Home for the Holidays

I hope everyone has been enjoying my posts from Africa. I was able to make it home to Toronto on schedule, on December 21st - threading my way between snow storms, cancelled flights and airport closures. My luggage wasn't so lucky, but rumour has it that it has now arrived safely at a neighbour's house while I visit with my family and friends in Ottawa.

I'm now dashing to put together a slide show of Africa photos and make rudimentary plans for my mid-January departure for South America. Contrary to my deepest fears, I'm not tired of travelling and can't wait to start the next leg.

I wish you all a happy, healthy New Year. Be adventurous and look for something to tell a story about every day!

Love,
Jordan

The Ex-pat Life in Nairobi

The breeze tickles the hairs on my leg, stirring me from my nap.

The stolid wooden daybed holds me in an embrace of deep, soft pillows. I take a deep breath, filling up with forest-filtered air, and open my eyes. Overhead, sunlight sifts through the trellis lacework of leaves, stirring as a sunbird flits between chains of yellow flowers. Its ‘chic-chic-chic’ joins the gentle interplay of birdsong and rustling leaves.

Beyond the lanai where I’ve been napping, the well-tended garden cascades past the pool and across the green lawn to the bougainvillea draped hedge.

I wake with the urge to write, not about what I know, for I know little. About what I sense.

It’s Sunday afternoon in Nairobi, my last full day in Africa, and I have time to reflect on a new perspective in my travels: the life of an ex-pat - specifically Europeans or North Americans living temporarily in Africa – and how it intersects with that of “natives”.

I had very kindly been invited by a Canadian ex-pat to use her house as a pied-a-terre. As a senior official with an international aid agency she is provided with the necessities of life in one of Africa’s largest cities – a house in a good neighbourhood, a live-in housekeeper, a gardener and 2 security guards.

The life of an ex-pat in Nairobi seems sweet. Downtown Nairobi has a lovely government quarter of well-maintained mid-century office towers set around green squares and leafy plazas.

Next to it, a lively business district gives space to pedestrians bustling between well-stocked shops.

Embassies, UN and aid agencies and their staff occupy the leafy, rolling neighbourhoods north and west of downtown.

The climate in December is delicious: mid ‘20s, warm sun, cooling breezes off the surrounding hills. A critical mass of expats forms a lively community. These are

people who seem to live grand principles and big ideas. Their challenging lives are softened by modern shopping centres, inviting country clubs and restaurants, good schools for their children.

The roads are paved and the traffic moves – eventually. And there are people to serve them.

It seems easy to slip into a blessed place in the hierarchy.

- My driver patiently accompanies me on my round of souvenir shops, holding my bags as I buy, and waits serenely in the car while I spend the morning at the Karen Blixen museum ("Out of Africa") and the afternoon at the musty National Museum.

- The downtown waiter places my lunch in front of me and withdraws his hand only a few inches, watching my face for a sign that he has done the right thing.

- A grocery store employee meekly follows me around the produce section holding my purchases in a wicker basket.

- The line at the museum information desk moves aside to let me ask my question. I get the sense that I’m mysterious and unpredictable to the native population; it occasionally feels a little like fear.

I also see fear in the trappings of ex-pat luxury. I notice the razor wire atop high walls, the metal roll screens over windows, the constant presence of uniformed and armed security guards. My driver tells me there are quick routes in from the airport that the international agencies have declared off limits because of the neighbourhoods they traverse. The house next door, recently robbed, has cut down all of the tall trees around its perimeter hedge and is building a wall decorated with bright spotlights.

But I’m overwhelmed by the genuine warmth and openness of the Africans around me. They want to know what I think of their country and are pleased to share their optimism now that a new constitution is in place. They are curious about my life in Canada, my profession, my travels. And they want to share their own dreams. The forest ranger wants to buy a few hectares and plant a forest, giving mahogany and ebony the time it needs to grow. The gardener dreams of buying a flour milling machine to start up a business in his home district. The taxi driver has a website to offer tours and safaris. The vendors in the Maasai market refer to their blanket on the ground as their ‘shop’.

I’m impressed by the enterprise, the ambition. I also recognize that the big dreams depend on making the right connections - an introduction, a sponsor, a connection.

It is a complex interplay of layers. To do their good work, the ex-pats need a cushion of comfort and security, and money flows into the economy to provide it. The money attracts a willing and deferential layer of the local community. Ambitious and hardworking, they hunger for the approval of someone who can give them a boost and they honestly believe that comfort is only a contact away.

