My first retraction

All the best news sources do it eventually.

So apparently there is another "Gibb's" restaurant in Tanzania, and my sources tell me that Martina Navratilova was likely referring to that one and not the Gibb's up the rocky hill from my house, although the actual identity of Martina's favorite restaurant in the world remains a mystery.

Personally, I am just happy knowing that my Gibb's has a 50% chance of being Martina's favorite restaurant; I have no problem tumbling my way home in the dark for those odds.

I'll have what she's having

What do Martina Navratilova and I have in common (besides a strange obsession with the Wimbledon women’s final)?

A love of Gibb’s Restaurant in Kigoma, Tanzania! So says this month’s Bon Appetit magazine, which I am told lists Navratilova’s selection in a list of “celebrity favorite restaurants.” Yes, celebrities were asked to pick their favorite restaurant in the world, and one of them just happened to pick the place that I pick whenever logistically possible as well (the restaurant is not a long walk from my house, but they use a wood-burning oven and stove for all of their meals, and unless you're a tennis pro it can take hours to get your entree; only because of my insatiable appetite for foods other than rice and beans have I recently become accustomed to the late-night stumble down the path home).

Thanks to Liz in NJ for letting me know about this. It will give me something to think about when I am waiting for my veggie curry tonight.

You talkin' to me?

I woke-up at 5-something yesterday morning to the sounds of the guards outside my window:

"...muzungu...!," said one, broiling with laughter, barely able to finish his sentence.

"...muzungu...!," replied the other in fits of hysteria.

I rolled-over and hoped they weren't talking about me.

"Muzungu" is essentially the Kiswahili version of "gringo." Some say that it means "white man," or "Westerner," although one person told me the literal translation is "those who contain their farts."

It is thus disconcerting for me to hear the word called out as I walk down the street, either to announce my presence or to get my attention. Is that all people see? A "muzungu?"

To add to the confusion, the greeting is frequently followed-up with some sort of plea; either silently with outstretched hands or with a verbal one, such as the man last Friday who yelled out "Muzungu - give me my money!," or the very young girl in her Sunday best who more succinctly stated: "Muzungu! Money money!" I only hoped those weren't her first words.

I can't help but think that if I called out a comparative label to a stranger back home, the only plea I would be making would be for a cold compress.

It is therefore difficult to make sense of what the connotation of the word is among the people who say it. If I were to guess by the voices of the guards on Sunday morning, I would imagine the reference is not a favorable one at all. But then last night, on my way to dinner, a little girl came running up to me in the street yelling "Muzungu!" and wrapped her arms around my leg. The other kids smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back, finally seeming to understand that just like any other word, so much of its meaning depends on its context.

Rumor has it...

That I am going to the Hilltop for dinner tonight. You know what that means? Vegetable curry! And maybe even wine!

My meals for the past two days have included:
Breakfast yesterday: power bar
Lunch: rice, beans and a little cooked spinach
Dinner: rice, beans, cabbage and french fries (the last of which was decidedly not my idea)

Breakfast today: fried bread (chapatti, as often seen in Indian restaurants)
Lunch: rice and a little spinach. No beans.
Afternoon snack: mango juice that I bought on the way into the office. Yum!

My eyes glaze over with quiet anticipation whenever someone mentions the possibility of having a comprehensive meal. I must look like a character in Oliver Twist. But this is a vitally important part of my learning process. As one friend told me, "just be glad your whole life isn't rice and beans." What a great perspective. I am totally embarrassed that I didn't think of it first.

"Water, water everywhere...

...and not a drop to drink.”

Whoever wrote that must have visited Kigoma once.

Outside my window lies 17% of the world’s fresh water. Lake Tanganyika fills a deep pocket of the lower end of the Great Rift Valley, the divergent plate boundary for the African and Indian tectonic plates. I have heard that a seismograph in Burundi has registered up to 60 earthquakes in the lake per day. If this rifting continues, one day Lake Tanganyika may become an ocean.

The lake is very deep, with depths reaching 1,470 meters (4,823 ft) in the northern basin of the lake, not far from where I live. So with the world’s second largest freshwater lake at our fingertips, why do so many people have to live without their basic water needs met? How is it that many people who live on the shore of Lake Tanganyika only consume about 25 liters of water per person per day – well below demand – whereas the US average, from New York City to the green lawns of Arizona, can and do consume 350?

