Kitame Campground

This is the first shelter that we erected on the beach front at Kitame Campground.  Two others are now built and will be ready for use in the dry season. 

Elephantitis

A disease wherein this guy steps on your tent. In the language of electrical construction, this is called "direct burial".

Ngorongoro

Simply known as "the Crater" in East Africa for very good reason. It is the largest caldera in the world with an unbroken rim, and is a veritable zoo. All the rainfall in the crater remains as, first, pools of fresh water and then flows into a lake to evaporate, so there is year-round habitat for animals. Only the giraffe cannot negotiate the steep walls of the rim. Nights spent camping up on the rim of the crater require good warm clothing and sleeping bags and tents. Elephants frequent the water tank for the bathhouse and warthogs wander through the camp at night.

Bwejuu, East Coast of Zanzibar

You get a thatch roof bungalow for about $10 a night, sleep with the sound of the Indian Ocean at your door, walk the finest white sand on the planet, eat fresh seafood of your choice, etc. etc. If there is any place on earth finer I just have never found it. Daily morning transportation from Stone Town and you do not need reservations - just go and there will be a place for you. We stay at Twisted Palms but there are a whole bunch of places, some nicer. Also some nicer hotels if you want to be pampered a bit, though I can't quite imagine staying in one. August, September is the cooler and drier time to visit and you won't have to fight the mosquitos. It can get sticky in the early months of the year. Walk out to the reef when the tide is out.

Mmbando's at Mwika- 2005

Here is Maleaki and Audrey Mmbando's place in Mwika up on the side of Kilmanjaro. Bananas, coffee and beans all growing together. The mountain is so densely settled here that they must keep the cows and goats fenced and bring them feed, mostly banana vegitation. Mwika is the banana capital of Tanzania and on market day the lorries load up huge loads to take all over the northern part of the country. Coffee has declined in importance but still grown. They put me up in the little addition on the rear of the house. They have just recently gotten electricity. It is blanket weather at night at this altitude, about 6000 feet and only a few degrees south of the equator, like a fine spring day year-round. Maleaki has a metal business in the village, making security grills for windows and doors. You can see his handiwork on his house.

Tarani Village Meeting Tree -2005

Myself with Chacha and some of the other village leaders at the meeting tree. Mkutano is Swahili for the "meeting" and it takes place under this tree where matters of the village are discussed in the shade. It generally goes on for hours and everyone gets to have a say. All matters are consensus and hours and hours are required. When everyone starts to get hungry and thirsty or has to pee, the meeting gets wrapped up. After 35 years, the village still needs a dispensary for medicine. Anyone want to go over with me and camp here in the village and put one up? You would never regret the experience, do good and have a blast! All they really need is a good supply of malaria medicine and a few antibiotics, all of which can be sold over the counter. Post me at mailto:kdbrunk@juno.com We could throw in a trip to the Serengeti.

Kazi Moto Family w/ Chacha - 2005

This is the Kazi Moto family and some other villagers. Kazi is sitting to Chacha's left and one of his wives in on the far right of the picture. Mzee Britos "grandson" is in the center back with the tee shirt. I say "grandson" in quotes because it may actually be the grandson of his brother. There are no distinctions in the lexicon or society. All those in the same generation and family are brothers and sisters.

Mzee Brito Grave - 2005

Chacha Mete took me to the grave of Mzee Brito, the old man who was our mentor. It is marked by a pile of rocks near where his house stood.
Chacha's wife Perusi died some years ago and Chacha carrries on alone. He, Kazi Moto, Albert and James Olimo all still live nearby.

Longnot Crater

Phil Stauffer was studying in Nairobi and we took motorcycle to Longnot Crater down in the Rift Valley, climbed it and spent the night up on the rim. It is virtually impossible to get down inside without ropes due to the shear walls but friends did onetime and barely made it out. There is a small plane which crashed down in the bowl but cannot be seen any longer. In the cool morning air, one could see all sorts of steam holes around the sides of the bowl. When we left the next morning we ran into a local guy who wondered if we had seen all the leopards that live up there. No. We were asleep in sleeping bags out on the dirt, sleeping the sleep of the ignorant. The photo at the top is us on the rim. The photo just below is Phil and I, 35 years later in the US, just as ignorant I suppose.