This environment must harden the long term ex-pats. All of these wonderful, ambitious, deserving people, doing what they can to make your life secure and comfortable: how do you listen to their dreams, so accessible with the right assistance, and not react? But you can't help everyone.

There is no easy answer. Micro-financing has emerged as a form of ‘everyman’s aid’. The Kivu website makes this accessible to potential individual donors around the world, but I wonder how accessible is it to millions of potential recipients?

Wrapping myself in ex-pat comforts, I find it too easy to be distracted from these questions.

There is a violent rustling in the tree tops and the dogs go wild, charging about the garden challenging the monkeys on their evening commute to set foot down here in their domain. The ingredients for tonight’s dinner await in the kitchen. The housekeeper has ironed my shirt for my flight tonight, and, the gardener drops by to wish me a good trip home. They both wonder when I’ll be back.

I don’t even hesitate. “Soon”, I tell them. “Very soon”.

Kibali Chimpanzee Tracking

It would be hard to top the Bwindi gorilla encounter, but for sheer drama, there’s nothing like a Chimpanzee.

After leaving the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Robert my driver and I had clattered down from the mountain and spent the night high on a ridge over one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen.

Lake Bunyonyi is a long, narrow flooded lake with 29 islands scattered over its southern end. Verdant terraced fields cascade down volcanic sugarloafs to the lakeshore spurring comparisons with Nepal. Over the far ridge, soaring volcanic cones line the border with Rwanda.

As we left the next morning, the lake and its valley were lost in a low white cloud. We drove north for the next 6 hours crossing a surprisingly diverse range of landscapes:

• bucolic rolling hills that grow much of East Africa’s bananas, watermelon and tomatoes in an irregular quilt of green textures,

• the dry grassland savannah of Queen Elizabeth National Park where a migration of white butterflies confetti the clear air between the thorn trees,

• across the equator to skirt the foothills of the cloud-shrouded Rwenzori Mountains, their snow-capped peaks marking the boundary with strife-torn Congo,

• impossibly manicured green hillsides stitched with dark pathways and capped by one-storey villas - vast tea plantations established a century ago by the ‘colonialists’.

While the roads were relatively good, there were challenges. A low causeway through a papyrus swamp had been over-run by fast-flowing water. A lorry was mired in the middle of the deluge and a bus, attempting to skirt it, had slid off the road and into the swamp. Robert resolutely decided there was enough room to pass on the other side of the lorry and despite a mixture of warnings and urgings from the crowd that had gathered, gunned the motor and charged through the dark waters mere millimeters from the scratched steel of the obstructing truck. He told me later that he calculated we were only a hand-span from a 2 meter drop off the causeway into the swamp.

And minutes before we reached our destination, another lorry had missed a turn, climbed an embankment and landed on its side across the road blocking our path with a load of rocks. Without even hesitating, Robert gunned the Land Cruiser’s motor and climbed the same embankment to skirt the obstruction. He was bound and determined to get me to the ranger station by 2pm

By the time we arrived at Kibale National Park, they had to pry my white knuckles from the seatbelt and help me down from the truck. My knees held, and within minutes I was striding into the dense forest on the heels of Jared, a slightly built, 52-year old veteran ranger. As luck would have it, I was the only visitor that afternoon. We had the park to ourselves.

Kibali is a rolling rainforest landscape that sits alongside the savannah of Queen Elizabeth National Park. It is recognized as the home of a wide range of primate species, but the star attractions are its troops of habituated Chimpanzees (accustomed to human presence … not ‘tamed’).

Jared warned me that the morning tacking had last seen the closest troop a half hour into the jungle, but within minutes he stopped dead in the middle of the path, his eyes fixed on a point up a side trail to our left. “There” he said.

Nervously, I slowly swivelled my head and ‘there’, silhouetted against the filtered afternoon light, was the classic profile of a male chimpanzee. He was watching us, and once sure that we had seen him, loped slowly off into the forest.

To my surprise, Jared took off after him, diving straight into the underbrush. Hesitating only for a moment, I followed, climbing over roots and fallen logs, avoiding thorns and hanging vines, squelching through grasping mud and balancing across logs. The young male chimp stayed about 4 meters ahead of us, glancing over his shoulder every now and then as if to make sure we were following. He soon joined up with his mother and younger sister and as the lengthening rays of the late-afternoon sun filtered through the canopy, the three of them began to feast on hard-shelled fruit.