I attended a lecture last night by a Tanzanian hydrogeologist who explained his hypothesis for why this is the case:

- Power outages; in order for 65% of the demand for water in this community to be met, the current water pumps would need to operate for 20 hours per day. Instead, they run for 18 hours per week, due largely to the scarcity of power.

- Inadequate and aging infrastructure; not only are there not enough pipes to circulate water through the community, but the pipes we currently have were laid in 1960 (and retrofitted in 1985), and it is estimated that 45-55% of the water that passes through them is lost to leakage (compared to the global average leakage rate of 10%).

Pollution is likely also a factor, as the water at the very edge of communities is so often polluted, and at times contaminated with cholera.

And let’s not forget the crocodiles. They are not common here, but a few rumors are probably all it would take to keep people away from the lake shore for a while (that's all it would take for me!).

So it is a tragedy and an irony that so many people go without water when water is in such abundance here. The good news is that there are Tanzanians who understand these issues, and who are bringing them to the attention of the officials who need to hear them.

Last week, men began digging-up the road which runs in front of my house; and last night on the way to the lecture, I noticed pipes lying next to the channels dug in the road. So it looks like part of the matter is already being addressed.

Hopefully additional taxes (including almost 30% of my salary) will go to employing people to continue to build the local infrastructure. Because everybody needs water.

Gratefully, history has also marched on

There is history wherever you go. Lucky are the travelers who find the right people to tell them about it.

This past weekend, we had two visitors from the US, and on our way to take them back to the airport, we stopped to pick-up a man who works at a local museum; a man who had kindly agreed to give us a tour of his museum that day. On our way to the museum together, our passenger said, “Let’s stop and see the roots of slavery on the way.”

The deepest roots of the slave trade are in West Africa, where twenty men boarded a Dutch vessel bound for Jamestown in 1619. But two hundred years later, the appetite for slaves had reached East Africa, and Sultan Seyyid Said of Zanzibar made slavery an important part of commerce in the lands he controlled. As the demand for slaves increased, Arabs began stretching further inland – taking with them, as one person told me, “Islam, and slavery.” By the early 1840’s, the Arabs had reached Ujiji, the town directly adjacent to the city where I now live, and Said was selling 40,000 slaves per year.

We drove to a community in Ujiji that looked like so many others, and our passenger (who is close friend of my roommate’s) led us between the wood planks and tin roofs to a small plot between a few homes. Large, solid rock formations grew out of the ground, with grasses growing between fissures and garbage piling-up in the cavities. “These are the foundations of the building that held the slaves,” we were told. It was here that they lived until it was time to march to the Coast, toward Zanzibar, where many of them would remain and work on the island's burgeoning clove plantations.

Kids came running out, and parents began to join them. We were led to a yard shared by a set of homes (I was later told that the front house was likely the husband’s, with the other structures each belonging to a different wife; yet another legacy of Islam). The yard had a deep pocket, where the wall was retaining a yard on one side and collecting trash on the other. It wondered: who had gazed upon that wall, and what thoughts must have been spinning in their head?

Ujiji was a hub for slaves collected from communities around Lake Tanganyika, with many shipped across the lake from Congo. In exchange for the men, Arab merchants traded flint-lock muskets, gold, and white fabric with local Chiefs. Such were the commodities used to barter for human lives.

The men were then connected using wooden “trees” – thick yokes around their necks – and marched to the Tanzanian coast: a path that I am told was at least 1,000 km long. On their journey, the story goes, slaves planted mangoes to provide shade and food for those who would follow; and to this day, mango trees apparently transect the country all the way from Ujiji to the coast, outlining the slave’s route like a lightening bolt.

We stood on a dusty road in Ujiji where kids played, women carried water and men sat in small groups in the shade. The road was flanked by old mango trees on each side. “This is where their march began,” our passenger told us. This is the first of the 1,000 km.

My eyes stretched to the end of the trees, where the road stopped and an unpredictable landscape started. I wondered what it must have been like to navigate that landscape wearing a wooden yoke, never knowing how many kilometers and mango trees lay ahead. This is a part of the history of the slave trade that I had never thought much about; so much of my education began with people boarding a ship. But with the foundations of the slave trade in East Africa at my feet, I could feel the history marching over me.

As I walked back to my friends, the sounds of the street began to fill my head again. I tried to return the smiles of kids on the street, wondering if they had any idea what had happened on the ground where they now played.

Day's end

This was the view of the sunset the other night. Not long after this photo was taken, the sun disappeared behind the hills of Congo, which sit about a finger's width off the horizon.

