We went on our biennial trip to Lake Wappappello in Missouri  last weekend. Unfortunately, Kevin and Owen didn’t make it, so Fiona, Jack and I had to represent the McKennas.

It was complicated getting everyone there. Fiona drove with Grammy and Jip. Jack and I got dropped off at the Philly airport on the way back from Top Gun in Williamsburg.

We all met at Aunt Jo & Uncle Kevan’s house for a great three days before heading south to the lake. (Photos of our Columbia visit are next on the list to post.)

For photos of our adventures at the lake, CLICK HERE 

 (If you don’t have Flash installed, CLICK HERE for non-Flash gallery.)

The country is beautiful: volcanos, lakes, beaches, cities. The food is great: grilled steak, lobster, chicken, fish, fresh fruit. The people were sooo nice (which is surprising … after the way the U.S. has treated the country for the past 150 years, I’m surprised they even let Americans in the country to come visit. As far as I can see, the only good things the Americans ever did for them was to teach them to love baseball instead of soccer.)

The highlights of our ten days included:

• going up four volcanos (and sledding back DOWN one of them)
• local baseball
• one island
• many beaches
• two or three lakes
• one natural spring pool
• surfboarding
• horseback riding
• fishing
• pottery making
• a school visit
• zip lining
• nature walks
• and sightseeing.

And I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.

Obviously, I haven’t had time to blog about everything (we ONLY have two baseball games, three baseball practices, three fencing classes, one swimming class, two pilates classes and two trainer workouts, two board meetings, two exchange student meetings, a cello recital and a school presentation this week!!)

But, I quickly went through and pulled some random pictures to show some of what we did. I didn’t edit them, but I did put some captions on some of them to explain. However, I *will* try to get some more detailed entries put together in the next few weeks.

CLICK HERE to see some photos from our trip

(I’m trying another site to store/display photos, so here’s an alternate album if the blog album isn’t working: http://christymckenna.zenfolio.com/nicaragua)

Fiona & the Datoga chief ... he already had several wives, but I think he might have been shopping for another!

(Back to Tanzania … ) Along with the time we spent in schools and with children, we loved encountering the wide variety of cultures throughout Tanzania. There are “officially” 126 different tribes in the country.

During our two-week trip, we met a number of individuals from several tribes. For example:

Makonde carvings at a market in Mto wa Mbu

We got to spend time with three different tribal groups in their villages: the Maasai, the Datoga and the Hadzabe.

The Maasai

In and around Arusha, we started to see Maasai communities. Traditionally, the Maasai were nomadic people whose lives and culture revolved around cattle. As their range has diminished and they’ve become slightly more settled, they’ve begun a bit of farming, usually maize.

Maasai boma as seen from the air, en route from the Serengeti to Kilimanjaro

The “home base” is called a “boma” and is a circular paddock area that contains the huts for living as well as a circular pen in the center for the livestock — their most precious possession. The boys and men are responsible for caring for the livestock and we regularly saw them driving cattle out to feed in the early parts of the day and back toward the boma as night approached. The older boys and men manage the cattle and the younger boys start off with the goats.

Maasai boma on the northern slope of Ngorongoro Crater

Many of the Maasai that we saw had their lower two teeth knocked out. We were told this was to facilitate giving them medicine and food if (when) they got tetanus, or “lock jaw.”

Many Maasai who we saw — in fact many Tanzanians — wear sandals made of old tires. We frequently saw them for sale along the roads and in markets.

We visited a Maasai boma that has been set up to help the women, who traditionally have very little status, earn some money by selling their bead work. We got to go into some of the huts. They’re basically one room structures, which a small storage area, a bed and a fire in the middle of the floor. We tasted their breakfast food — a kind of polenta-porridge drink made with maize and fermented milk. Traditionally, the main elements in their diets are blood and milk.

We met the school teacher and her students, who go to school half the day and spend the other half doing chores. They’re building a new schoolhouse so they can continue their lessons when the rainy season starts.

Interestingly, although everyone live in the traditional huts and wore mostly traditional clothes (the big cloth that they wrap themselves in, kind of like a Scottish plaid, is called a “shuka”), we did see several men in the boma with cell phones and several people who had digital watches.