And then there were two. Where did little sister go? I caught a movement on the narrow tree limb over our head and had only a split second to warn Jared before she let loose a stream of pee, missing us by inches as we dove for cover. Chimp with a sense of humour; she sat there watching us and peeing.

Leaving the fruit eaters, we headed out in a wide arc through the forest and encountered another group – several adults and 2 small babies – all on the move. They led us right back to the original trio and Jared explained that the two groups may have been separated for a few days because, yes, Chimps exchange hugs as greetings.

A little further on, we came across Matu – a relaxed, grizzled chimp in his 40s. He sat in a small clearing, a few pieces of fruit at his side, and contentedly ate, dropping seeds on his ample belly and occasionally glancing around to see what was happening. Jared and I leaned against a fallen tree about 3 meters away and talked, in normal voices, about his 6 children, his two dead brothers who had chosen poaching over an education and whose children he now supported. It was just us three old guys, sitting in the woods, enjoying each other’s company.

Occasionally, Matu would hoot a couple of times, and cock his head to listen to the response – and from all around us, tree shaking and hoots building to wild, alarming screams that shredded the peace of the forest and tightened my nerves. When the dramatic cacophony died away, Matu contentedly returned to his fruit, secure in knowing where everyone was and what they were up to.

When Matu got up and wandered off, Jared and I decided to as well.

No big life lessons or morals from this story, just another dimension in Uganda’s amazing natural wealth. In case you haven’t guessed, ‘Mzungu* loves Uganda’.

* Swahili word for a white person, generally shouted at you as you drive past. In the words of an adorable, barefoot six-year-old girl in a torn dress: “Hey mzungu, where is my money?”

Bwindi Encounter

“Come, come, stay together. Hurry.” The tracker’s voice was just above a whisper. The five of us scrambled up the steep path of loose stones. Hands reached for hands as we pulled each other into a tightly packed cluster, and only then looked over our shoulder to see why the urgency.

At the side of the path we had just vacated was a huge silverback Mountain gorilla, perhaps even the dominant male of the Nkringo family we were tracking. He was lying on his stomach, his massive head hovering above his crossed forearms, patiently watching us.
Once we were out of his way, he heaved his 200 kg of solid bulk onto his knuckles and with a deliberate, confident gait, walked right by us, only a meter away, and into the thick undergrowth on the other side of the path.

A moment passed, and we realized we were all holding our breaths. The sardonic Italian teacher who kept claiming she want to ‘hug a baby’, the beautiful French/German aid worker tall and lean and gentle, the 70-something adventurers, husband and wife, who had recently walked across the desert in Mali. All of us exhaled and loosened our grips on each other’s arms.

We had reached the habituated family group, about 14 of the world’s 350 surviving of Mountain Gorillas, after a horrific 2 hour drive from the Ugandan border town of Kisoro, along a rutted sloping cliff-edge mountain road that only a Land Cruiser could grip. The views, as the first rays of sunrise gilded the terraced volcanic slopes, were spectacular. They marched in lush green ridges towards the three distant blue volcanoes that mark the border with Congo and Rwanda .

From the ridge-top office, a rude hut of concrete and tin where we collected our guide, porters and Kalishnikov-armed trackers, we began an arduous single-file descent, 600 meters down a steep slippery footpath of red clay, through grassy fields, banana plantations and eucalyptus and pine plantations.

As we neared the river at the bottom of the valley, we entered the famed Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and immediately spotted our first gorilla, a juvenile sitting high up in a tree, calmly watching us through a gap in the foliage as he stripped leaves from branches with his mouth.

Within a few meters, we had encountered the whole family, 3 mature male Silverbacks, 3 young adult male Blackbacks and a number of females and juveniles.

They sat, half hidden by the lush greenery, their glossy ebony faces turning occasionally to look at us, blinking deep eyes , looking more bored than curious. Their hands, disproportionately huge, even for their bulk, delicately plucked crisp green leaves or scratched at annoying insects.

A baby provided some entertainment by climbed a tree and swinging from a branch. A silver back lay flat on his back on the slope below and watched us, upside down, through his eyebrows.

We spent the next hour slipping through the dense undergrowth, careful to follow the trackers’ urging to stay together and make as little noise as possible. Breathlessly we crouched, only meters from these huge, sleek mounds of muscle, and watched every twitch and blink, occasionally snapping out-of-focus photos.

As the allocated hour neared its end, the adults disappeared, leaving a pair of juveniles to entertain us by cavorting on a dead tree limb until it broke under their weight. But they too, responding to the distant barks of the dominate male, bounded off, deeper into the forest.