With beers, soda and other "sun-downers," we enjoyed the view until the mosquitoes chased us away... but we will be back.

No wonder I couldn't see them

The identity of the exotic birds referenced in yesterday’s post have been revealed: my noisy neighbors are likely a pair of Southern Boubou Shrikes. Apparently this species is famous for their duets. I described the sound as a “whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-hop,” which I believed to be the sound of one bird. As it turns out, the “whoop-whoop” sounds (or “bou-bou” sounds) are the male in the pair, with the female perfectly completing the call with a “squaw” (which I first thought sounded like a “hop”). So what I thought was one bird calling and another returning the call was most likely one pair in one tree (who complete each other’s calls with such perfect rhythm that it’s hard to imagine it’s two birds rather than one), and another pair of birds in the adjacent tree.

And despite their loud and boisterous call, they are actually quite plain looking, and small (an inverse relationship I should have remembered from my encounters in college). One website stated that their raucous call is the result of their size and the fact that visibility is so low in the climate they inhabit; it's the only way they can find each other.

This afternoon the winds began to blow through the office where I am working and tumbled the papers and slammed the door shut, despite the large rock used to prop it open. I looked at my watch and it was two o’clock on the dot. The mid-afternoon winds were right on schedule.

Sounds of sunrise

Whenever I wake-up some place new, my mind slowly becomes aware of its surroundings in the moments before I fully awaken. It struggles to identify and recognize the sounds outside – the water, birds, or maybe cars – and to establish my bearings based on what it hears. The sounds are different out there, my mind muses, Where am I? This doesn’t feel like my bed. This sounds far away. I must be far away. It's coming back to me now: I live in Tanzania! Ah, that’s right, now it makes sense... and I drift back to sleep.

But my subconscious is now becoming highly tuned to the sounds of pre-dawn Kigoma.

The first notes to waft into my room – and my consciousness – are from the rustling of leaves outside my window. There are diurnal winds in Kigoma that are extremely predictable during the dry season – blowing from the land to the lake before sunrise, and from the lake onto the land between two and three in the afternoon. During the lake’s gasp for air in the morning, the winds blow right through my room, with gusts shaking the trees and chilling my skin. I reach for the blanket to cover up, and rollover, knowing that dawn is near.

Moments later I hear the wavering, sing-song voice of a man. I wake-up a little more and recognize the sound as that of the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, being recited by the muezzin at the mosque up the hill. “Allah is the greatest,” he recites, “Make haste towards prayer; prayer is better than sleep.”

On the horizon, the first rays of light must be warming the sky. The birds in the tree begin to stretch their feathers. The first to greet the dawn is the unusual-sounding bird that makes a whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-hop sound. I try to visualize the bird, and picture it having a big red crest of feathers on its head. The message is returned by a garbled whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-hop, but the sound is distorted; I imagine it being the bird equivalent of someone talking to you from the bathroom while brushing their teeth. “What?,” the first bird seems to be saying. “I SAID whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-hop!” the second bird replies.

Then the less exotic birds chime in: the whistling sound of something that might be Alexander’s Alakat, the chirping of a bird that reminds me of home, followed by the crowing of a neighbor’s rooster.

Every city sounds different in the morning – with different scores and different soloists. But Kigoma seems special: the vibrating leaves are somehow always on cue; the Adhan creates a hypnotic second movement, and because its sound is carried on the wind, it always seems to crescendo with the leaves; and finally, the rousing rhapsody of the birds, who are the final harbinger of morning – telling me it is time to wake-up.

I love to lie in bed and enjoy this early morning symphony, knowing that soon the music will be replaced by the voices of goats and two-stroke engines, and the crunch of gravel under the feet of guards doing their rounds. I lie there with my eyes closed and savor the sounds, and once I am fully awake, I get up and join the chorus.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie

Back in the States, Luke and I used to joke that I had “better get used to the vegetable curry,” meaning that vegetarians would probably have limited options at the restaurants here. As it turns out, we have four principle options, and vegetable curry isn’t one of them: rice, beans, cooked spinach and eggs.

So far my meals have looked something like this:

Breakfast (chai ya asubuhi): chai na maziwa (black tea with milk, and keep it coming!) na chapatti moja (one piece of fried tortilla-like bread) or a Spanish omelet.

Lunch (chakula cha mchana): bowl of rice with beans and/or boiled spinach or cooked cabbage.