Fiona modeling an "engarewa" (a beaded ceremonial collar). A Maasai women might wear several of these at one time.

The bead work was interesting and the women were very proud of their crafts. Bracelets, necklaces and the wide collars were all for sale. They also had some decorated herding sticks. I don’t think I ever saw a Maasai man in our entire time in Tanzania without his herding stick.

The Maasai are probably the most famous tribe in Tanzania and it seems like the government has made a lot of concessions to keep them happy, in terms of granting them land.

CLICK HERE for more photos of the Maasai we encountered in Tanzania.

The Datoga

A few days later, when we were staying near Lake Eyasi, we got to spend time in a Datoga village. The Datoga are a Nilotic people, thought to have originated in Ethiopia or southern Sudan. Like the Maasai, the Datoga  traditionally were herders, but have added a bit more agriculture. They are also well known as blacksmiths.

Owen said it was really tough to work the cow stomach hand bellows

The Datoga use cow stomach as hand bellows; Jack and Owen both got a chance to try to pump the bellows when we visited the village. The Datoga melt down anything — pipe fittings, discarded bicycle parts, anything metal — to make simple jewelery as well as arrowheads to trade with neighboring tribes, such as the Hadzabe (bushmen).

They “dressed” us in jewelery (some which we purchased later) and were clearly very proud of their arrowheads and knives. Some of the women have the decorative scarring on their faces in circular patterns around the eyes.

The woman with the drum has the traditional scarring pattern around her eyes.

We really enjoyed meeting the Datoga women; the men pretty much kept to themselves although they hovered nearby. And even though we were speaking through an interpreter, it really felt like we were talking together. The chief’s older wife took us into her hut and was very engaging. She asked us as many questions as we asked her! We “chatted” for quite a while.

After visiting, they demonstrating their dancing. It was much like the Maasai dancing — some singing, clapping, a small drum and the “dance” consists of jumping straight in the air. I must say that some of the young men can really spring high. The women also add to the music by tapping their bracelets together.

CLICK HERE for more photos of our time with the Datoga.

The Hadzabe

The Hadzabe, or bushmen, are among the last true hunter-gather societies left in the world. They are closely linked with San in southern Africa, who live hear the Kalahari desert (the stars of “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”) They hunt on foot with bow and arrows, don’t have permanent homes and speak a “click” language.

The National Geographic ran a great article on the Hadzabe in the Dec. 2009 issue. (Read it online here.) One of the bushmen we met was  photographed in the article.

Like the Datoga, they live near Lake Eyasi. We got up WELL BEFORE dawn one morning to catch up with them and go hunting. When we first got there, the hunters were still getting ready–putting on baboon fur headdresses, checking bows and arrows and smoking joints. Apparently, marijuana has become a big part of their lives.

Around the campfire, there were an older man, who was fletching arrows, and an older woman, who was weaving fronds into long strips that I think get made into baskets. They told us that all the other women and children had been gone a day or two, hunting for honey. Fiona was disappointment that she didn’t get to meet any “bushmen children,” as she called them.

As the hunters were getting ready, Jack and Owen got a chance to shoot the bows. I think the Hadzabe were quite surprised at how well they shot (they have bows, arrows and targets at home.)

Jack gets an archery lesson from a Hadza hunter

As hunting with the bushmen requires running through the woods for a couple hours, Fiona and I stayed behind. She was also quite apprehensive that they might catch and kill a baboon, which is one of their favorite targets. While they were gone, we hung out with the basket-making lady and the arrow-making guy.

Apparently the hunting trip was quite exciting, although they only came home with a squirrel and a bird. The bushmen immediately threw them on the fire — whole and un-gutted. As they cooked, they pulled fur and feather off once they were charred. They would pull a piece of the bird or squirrel off the fire and use their knives to cut off cooked bites, which they offered around. We all had some. I think they probably eat every last bit of the game.

Hadzabe hunters cooking a squirrel and bird WHOLE on the fire

After our “meal,” the boys got some more bow and arrow lessons and they offered to sell the bows and arrows, which we immediately said yes to. (I think they were about 15.00 a piece). They also had some porcupine quill necklaces, which Fiona latched onto.