We climbed slowly back up the slope in a daze, plodding one foot in front of the other, the porters occasionally giving us a hand when knees or lungs failed. It had been a rare privilege as clumsy outsiders, to be admitted into the forest home of these impressive, gentle primates, our closest genetic cousins. Their odds for survival are not great with conflict in Congo and the encroachment of growing human needs for land and hardwood in Rwanda and Uganda. We can only hope that future generations will have the opportunity I just did to spend an hour visiting their home.

On the road to Kampala

Robert and I wrapped up our joint tour with a few days on Zanzibar. I will get back to you in the near future about its many 'vibes'. I just wanted to get today's adventure out while it was fresh.

I landed this morning in Kampala, the capital of Uganda ... the driver, named "Silver" and sporting a jaunty straw cowboy hat, was waiting at Entebbe Airport with my name on a sign. The hour long drive into town, through the rolling, lush green hills of Entebbe and by the vast horizon of Lake Victoria was very picturesque, even in the rain.

The paper work at the Travel Agency took the better part of 2 hours, largely waiting for the credit card authorizations to come through, but the good news is that they did get me the require permit to spend an hour with the Mountain Gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. It'll take all day tomorrow to get to the mountains in the south-west of the country. Then, with a very early start, it will take a full day to hike in visit, and hike out, and then a full day to drive back to Kampala. In the days that follow, I've got a half day tour of the city lined up, followed by a full day trip out to Jinja and the Source of the Nile before I fly back to Nairobi on the 17th.

In the "what was I thinking?"department, I had asked the agent to book me into the hotel described by Lonely Planet as "our pick" for amazing value. I should have paid more attention to the pregnant, lengthy pause, but she was too sweet and too polite to challenge my choice. And I of all people, I should know that the value equation has a 'quality' component. Been away from Market Research too long.

It was like something out of Star Wars. Talk about characters. After dodging the triple-parked trucks in the dirt road out front unloading flatsceen TVs, tires and big white sacks of something, Silver and I walked in, looked at each other, and walked out. "I would fear for your safety", he said, with unusual candor.

The next hotel on the list was only a little better. Luckily they were fully booked. In the end, I settled for the JBK Hotel across the street - where middle class Africans might stay. It's secure, and not visibly grimy. But it's clearly not ready for prime time. The wall paper is peeling, the view of the construction side next door is hazy with grime and diesel fumes. The towels are grey and the size of handkerchiefs. The bed looks clean, but is closer to concrete than foam. And the air-conditioner makes a huge racket ... actually an advantage, given the noise outside. How many sidewalk preachers with megaphones does one town need?

I'll make it through the night. Everyone here is bending over backwards to make me happy - even walked me down to the internet cafe in this mall after we discovered the hotel's promised WiFi wasn't working (probably never has).

After I checked in, Silver took me on a tour of the two 'upscale' hotels in downtown Kampala - the Triangle and The Grand Imperial. I'll stay in one or the other when I get back from Bwindi ... the first is new and sort of a high rise Motel 6. The second lives up to its name - it was built in 1923 and may have had an update sometime in the pre-independence '50s.

The interesting thing is that I have not seen a single white face since I got off the plane. I asked Mary where the Mzungus stay and she said - in the 5 star hotels out of town. That was confirmed when I went for a walk this afternoon - not a single white face in town. And the nice thing is that people either completely ignore me, or start up very gentle, pleasant conversations. Over the course of 2 hours, I had half a dozen chats with people who are simply passing the time by asking this scruffy, oddly-dressed stranger a few questions. The people I've met have such a gentle, relaxed manner and quick smile.

And I've never seen such industry. There are 3 million people in town and most of them seem to be out on the street either buying or selling on this Saturday afternoon. There are shops everywhere - from glossy tile and chrome Bata shoe stores, to dimly lit hardwares to tiny closets with a few personal care products on their shelves. On the main shopping throughfare, 2 storey arcades run through buildings offering fashions and leather goods. No space goes to waste. Under a ramp, two women have a hair products shop in which they can only sit. As the ramp drops to the sidewalk, a sandal maker crouches in the last 5 feet surrounded by his wares.

The sidewalk mamas display their wares by the curb, and around the fringes of the food market, women sit on the ground in the shade of parked cars, reaching into big sacks by their sides to peel the legs and antennae off of live grasshoppers. They are fried as snacks I'm told.

