Zebrafish

September 9

Tanzania

I enjoyed Dar es Salaam as cities go it was both friendly and multicultural with it's African, Indian, Arabic and European flavours. Where as Zanzibar's stonetown was a bit too touristy after my recent journeys, nethertheless wandering the maze of alleyways I found it a place full of interesting Swahili culture and later history as a British protecterate. The island was important to the Arabs for both slave and spice trading and the sultan grew exotic spices and fruit from all over Asia. Nowadays the usual thing to do is go on a spice tour, I did too and really enjoyed being a tourist.

arabic sailing dhow, zanzibar

On the coast I stayed at Mohammed's on Mtwembe beach. The sand here is like the coconut puree served with samosa, resting on it are dugout canoes against a clear cyan sea. Tim from London and I played footie with some local children on the beach and we had a good laugh teaching them rugby.

seaweed, zanzibar

I went snorkelling around Mtembwe atoll with a 6 metre long whale shark! Swimming from the dive boat through deep ribbons shoals of shrimp. I was first to the spot where we'd seen it's fin break the surface. I looked around to see where the other snorkellers were heading too, then when I put my head back in the water I saw a huge jaw over a metre wide and two eyes swimming diagonally upwards, straight towards me!

I've never moved so fast in all my life as I turned 90 degrees and finned as fast as I could away. The whale shark turned around also and we were then able to swim alongside it for 2-3 minutes. Thankfully the whale shark is completely harmless to humans as it only feeds on shrimps. I snorkelled for 2.5 hours all together that day and saw some new species to me such as a brown spotted sea snake and white moray eel, but also many more familiar large parrot fish, moorish idols and giant clams.

I caught a cold and blistered my toe snorkelling and so feeling a little low was pleased to meet British backpackers, Peter and Hannah who are running Kimamboni guesthouse. 2000m high in tropical vegetation on the slopes and in supurb sunset view of Mount Kilimanjaro, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . I spent a few days at this mountain home relaxing, playing scrabble and writing my diary up in the sunshine. We walked up to a high waterfall nearby and back through the friendly Chagga people's villages and tried their local banana beer.

kilimanjaro sunset

Peter also runs the Kilimanjaro porter assistance project. One of the things it does is loan warm clothes to the porters. Although it costs about $100 a day x 5 days to climb the mountain many porters only earns about $3-4 a day and I am told every few weeks one is brought down dead from hyperthermia.

Next stop was the safari capital of Arusha in the shadow of Mount Meru. The locals were complaining about the lack of tourists due to George and Ossama's global terrorism threat but for me it meant the parks were not such a 4WD circus as they normally are. I went on a 3 day safari here with two Spanish friends Victor and Lola and our drivers Good Luck and Sultan. I found it a bit tiring at times but was worth it to visit to see the tree sleeping lion in the Lake Maynara park and the World Heritage Site of Ngorogoro crater.

This is the heart of the ancient Great Rift Valley. The probable birthplace of humanity. An area full of tropical extinct volcanos, endless flat plains and coloured lakes. Ngorogoro is a 300 million year old flat pan inside a steep sided volcanic crater on the edge of the Serengeti. There are a couple of forests, pools, a river and a steaming white soda lake full of pink flamingoes.

hippo pool, ngorogoro crater

There was an adult pair of lions resting. The male with his almost dog like face raised up into the wind blowing his shaggy fur. Brown hyenas sleeping by pools, hippos in the heat of the day splashing themselves with their tail and farting and huge herds of buffalo, wildebeest and zebra. I had to eat my lunch in the Land Rover as eagles sweeping above were making immediate swoops trying to snatch my sandwich from my hand.

mating lion pair, ngorogoro crater

An overnight bus via Nairobi (the start and end of this trip) and onto Mwanza, the busy southerly port town for Lake Victoria. On the way to the internet cafe a couple of riot vans passed me then while I was checking my email I heard a couple of loud bangs outside. Christians and Muslims had apparently been fighting in the street and the police had fired a couple of tear gas bombs to disrupt them. I could feel a peppery sensation in my nose as we looked out onto the street. But it turned out to be good thing as I met 3 Dutch doctors Mimosa, Anke and Jurian who'd been caught up in the riot and we spent the rest of the evening in the bar drinking and talking.

I left at 5 the next morning and crossed over to the Rwanda border by a mean looking orange coach called "Soldier of War" with windows decorated with large childlike transfers of soldiers, hawks and fighter planes. Rwanda is a safe country to visit now, all the same I was a little apprehensive at first. But soon found the people here to be very friendly.

Rwanda

river border, rwanda/tanzania

Rwanda is a beautifull country of mountains and fertile terraced valleys. Women carrying bright primary colourfull umbrellas and boys riding bicycles weighed down with green bananas. It's impossible to imagine what happened here but unfortunately Rwanda is better know to most people for the terrible genocide that occurred here in 1994. When half a nation went on the rampage and in 3.5 months almost 800,000 people were hacked to death with pangas (machetes), shot through the head or butchered with anything to hand.

church memorial

This morning I chartered a taxi and visited two genocide memorial sites, both were churches in the villages of Nyamata and Ntarama where people went for safety but were instead murdered. At Nyamata 10,000 people were killed in the church and 10,000 outside. It was the most disturbing place I've ever visited. The metal roof and brick walls are studded from grenade blasts, skulls, assorted bones and old clothing in one room and in newly created tombs outside there are piles of skulls and bones organised for display. In one pit 56 people were thrown in alive and killed with rocks.

genocide church memorial

open tomb memorial

Before 1994 there were 125,000 people living in this area, 80% were killed. Most of my driver's family were also killed at this time and it was his first visit to these particular sites. There is a visitor book there with people's comments from all over the world and all walks of life. It was a difficult morning today but I believe it's important to learn about such atrocities and hope that in the future we can help prevent anything like this happening again.