Although their lifestyle is certainly the most primitive we’ve encountered, they’re not immune from modern civilization. Our local guide told us they’ll probably take the money they earned and go to town to buy meat and drink beer until the money’s gone. Sort of reminds me of the early encounters between white men and Native Americans.

CLICK HERE for more photos of the Hadzabe.

Previous posts about our trip to Tanzania are here:

• Photos from Tanzania: JFK, Amsterdam and FINALLY, some Animals
• Photos from Tanzania: Schools & Students
• Photos from Tanzania: Mto wa Mbu

One of the best times in Williamsburg was when Kevin bid in an open air auction on a trap ball game (kind of like early baseball/wiffleball). We spent a long time playing on the grassy area in the middle of the town (although, the weekend *was* supposed to be a break from the Spring’s endless baseball games!)

Right before we left Monday morning, we flew through the Rockefeller Folk Art museum and that was a surprise hit with the kids.  They were even disappointed we didn’t have time to visit the other part of the museum (the decorative arts section.)

There was minimal fighting once we got the sleeping situation sorted out and everyone enjoyed eating in the taverns.

Click here to see photos from the trip.

(Gratuitous zebra photo to make the beginning of the post interesting)

Our flight was supposed in leave JFK in the early evening, arrive in Amsterdam the next morning and then around midday, we had planned to take another flight to Tanzania. That way we would have a day (Monday) to explore the city of Arusha before our safari officially started on Tuesday.

It didn’t quite work that way. The huge nor’easter that blew threw the area that Saturday grounded flights at JFK for hours. After many conflicting announcements from the airlines about when/if our flight would leave, we found out that our flight was indeed going to leave about six hours late. However, there were a couple of caveats: there would be no food on the flight and they weren’t going to load the luggage.

Apparently the winds were still so high that the catering union refused to work and wouldn’t put food on the plane and the luggage union refused to load luggage on the plane. (As we found out later, when we finally got our bags, the luggage was left out on the tarmac in the driving rain to get soaked through.)

Luggage for five people, for 14 days

At that point, we just wanted to get moving so we all trooped onto the plane. Everyone pretty much fell asleep immediately, which in the long run was helpful for getting us on the right internal clock in Tanzania. Once we landed in Amsterdam, we figured that we might as well go into the city and explore, instead of hanging out at an airport hotel waiting for our Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro flight the following day. Before we left the airport, we found a “Hema” store (kind of like low-end Target) and got underwear, tooth brushes, jackets, etc., as we weren’t really prepared for Northern European March weather.

I love Amsterdam; it’s been on our list of cities to visit for a while. So, this was a good chance to get a taste of it. We got hotel rooms and right away went out and spent a couple of hours on a canal boat tour. We found a great Argentinean steakhouse a short walk from the hotel and had a wonderful dinner (as usual, Owen had the best dessert; someday we’ll just learn to order what he orders.)

Our Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro leg was uneventful, although LONG — about 8 1/2 hours. Luckily, KLM has on-demand TV and movies for every seat, so we all got to watch what we wanted (The Blind Side and Slumdog Millionaire were some  of our favorites. I watched about six episodes of “The Mentalist,” Jack watched about a season’s worth of episodes of “Two and a Half Men,” Owen played games and Fiona watched “The Princess and the Frog’ several times in row.)

Photos from JFK & Amsterdam are here.

Maramboi Tented Camp, as seen from the shore of Lake Manyara

The first tented camp we stayed at was a lodge on the shores of Lake Manyara, about 30 minutes outside Tarangire National Park. The tents were canvas atop of wooden platforms, but they were a lot more luxurious than the platform tents we had at Girl Scout camp. All the beds have mosquito netting and there’s a second section of the tent with running water/shower/toilet. You can raise or lower the flaps to have a view out of the screens and watch the zebras and wildebeest as well as the flamingos and Lake Manyara beyond. Sunrises and sunsets over the lake were especially beautiful.

There is a central lodge building with full-time electricity with a “living room area” and where meals are served. This lodge also had a swimming pool, which the kids really enjoyed after a long, hot game drive. We were up before dawn each morning to go on our game drives so we ate breakfast pretty quickly. We generally had scrambled eggs and some bacon and fruit (it looked liked they had nice breakfast buffets for the other guests.) The other meals were pretty straightforward, almost always starting with soup, then salad, then maybe pasta and ending with fruit for dessert.

