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.

Toilet- Tarani 1971

Here it is, folks. No building needed.

Grain Storage - WaIkoma 1972

The very large woven baskets with thatch roofs you see on the right of the house are grain storage bins. One clmbs a small ladder and props up the roof to get to the grain when needed.

Cooking - Tarani 1971

Cooking was done over an open fire with an earthern pot nested between three stones. Villagers cooked inside during the rains and the smoke filtered out through the thatch. They would build a seperate tiny hut ( jiko) in which to do the cooking. We erected an old piece of tarp over our fire when necessary. The cooking stones held great significance as sort of the hallmark of the home. There were several staple products which practially everyone needed; kerosene lamp oil (for tiny wick lamps) salt, cooking oil and matches. Tea leaves and sugar were added if one had the shillings and then came malaria pills and batteries for a flashlight. Machetes, cloth and perhaps a metal basin could be had at some close little store.
Practially everything else could be made; cooking pots, food baskets, sleeping mats, spears, bows and arrows, sandals from old tires, leather skins for various uses, wooden mortar and pestle for grinding grain, stools from wood. All these were fashioned with great craftsmanship, decoration and beauty. Some of the baskets were woven so tightly that they would hold porridge, uji, made from grain. Water would be carried from the waterhole or spring in five gallon metal kerosene tins (debe). This was mostly done by women and children and only occasionally men.

Army Ants (Siafu) Tarani 1971

The rains tended to bring out the army ants. They mostly stuck to their little paths in the dirt but if one inadvertently stepped on them they would rapidly fan out looking for the fresh meat. Cagged animals were always at risk. The ants were large enough to really hurt when they bit you and usually would go up your legs until they found softer "meat"! Our rabbits in the hutches could be protected by sitting the hutch legs in old tin cans and filling the can with used oil or kerosene. One good that came from the ants is that they would clean all the vermin out of a hut. If you slept with a mosquito net tucked in around your mattress you were protected. The risk was not too worrisome. Snakes were more of a concern. Puff Adder, Spitting Cobra and the Mambas were most feared. If bitten in the bush, probably the most prudent activity would be to pick your burial spot. Again, one was just careful to keep watch. Most huts were kept in dirt clearings to be able to observe such dangers and also to keep grass fires from reaching the thatch roof. Grass would burn off at the end of the dry season and the smell of smoke was ubiquitious from this and from cooking fires. Our cooking fire was at the right where the three large stones are placed. You can observe that we are catching drinking water off the goathouse roof and into half a metal drum. Mzee Brito thatched the beautiful elevated rabbit hutch in perfect Zanaki style.

Goat House - Tarani 1971

Animals had to be protected at night from the hyena and occasional leopard. We only lost one which we could not get in one night. Mzee Brito, our close neighbor who lived about 1oo yards away, took great delight in showing these two Mzungu (European) boys how to do things the proper way. He taught us how to build and thatch, make rope from sisal, how to make beautiful baskets from bark and grass. His main source of protein was tiny songbirds he caught by building a small twig frame down by the waterhole and coating it with gooey sap. The little birds would come to drink, perch on the frame and become stuck. They would be collected and roasted over the fire on a piece of corrogated metal which singed off the beaks, legs and feathers. They were then stored in an earthen pot. A little corn meal ugali and one was set. One could also collect flying ants with a kerosene lantern hung over a pan of water at night. The bugs would be drawn to the light and fall into the water. They were then thrown down on the metal and roasted. Eventually we learned we had been eating the wrong bugs. It was a source of great amusement to him, as was the strange language we spoke and all the foolish pieces of junk we hauled in which had no use in his life. He was killed by poison arrow several years after we left - someone thought he was an Mchawi (evil doctor who could cast spells) He was our mentor. He also had and used poison arrows but would never show me the tree which produced the sap of which the poison was made. The Zanaki were traditionally hunters but had turned to farming, mostly. Dried meat was still a staple and mostly came from the Waikizu or WaIkoma further to the east. A lot of it was from "poachers", which was the perjorative way to describe those who hunted as a way of living, something done for eons. It made far more sense to harvest the wild game than ruin the ecology with goats and cattle. In fact, a study showed that the mix of wild game in the plains was seven times more effective than domestic cattle and goats in exchanging vegitation, inedible by humans, to meat protein. Remember that when you are prodded to give to some "save the wildlife" fund. You MAY be contributing to the extinction of some traditional life-style which was far more in harmony with nature. There must be some balance found.

Tarani Kijiji cha Ujamaa 1970-1972

This may well be the final view I had of our place in Tarani village. In the foreground is an old rusted out galvanized rainwater tank we used as an outhouse when there were visitors. Just pulled it over the hole in the ground. Othewise no house was needed. Goathouse and rabbit hutch in the background as well as the tiny "snake-proof" camper. 35 years later there is not one sign that anything ever stood on this spot. Even the accacia tree is gone. It has all been "recycled" by termites, army ants, weather and our village friends.