Dinner (chakula cha jioni): more rice and beans and spinach, or a Spanish omelet.

At one restaurant/bar near the office, the vegetarian dish is something called “chips mayai,” a locally famous dish which consists of fried eggs laced with French fries. I walk on the opposite side of the street when passing that place.

On two very memorable occasions I have gone to a place called the “Gibbs Resort,” which offers a variety of vegetarian options, including margarita pizza, spring rolls, veggie burgers and, yes, vegetable curry. The fact that it will require walking (or running) up and down a very steep hill will help me burn off the excess calories I consume there.

Obviously there is a market where I can buy groceries and choose my own gastronomical adventure (for example, I can pack bananas and boiled peanuts to supplement my lunches), and obviously when I moved to Tanzania I knew I’d be leaving behind the foods and routines that constituted a Venti-sized portion of my diet. Learning to “live without,” and to do so without needing to blog about it, is one of the many things that I hope to gain from this experience. Because for most of the world, it probably doesn’t feel like living “without” anything at all.

It is hard not to live here and know just how lucky I am to have any food whatsoever, and while I may joke about it here, when my bowl of rice and beans is served at lunchtime, the predominant thought going through my head is this one: gratitude.

Limerick for a Monitor Lizard

There once was a lizard named Monty,
who lived in the ceiling above me.
He ate bats all day
and helped keep rodents away,
but sometimes at night he would he bug me.

Bird's eye view of South Africa

Common Moorhen

(I know she's hard to see, but this photo is all about the landscape)

Perhaps the best way to avoid jet-lag is to wake-up at 5:15a the first morning that you have reached your destination and wait in the cold for an hour for a bus (which never came) to eventually join a day-long birding excursion that will last from before sunrise to after sunset. It worked for me!

For me and the others in my van, the first bird we saw that day was a dead Spotted Eagle Owl on the side of the road (which I thought was not a good omen); but the evening toast following our birding excursion was attended by a very live Spotted Eagle Owl, who helped usher us back onto the road as we left. As one of my fellow birders pointed out to me, that was a very good omen.

There were so many highlights on this trip, too many to list, but here are a few:

- Me spotting and identifying a Turaco in the distance (which admittedly is one of the most visible and identifiable bird species; the one I saw turned out to be the Knysna Turaco - which in South Africa they call a "Loerie")
- Watching a Redknobbed Coot catch a fish;
- Seeing a Pied Kingfisher hover over the water before diving in for the kill (it reminded me so much of the Harrier Hawks back home that Mom loves so much)
- A fellow birder spotting a Peregrine Falcon on a far-away bridge (if I had his lens, you'd be able to see what I was talking about)
- Watching Greater Flamingos bathe in the sunlight on a distant island.

I can't imagine a better way to start-off my African experience. I hope you enjoy the photos half as much as I enjoyed taking them. Love, Rob

Redknobbed Coot (the name says it all)

Dusky Flycatcher (sometimes I liked the small, simple birds best)

African Spoonbill (but it's hard not to love the exotic ones, too)

Malachite Sunbird (side view - check out that beak!)

Malachite Sunbird (back)

Great (White) Egret about to take flight

(Tom Mangelsen, eat your heart out!)

Blacksmith Lapwing in flight

African Sacred Ibis with Yellowbilled ducks

Unidentified bird 1 (likely the Sombre Greenbul, or Bulbul)

Unidentified bird 2 (likely the Southern Black Flycatcher)

Silhouette of Another unidentified bird
(I kept spotting and photographing them faster than I could get an expert to ID them!)

Brownhooded Kingfisher
(this was a real test for my 300mm VR lens - and it worked)

Peregrine Falcon resting on a bridge

Cape Batis (he's really not as mean as he looks)

Cape Batis warming up his engines

Yellowbreasted Apalis (who stole my heart)

Shooting star

I had dinner last night with a colleague of mine who founded TACARE, the Jane Goodall Institute program in Kigoma, with which I am now affiliated. At the end of our dinner there was the most brilliant shooting star - unlike any I have ever seen before, with a long tail that trailed across the sky as the "star" sunk toward the Indian Ocean. George told me to "make a wish," and I thought to myself: "I already have."

East African Resident Rob

It was with great honor that I cut to the front of the line at Dar es Salaam passport control to join the line designated for "East African Residents" - that's me!