One afternoon, instead of a game drive, we took a hike around the lake with a local guide. We learned about native plants and how they are used for food and medicine. We learned how to identify footprints — zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, hyena. We found a leopard tortoise and a zebra skeleton and we learned about how the zebra and wildebeest live together.

(Basically, the zebra manipulate the wildebeest into being a decoy. If a zebra senses danger, it starts to run , triggering the wildebeest to stampede. The zebra then stops and waits to see if anything actually gets the wildebeest or if it’s a false alarm. Also, they help each other eat. The zebra likes the tall part of the grasses, so they eat first in an area, cutting the grass down. The wildebeest likes the lower part of the grass stalk, so it eats what’s left over after the zebras move through.)

Photos from Maramboi Tented Camp are here.

Owen, all decked out in his safari gear, ready for a dawn game drive

We went on several hours-long game drives into Tarangire, which turns out to have been our favorite park. Even without animals, the landscape was beautiful, with rolling hills, rivers, a variety of trees and other plants. Add in the animals — giraffe, elephants, lions, birds, etc. — and we would say that Tarangire is a “must-see” on any safari itinerary.

On our first afternoon drive into the park, we saw a few giraffes in the distance and were SO EXCITED. Little did we know how close we’d get to the animals later on. We were really enjoying the scenery and seeing some impala and a wart hog family when Owen made our first significant animal sighting: a troop of baboons. We spent a while just watching the young ones and adults play and eat before we moved on.

The next major sighting was one of our favorites of the entire trip. Near a river we came upon a herd (well over 100) of elephants. They were moving up from a valley, across the road and down to the river and crossing the river. We just parked in the Land Rover on the road and watched. It was unbelievable. There were elephants of all ages . . . from tiny babies to old females (the old males form “bachelor” herds, that we saw later.) Often we would see the mother elephants with several children: “teenagers,” “toddlers,” and “babies.”  It seemed like the “teenagers” were often assigned to be the babysitters for the tiny ones.

We saw the elephants cross the river, which was over the heads of the littlest elephants. They used their trunks to hold on to the mama elephants’ tails and scrambled to get across. The elephants had no fear of us and came close enough to the vehicle that we could have reached out and touched them.

Baby elephant (probably about 3 weeks old) following its mother across the road

After the elephant encounter, on the way out of the park, we almost ran into three lionesses crossing the road. It’s amazing how huge they are and like the elephants, they are totally unfazed by the vehicle or us.

We really like birds, whether they’re the goldfinches at our backyard feeders or the hawks in Belize. Tanzania was full of fascinating birds. One of our favorites was the Lilac-Breasted Roller. The kids got a big kick out of the Secretary Bird (Some say the bird got its name from its crest, which looks like the quill pens that old-time secretaries kept handy in their hair.)

We liked the Secretary bird because it could poof out its head feathers into a funky, spiky “hairstyle.” We also saw ostriches, which I hadn’t realized was native to Africa and are NOT native to Australia (they were imported to Australia and farmed in the 19th century).

Lilac-Breasted Roller about to take flight (photo by Jack McKenna)

On another day in Tarangire, we again came up a significant herd of elephants. After watching an adult partway hidden in the trees for a while, we realized that she had a tiny tiny baby (newborn) with her and it was nursing. That group of elephants was being annoyed by a troop of baboons and we got to hear the elephants “roar” and charge the baboons to clear the area.  All in all, the highlights of Tarangire were the elephants and the landscape itself.

Photos from Tarangire National Park are here.

Some of the beautiful scenery in Tarangire

Maasai Schoolchildren in their Outdoor "Classroom"

I think that some of the times we’ll most remember is when we visited schools. We spent a short time at a Maasai school near Lake Ayashi and spent a lot of time at the Haydesh Primary School near Karatu.

The Maasai school we visited was just for the youngest children. It was held outdoors, under a shade tree with one teacher. They were in the process of building a classroom so that they could continue lessons when it rains. The children go to school in the mornings and then help around the boma (family community) in the afternoons.

