Safari – Olgelvy & Maasi Village – Sunday 29 April

It was a bloody early start today. We had to be in the truck by 7am – I think we were all sorted by maybe 7:10am – that includes packing the tents up and eating breakfast. No wonder we’re all so early to bed!

Today we drove along the ‘Best Road in Africa’. It was built by the Japanese. I’m not sure why they built it but we were thankful. Its smooth, wide, no pop holes. Lovely. It was a bit of a winding road… wasn’t sure how I’d go on the bus but it wasn’t too bad.

We stopped for lunch at Olgelvy Gorge. This was where they found some special fossils. Can’t for the life of me remember why the fossils were important. I’m sure we were told, but just can’t remember.

Next stop was at a proper Maasi Village.

On the way there Alex gave us a little run down, explained about the money we’d pay (USD20 each) and how the village would use it to pay for malaria treatment and other things they couldn’t grow or make themselves. Everyone had been teasing me about being the mother hen so I wanted to let someone else take the lead this time. So I started collecting the money from the back of the bus then gave it to Hugo. Fiona was teasing us saying it was too much responsibility for Hugo and we all laughed but when he went to give the money over he buggered it up! It was a bit confusing because some of the money was in US dollars and some in Tanzania shillings so the adding together wasn’t completely straight forward.

Once we got all that sorted it was time for the Maasi Welcome dance – this was mostly the guys jumping along the path in some sort of undulating dance. It was weird, not specifically good or bad, just not based on gracefulness, more about rhythm and beat.

After the dance we went inside the village. The walls of the village are only chest high as were all the buildings. Part of it is they aren’t permanent structures, the entire village moves but I’m not sure how often. I think it relates to having suitable grazing around for the animals etc.

One of the village elders (he’s probably only 35!) a guy called Loco took us on a tour of the village. The men and women danced for us – in separate groups. The men did a kind of jumping dance that Matt and Alex had a go at it and the women did a kind of undulating dance thing. All of us girls, with the exception of Fiona of course, had a go at the women’s dance. It was funny.

After this Loco took us to show us inside a Maasi hut. They are SOOOOOO small, and they bring the animals in at night in the winter time. They live in each others pockets.

After the tour we wandered around and bought jewellery. It was a bit of a hard sell at times which was a bit annoying and it was much more expensive than some of the other places we’d been at, but at least this way the money goes direct to the village. Although we were a bit sceptical that Loco might take it all and leave the makers with nothing… but because they all live so dependent on each other I guess it might be all for the good of the tribe.

The best bit of the Maasi village visit was when Aidan reminded me about the pencils and paper that we’d brought with us. I ran back to the truck and grabbed it and we gave it to the kids. We’d been wondering where all the kids were and it turns out they were in school! There’s a little hut out the back of the village and all the kids were in the hut learning the alphabet. I gave the pencils and paper to the teacher and she shared them out amongst the children. Only Aidan, Colin and I had brought stuff and the boys had each brought 5 packs of coloured pencils each and I’d brought half a dozen notepads so they had pencils and paper to write on. We didn’t get very good pics of it, but it was quite cute.

From here we drove to our campsite in the Serengeti. On the way to the campsite we saw buffalo, zebra and wildebeest. At one point when we were driving down the road Hungry Man stopped the truck because there was a cheetah beside the road. We got loads of photos and the cheetah even posed on a rock for us.

We were even lucky enough to see a lion and two lionesses on a rock. They’d just had a feed and were relaxing in the sun. We got some awesome photos – even one with a big bit of drool hanging off from the lion’s jaws. It looked like Pride Rock – very majestic :)

It’s weird when we see an animal we all take loads of photos and everyone wants to make sure they get a good shot, but I think everyone takes an extra dozen shots just in case they’re missing something while everyone else is still taking pictures.

Not too long after we’d seen the lions we were driving through the rolling savannah of the Serengeti on the way to the camp site. In the distance we could see clouds and rain falling in sheets but it was still clear for us. All of a sudden the truck stopped. We were all looking out the windows to see which animal we were stopping for when Alex looked out the window and saw Hungry Man get out of the truck. Turns out we had a flat tyre!

Hungry Man, Alex and Solo got out of the truck to change the tyre. Alex said it happens all the time because the roads are so bad. We all stayed in the truck – we’d only left the lions about 15 minutes before, we weren’t that far from the carnivorous locals! While they changed the tyre it started to rain. We were sitting in the truck eating biscuits (we had a 3kg box of marie biscuits that we were steadily making out way through). We were laughing, taking photos of the rain coming in and generally entertaining ourselves while they got us back on the road.

We got to the campsite about 5pm. The sun was just setting and we quickly set up our tents and got organized. Alex had already warned us that we shouldn’t leave our tents of a night. He said if it was a ‘short call’ we should just go behind the tent, otherwise just be real quick. As a consequence I don’t think any of us even had a drink of water after about 4pm!

This was the only time we were staying more than one night in the same place so we set up our tents and sat around the fire enjoying the evening air. It was a little cool, but not really cold. We’d been so lucky with the weather. We think it might have drizzled during the night at Mtowambu (mossie river) or at least really heavy dew, but it wasn’t enough to make the tents yucky.

Again we had a fabulous dinner – I can’t believe how good the foods been. Solo’s fantastic. We keep talking about taking him with us. He’s got this massive box of herbs and spices – everything he makes is so tasty. He’s made vegetable soups every night – each night a different a different vegetable, but it’s always a smooth soup (and he’s go no blender to puree it!)

Tomorrow morning Heidi’s going on a balloon ride over the Serengeti. Aidan was tempted but at USD$400 and that seemed an awful lot to spend… She’s so excited. We’ll go on a game drive and meet her at lunch time at the Lodge. She has to be up about 4:30am and we’ve all got to be up about 6am for our early morning game drive.

We were sitting around the fire in the little camp chairs and generally just chatting and someone said – oh wish we had marshmallows. Just as they said that Alex walks over with a bag of marshmallows and two sticks that he’s making points on the end of so we can roast them. It was great.

We were chatting generally and someone asked Alex a question. I forget what started it but then he started telling us about his life a little bit. He grew up in a Maasi village until he was 15 then his mum sent him and a couple of his older sisters to Nairobi to continue their schooling. He’s now studying wildlife management at a school like a TAFE. When he first went to Nairobi he only spoke Maasi and the school was in English and Swahili so before he could learn stuff he had to learn to communicate with the other student and the teacher. That must have been so daunting.

I think we started talking about playing ‘spotlight’ when we were kids, coz we were nearly all Aussies we were talking about using a torch to go looking for possums. Then Alex told us about two of the games he used to play when he was a boy. First there was a spear throwing game. One boy would stand with their legs apart and the other boys would throw spears at them making the spear stick into the ground between their feet! He said he’s got a scar on his leg from where someone’s aim was off!

His other game was elephant tag. This game required the boys to sneak upon an elephant in the dark and put your hand on its tail or bum and then wave back to your friends. It was to show how brave you were. But then boys being boys they would throw a pebble at the feet of the elephant so the next boy to go up to touch it would be walking up behind a wary elephant rather than an unprepared elephant. We were in hysterics. Our little games of spotlight and hi-akki seemed to pale in comparison!

Again we were tucked up in bed by about 9pm, tonight was the first time we’d needed our sleeping bags. The last few nights just the sleeping sheet has been enough. I love my new sleeping bag :)