In the formal green park by the High Court, teens with plastic bowls full of nail polish bottles sit on the ground at the feet of their clients and paint or clip nails. "Lonkey", all of 19, tells me that my nails 'need work', and when I say I like them the way they are, plops himself down beside me and asks me what life is like in Canada.

I'm actually really loving this. Once again I've shifted to the road less travelled by.

No more news for the next few days. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest may be on the tourist track, but its far away from high speed internet. [Although I half expect to find the Gorilla's texting each other.]

Three new posts...

Once again I've stumbled into a spot that has relatively efficient high speed internet... for now. So I've put up three new posts covering the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater (read below).

We've grown a little tired of game drives - and particularly of the "free African Massage" roads. How many days in a row can one survive the continuous bump, shake, rattle, jostle, bounce and whip side-to-side of really bad roads? It would be fun for 15 minutes as an amusement park ride, but imagine 7 hours a day, 8 days in a row.

So the Pongwe Beach Hotel on Zanzibar has come just in time. White sand, turquoise water, amazing meals and an almost cooling breeze from off the ocean. Just to give you a taste, here's a photo of our cabin, only a few feet from high tide, and another shot of the beach at sunrise - taken from our terrace.

When the tide is low, the waves break on a reef several hundred meters off shore, and the loudest noise is the clacking of the palm fronds in the gentle breeze.

However, when the tide is high (at 4am) it pounds against the black coral rock and thumps hard on the beach, and sounds like giants moving heavy furniture upstairs.

I'll get used to it!

Tomorrow, we move across the island to the Old Stone Town for one night before heading back to Nairobi.

Ngorongoro Symbiosis

We sit on tufts of grass, high in the Ngorongoro Highlands. The cool breeze riffles around us, and the land falls away at our feet.

We’ve climbed to this spot, led by a tall, lean Maasai man named Manuel, to see a waterfall, and we are enveloped by beauty.

A narrow, deeply-cut chasm zig zags from our feet out into the broad depression of the famous Ngorongoro crater. The interlocking ridges on the left are last year’s tall golden grass and those reaching in from the right glow with bright green tender shoots encouraged by the herders’ controlled burn. At our shoulder, rushing spring water tumbles into the chasm far below.

We are warmed by the hot sun and cooled by the sweet mountain breeze and time stands still.

The Crater, 20 km across and softened by the morning haze, is a patchwork of savannah and swamp, woodland and soda lake; the largest un-flooded caldera in the world and one of its eight wonders. Embraced by its tall blue walls, it is cut off, a safe citadel, a lost world where grazers and predators intermingle.

Yesterday, we had parked beside well-fed lions asleep in the mid-day heat only meters from neighbourly zebras, gnus, gazelles, ostriches and warthogs, grazing shoulder-to-shoulder on the nutritious grass, seemingly oblivious to each other.

Idyllic as it may seem, it is no lost Eden; not far away, a regal male lion panted in the breeze beside his fresh kill, a disembowelled gnu. We had seen zebras scatter as 3 cheetahs with blood spattered mouths toss their gazelle lunch in the air. Sun bleached rib-cages and tumbled buffalo skulls litter the banks of a wetland.

The harsh realities of daily life contrast sharply with the experience of the tourist. High above on the Crater rim, luxury lodges provide panoramic vistas from well-appointed rooms. Gin and tonics are enjoyed on the lawn as the sun sets over the far rim. Buffet breakfasts and 3-course dinners are attended by staff with ‘jambo’ and ‘karibo’ greetings. Sturdy Toyota Land Cruisers, 4-wheeled tanks, bounce you the 600 meters down to the Crater floor in the morning and safely skitter you up at the end of the day.

The two realities – the predator and prey on the floor, and the tourists on the rim – may exist in sharp contrast, but they also survive because of each other. The animals draw the tourists and the tourism dollars have encouraged Tanzania to protect the crater, rim and highlands beyond. Those dollars that are not spirited away by foreign owners of hotel chains and safari companies pay for the Conservation staff and anti-poaching patrols.

The politics of tourism is fascinating , but for one morning, it was a rare privilege for us to step off the tourist track and out of the tank-like Cruiser , follow Manuel up to the waterfall and stop time long enough to drink in one of the most breath-taking landscapes I’ve ever seen.