Haydesh Primary School is VERY isolated. It took us almost two hours from Karatu to get there on winding, dirt roads. We could see that during the rainy season the roads would definitely be washed out.

The area has been hit hard by the drought over the past few years. Although the rains late last year and into this year have improved things very much, we could tell that the area was still struggling. Most of the residents of the area are from the Iraqw tribe. Their mother tongue is a Cushtic language (related to Ethiopian), so that means Kiswahili (the “official” language of Tanzania) is the second language for students and English is the third.

Children of the Haydesh Primary School

The parents of the community are responsible for building the school, and once that is done the government provides a corrugated tin roof and teachers. This school had three classrooms complete — for seven grades — and three teachers. Another classroom was almost complete. They combined classes when they can — for example, the third through sixth graders were together — otherwise, the children wait outside until a teacher and classroom is available. The school has no electricity or running water.

The oldest children could speak English as well as Kiswahili and all introduced themselves to us. Their lessons are mostly in Swahili, but they do a lot of work in English as well. The very youngest children, the five-, six- and seven-year-olds were working on learning Kiswahili so they had classes in their mother tongue as well.

The classrooms all had “Little House on the Prairie”-style desks, with two or three students per desks. The students shared textbooks AND they shared notebooks/paper. The school obviously desperately needs supplies. One of my favorite moments was when we’d been there about 10 minutes and Jack whispered to me, “I think I should suggest a CSO (the Germantown Academy student-run Community Service Organization) project to help this school. They need notebook paper and pencils.”

More photos from our school visits are here.

Children of the Mto wa Mbu Village

I’m working through the thousands of photos that Jack and I took in Tanzania. The first two groups are of some of the people we met. The people were by far the best part of the trip (although baby zebras were a close second). We learned so much and met so many nice people.

The first set of photos are from a day we spent in a town called Mto wa Mbu, or Mosquito Village, which is near Lake Manyara. We walked around the village with a fantastic guide who knew absolutely everyone. With Abraham, we visited people’s gardens, their kitchens and livestock and learned a lot about day-to-day life. It’s estimated that there are 126 different tribes in Tanzania and that there are members of each tribe living in Mto wa Mbu. We’ve done a lot of traveling and had many different guides. Abraham was one of the top two or three. We loved the time we spent with him and hope we see him again.

Two of the best parts of our walk were when we spent some time in a “pub,” sharing some banana beer, a specialty of the Chaga tribe. The beer is low alcohol (about 2%) so the kids shared some too. Traditionally, it’s poured in a large gourd and then passed around the group. Another great part of our time in the town was when the kids got an art lesson. They painted Maasai warriors in a traditional style, using a palette knife.

But the best thing about Mto wa Mbu was LUNCH. In the courtyard of a local family’s home, we had a buffet of many different local foods. The kids LOVED the goat meat and different kinds of bananas as well as chapati bread. I really liked “ugali” which is basically polenta, “mchicha” which is a lot like spinach greens and my favorite, “makande” which is a bean-and-corn stew. Kevin really like a pork and banana stew. Also, all through Tanzania we had avocados, the best avocados I’ve ever eaten. They were picked fresh, totally ripe, right from the tree. I could have eaten the whole platter.

As we were talking at lunch, we learned that school children will often step into a field and cut off a piece of sugarcane to snack on. Jack, Owen and Fiona thought that sounded great, so our hostess took her machete and stepped off into a field and came back with a platter of fresh sugarcane pieces for our dessert.

As we were walking around the village, we passed some schoolgirls. According to Abraham, they looked at Jack and Owen and one said, “There are our husbands. I get the one in the green shirt (Owen).” The other said, “I get the one in the baseball hat (Jack).”

Photos from our day in Mto wa Mbu are here.

We had a wonderful time. Fiona rode absolutely every ride possible (she wasn’t tall enough for Rockin’ Rollercoaster!). We especially loved the Tower of Terror!

The princess breakfast was a big success…Fiona got to talk to five different princesses and Jack and Owen successfully managed to speak to none.

See you next Tuesday!!

No, actually I did a quick run through and pulled about 200. Have fun looking at them!!!

Cancun photos are here.