow dung and are called manyatas if the roofs are also made from dung. When the houses have thatched roofs they are then called bandas. His wife had a small fire going in the bedroom where she was cooking beans. There was a very small hole in the wall for the smoke to escape. They were drying gourds on top of the roof. The roof also had a plastic covering over part of it because El Nino had been hard on the cow dung roof!

Maasai men are generally very tall and thin. They spent some time pointing to Scott because he is also very tall. At one point they asked him to jump for them because they had shown us their ability to jump high when we first arrived while the women were singing. Scott showed them how high he jumped lending support to the theory that "white men can't jump"! I gave the children some of my extra paper and pens. They were happy to have materials for writing.

	After we shopped at the Maasai village purchasing some beaded necklaces and ceremonial meeting sticks called Orinkos (in Maasai language), we drove to Olduvai Gorge for lunch. It was discovered by a German scientist who, when collecting butterflies, fell into the gorge. The Leakeys became interested when they saw some of the fossils that the German scientist had discovered. It is really called Oldupai after the Swahili name for the sisal plant but was written incorrectly by the Germans. We toured the small museum and took pictures of some of the fossils as well as of the gorge below us.

The vast Serengeti plain is home to thousands of zebras, gazelles and wildebeest. We were lucky to come upon several small prides of lions, one of which had two cubs about three months old. It was fun to watch the cubs relax, play and yawn so close to us.