I'll never grow tired of Zebras

I used to think that the Zebras was a rare and exotic animal. But after almost 2 months in Africa, I’ve seen thousands of them – populating the floodplains of the Chobe river between Botswana and Namibia's Caprivi Strip, grazing between the trees in South Africa’s Kruger Park, and now swarming the rolling grasslands of Tanzania’s Serengeti.
Mules in football jerseys, we’ve been told; convict donkeys; clowns of the grasslands. And they do look like fat, gaily painted horses. But as I've watched them for long minutes, followed them through my binoculars, see the range of their behaviours, I've come to realize that there is nothing comic about them.

They are, instead a calm, elegant, unflappable presence. Their stripes, each as individually patterned as fingerprints, are more tuxedo than clown suit. The diamond pattern on their narrow faces, the bold bands on their meaty sides, the slatted shapes down their rounded bottoms, even the braided pattern along their narrow tails… all mesmerizing, even hypnotizing.

And their gentle, social behaviour suggests an animal I’d like to know. They stand side by side, head to tail and lean against each other, like Dr. Doolittle’s push-me-pull-you, watching each other’s backs. They simultaneously nibble burrs and ticks off of each other’s flanks. A newly born colt stands straight on wobbly legs and shelters in his mother’s shadows. When startled, they break into a co-ordinated canter, as pretty as any show-horse’s routine, and toss their narrow manes.

I’ve seen thousands of Zebras, and I’ll never grow tired of them.

The Eternal Flow of the Serengeti

Perched on the summit of Naabi Hill, I slowly turn a full 360 degrees, and take in the endless sea of grass that stretches as far as I can see in all directions. A stiff, damp wind whistles through the stunted trees at the foot of this granite outcropping, and leans against my shoulders. From the west, the advancing rain storm paints a tall, narrow grey curtain between the high clouds and the thirsty ground. As it nears, it widens to take in the whole quadrant of my view.

The first few drops splash warmly on my cheeks and darken the dusty rock at my feet. It is the start of the short rains in Tanzania and while a few, infrequent showers have eased up the first few green shoots, the soil is thirsty for more.

I clamber down from my perch before the full brunt of the storm hits, and take refuge in the cosy confines of our Land Cruiser, eating the hotel’s box lunch with Robert and our guide Baraka while the rain drums on the roof and washes the red soil of this morning’s drive off of the windows.

We had two days to spend crisscrossing the Serengeti on game drives, and while the list of animals we spotted grew quickly to two columns in my notebook, there was something else that left an impression on me. There was the sense of subtle, yet concerted movement … more felt than seen.

We would stop the car by the side of the pitted dirt road, turn off the engine, and feel the stillness wash over us; the gentle sway of last year’s dried grass on the rolling landscape, the faint songs of the grassland birds, and the contented grazing of the animals all around us. But as we ourselves became still we began to feel the pull towards the south.

Serengeti National Park is home to vast herds of animals that are constantly on the move, migrating clockwise through the year in search of fresh grass. We were not visiting during the time of the spectacular mass migrations, with millions of wildebeest crossing rivers at the same time. But still there was movement.

At first glance, it looked like the huge mixed herds of ugly grey-black Bearded gnus (wildebeest) and elegant black-on-white zebras and the large family groups of delicate, skittish Thompson gazelles were stationary. But each step they took was in the same direction. Each casual saunter to a new clump of grass took them closer to the southern grasslands. It was as if an unseen force was gently drawing us all in one direction.

The rhythms of life are not all gentle. We witnessed an adult baboon charge the fringe of a group of Thompson gazelle's and grab a young foal. Despite its mother's frantic efforts to free her baby, the primate proceeded to tear apart the young animal while it bleated and struggled.

Parked by the side of the road, with endless rolling vistas around us, we felt if only for a moment that we were part of this eternal flow.

Lots of new stuff

Ah, the glories of a fast WiFi connection! I've been busy with three new posts: my arrival in Arusha and two posts to show you some photos from Ihla de Mocambique and Ibo Island (including the 'birds'). So keep scrolling....

Photos from Ibo Island

Here are a few selected photos that show the ghostly beauty of Ibo Island, Mozambique.

The dhow trip to the sand bar, with Anna and Paulina.

(Apologies to the bird ringers if I make a mistake, but) Emerald Cukoo and Blue Waxbill. The ringers at work under the Flamboyant Tree in the bush veld.

Spectacled Weaver, Gorgeous Bush-Shrike, Scarlet Chested Sunbird (same niche as a hummingbird).

The Bird Ringers - Manobra, Phil, Bruno, Malcom and Pieter - having set the nets on the tidal flats, are waiting for the tide to go out and the sun to set. Not a bad way to spend the evening.