The baggage claim area was more chaotic than I had remembered. Two small carousels serve all incoming flights - domestic and international - and passengers from huge planes funnel into the room where tensions pile as high as the boxes of figs. Unsure which carousel my luggage would eventually arrive on (when the bags arrive, the staff just put them on a carousel, and it doesn't usually matter since someone is likely to pull it off and stack it on the floor somewhere anyway).

People were stumbling and falling all around me (it reminded me of the beach party in Port Elizabeth), there was a woman near me yelling at a man, a box of figs suddenly exploded everywhere, there was no air circulation in the room, it was hard to breathe, and I was pinned in place by people, bags and carts.

Finally, after about 45 minutes, enough people had left that I could break my way free and make my way to the door to the staging area where the luggage is loaded onto the carousels. I asked an airport staff member there "Have the bags from the South African flight from Johannesburg been loaded onto the carousels yet?" "Some have," he said. "Do you know which carousel they were put on?" I followed-up with a smile; "Probably some on that one and some on that one," he replied.

I thanked the man ("Asante sana!"), and somehow through it all kept my cool - trusting that my bags would arrive eventually, and that I would find them in the piles of luggage all around me.

It was at that moment, when I was turning away from the airport staff member, that I spotted the bright red band on my big suitcase - I had found it! And on the other side, under one or two bags and probably as many people, sat my bag with the bright blue band.

I felt like a parent who reunited with a missing child in a busy supermarket. I kindly worked my way around the room to one bag, and then back around the room to the far side for the other, and with both of my bags I proceeded outside, where luckily my ride had no yet given up on me.

I hope there will be many success stories that I will be writing about on this page in the months ahead, but I consider this first one to be really exciting: I have managed to move to Tanzania, and spend about 1.5 weeks traveling in South Africa on the way, and have not yet lost a thing. And once you see the airport in Dar, you will know: that's not an easy feat!

Live Earth

The paper this morning read "SA falls short of Live Earth challenge." But I can tell you from personal experience, the Live Earth concert in Johannesburg was a very exciting party.

These concerts were organized globally at the behest of Al Gore to increase education about climate change (and also no doubt a great deal of greenhouse gases in the process). Our entertainment was a bit weaker than most of the other cities, but we did have Joss Stone (who I had never heard of, but was great - and hopefully a rising star), the Soweto Gospel Choir, Angelique Kidjo (my favorite!) and closed with UB40 ("red, red wine..."). We finished our red wine and headed out before the "10,000" people (by my estimations, more like 3,000) departed the Coca-Cola Dome for the two-lane road headed back toward the highway. With a 7a departure for the Johannesburg airport the next morning, I was glad to be leaving the concert by midnight.

I had a great time - big thanks to Kate G for the ticket (and for being my arm candy for the night!), and to Keegan and friends for helping make the night so special! I will never forget it.

What happens in Port Elizabeth stays in Port Elizabeth

Entrance to the SCB Beach Party

Last night the Society for Conservation Biology organized an amazing beach party for conference participants. Draping and decorating transformed the underbelly of a bridge into a glamorous dance floor and buffet, with the curtains flowing onto the beach where drunk biologists could be found in abundance.

People who spend their life in front of microscope or in the bush studying beetles or wild dogs appear to go crazy whenever there is liquor and other people (especially datable and eligible other people) around. I politely sipped my drink with Kate, a friend of mine from DC who I was surprised to run into here, and we watched as some of the world's greatest minds in conservation biology fell over themselves on the beach around us.

I wonder what theories of pack behavior - which were no doubt revolutionized by these very people - would say about the scene last night.

I hope you all had a very independent day today. I wish I could join you for today's festivities!

Dom Pedro, my friend

Not to be confused with Don Pablo, the communist poet from Chile, who I also adore.

Dom Pedro is a popular dessert drink in South Africa, served in moderate portions so you don't explode on your way down the boardwalk. My waitress Roxy explained its contents to me as follows:

You take a blender (or "blenda" as she pronounces it)
One and a half shots of Kahlúa (or Amarula or Peppermint Schnapps, or your flavor of choice)
Two scoops of ice cream
Milk
Press "On."

To my friends in DC: you can try this with skim milk and frozen yogurt, but I assure you it won't be the same.

I have photos from last Saturday's birding excursion that you won't believe, but unfortunately I won't be able to download and post them until this weekend. Be sure to check back - the photos are worth the wait (the birds practically flew into my hand, which was only a problem because I was shooting with a telephoto lens).

This trip has been a dream come true, and it's just beginning.