Duncan the Goat w/ Aloise

One of our better ideas was to bring in milk goat stock to cross with local goats. We got this handsome guy from Nairobi and brought him back on the back of a pickup. We bluffed our way through the gate at Ngorongoro Crater in order to come home the short way. Since we were part of an Ujamaa village and that was the government policy, the argument was made that if we were not allowed through, the guards would be thwarting "progress" and, furthermore, it was a village in Zanaki land very near President Nyerere's home village. Low and behold, we then proceeded to lose our fuel pump just down the road and had to back most of the way up to the Crater rim so that fuel would feed the carburator by gravity and then had to spend the night in wild animal land. A cook put Duncan in his little kitchen building for safety overnight and the next morning there were goat turds in every conceivable spot of that little building; pots, pans, stove, you name it. The place was in shambles. The cook took one look and almost died of laughter! We went through the Serengeti with that goat on the back like we were trolling for lions, but we got him through. Duncan was a real pain in the butt when any doe in the village was in heat. He would nail you every chance he got. I guess he was still mad about the trip down. He got some sort of disease and passed away before he could achieve much in terms of offspring, not that he didn't want to or didn't try. He was likely too large a buck to cross with the small does due to birthing issues. But he was rather entertaining. Aloise was his guardian and took it all in good humour.

New Goat House

We built a new goat house from mud blocks and with a tin roof. If you look carefully you will see my co-worker Don holding a baby goat up at the window. We had five or six goats that ran loose during the day and getting them in at night was a real hassle. One old nanny decided she was going to stay out and it was her last night. A leopard (according to Mzee Brito) got her.

Weapons

Weapons were used for defense and hunting. Poison arrow tips were designed to come off the shaft and remain in the victim while the poison did it's thing. It required tracking for a while until the animal collapsed and the area around the arrow tip would be cut out. The bow is strung with sinew. The quiver is from rawhide, shaped and sewn while green. The spear head came on an eight foot shaft. My co-worker, Don, was trapped one day in our grass house by a green mamba and the only thing at hand was the spear. The shaft was too unwieldy with the low roof and all. He broke the shaft off over his knee to have a go at the snake. Don won and the snake lost but my spear was then only about three feet long. They also used a club called a rungu and a machete called a panga. There was a defensive system in the bush in which anyone in trouble could make this certain call and everyone else in hearing distance would repeat the call and head toward the sound with a weapon of some sort. So the call was spread far and wide and in several minutes the original caller would be surrounded with their homegrown "milita", armed to the teeth. Woo unto all who used the call for no reason. They may or may not be beaten senseless. Justice was swift and sure. Cattle theiving was a common concern.

Oxen Power Plant - Kilacha 1977

Over at the Kilacha Training Centre there was this junk tractor which we used as raw material for other projects. I dug a hole and took the whole rear end and put one wheel down in the hole with the transmission just slightly below the ground level and mixed some cement to anchor it at the lower hub. I backfilled and attached a full length of two inch pipe to the transmission at the clutch end and ran it out in a small ditch. Used wood block bearings boiled in oil to support it at several places. Then laid some old sheetmetal over the ditch and leveled it off. I attached four long poles to the upper hub and supported them about mid-span with guy wires from a center stand pipe. An oxen was attached to each sweep arm. The output speed could be governed by shifting the transmission or prodding the oxen. On the outboard end of the output shaft was fastened a large two - sheeve pulley which is shrouded a bit with a wooden box. We could power several different implements but the best, by far, was the old two-hole corn sheller which could spin so fast that you could not keep up feeding it. This was about 30 years ago and I don't know how it held up.