Wazanaki and WaIkoma Land

This is the present day view, taken from where our hut used to stand, out toward the southeast and the Serengeti. Far in the distance stands Chamliho, a mountain on which the Germans (pre WWI) had built a light signal station to send military information from the Lake Victoria region to the coast, about 900 miles away. Signals were relayed along from station to station. Fort Ikoma, also built by the Germans, lies not far away. There is a persistant rumor that a hoard of gold, which was used to pay the German soldiers, was buried and left behind when the British finally chased von Lettow out of the fort. The Tanganyikans who dug for them were supposedly shot to keep the secret. von Lettow was never captured but finally chased into Mozambique after keeping vast numbers of Brits engaged in trying to capture him and his Tanganyika "askaris". There is a well-known statue, the Askari Monument in Dar es Salaam, to honor his Tanganyikan soldiers.

All Cleaned Up

Siso, my hunting buddy and I, hit the town of Musoma one day and decided to go to the local "studio" and get a photo while actually being clean and in clean clothes, sort of rare. Siso is now rather old and in poor health, still living at home in Buturi, but we can laugh at all the fun we had out hunting together. Flat tires (one always carried jacks, spanners, tire irons and tube repair kits) tetse flies, hyenas at night, army ants, punctured fuel tanks, sleeping on the dirt, things that broke in absolutely the worst place to be. Of such, good memories are made. Look at those checked pants!

The Rain

Life in the bush is governed by the rain and the coming and going of the rainy season. The huge migrations of wildebeast and zebra are predicated on this, as is the survival of all life in the bush, human included. There is nothing so exciting as seeing a thunderstorm coming after several months of living out of a mudhole, boiling or filtering water and knowing that clean water is on the way and that your rainbarrel will be full of water and all of it drinkable! Water is more valuable than the gold which might lie at the end of this arc.

Celebrating

Important events in village life require a feast of some kind or another. Many or these involve the drinking of local beer made from fermented grain and called mbege. An earthen pot is sunk in the dirt up to it's rim and filled with warm mash. Each drinker has his own straw or mrija, fashioned from joined hollow grass stems and covered over with small fish intestine, very much like heat shrink electrical tubing. The drying shrinks the tubing and holds the mrija together. A small piece of tin is punctured with holes and wrapped around the lower end as a screen. The mrija is rather brittle and must be carried in a long tube for protection unless one is so fortunate to get some transfussion hose from a hospital and make a flexible mrija. The mbege is very low in alcohol content and one can drink and socialize for hours and still walk home. From time to time warm water is added to the pot to encourage the fermentation. Corn ugali sits on the ground and someone has almost finished off the meat stew. My co-worker, Don and his wife, Judy are having a go at it. Since Mennonites were supposed to be teetotalers the Bishop, who saw these photos, mused that they must be "pretending." Right.

Sundown in the Serengeti

Thrashing Beans

Some of the farm work was done together on particular crops that were raised communally. We raised red beans and ricked them on the tripods you see in the background and then thrashed them out with sticks on an old piece of tarp. Chacha Mete is in the foreground. Corn, beans, rice and bananas were staples. Cassava was always grown as a hardship crop just in case the rains failed. It would grow in almost any conditions and was practically all starch. The roots would be dug up and ground when dry and used to extend the maize ugali. We in North America actually eat cassava as Tapioca. Machicha, wild greens could be gathered and added to the stew that was eaten with the ugali. Mostly the stew was wild dried meat and the occasional chicken always with onions. Goat was slaughtered for special occasions. Old Mzee Brito who lived next door subsisted for the most part on tiny songbirds that he caught down by the spring where we got water. It was not much more than a mudhole that was used by cattle in the day and wild animals at night. It was also where laundry and bathing was done. It was our drinking water but only after you ran it through a British Berkfield filtre. The two of us guys lived on 5 gallons a day to bathe, wash dishes, do laundry, water the plants and water the goats. It was reused so many times it looked like think chocolate milk when it went on the plants.

Plowing

This is one of Kazi Moto's wives, the beauty who can plow like crazy. I stopped to see Kazi last time I got out to Tarani and he is not in good health. She seems to be doing , however and still is quite beautiful in old age. This is a single bottom steel plow pulled by four oxen and she is breaking up some virgin soil down below our place preparing to plant corn. As you can see from the dry grass, the time is near the end of the dry season when planting begins and roofs are thatched. Walls are mudded when the rains begin so that water does not have to be carried. This spot is between the Serengeti Plains to the east and Lake Victoria/Nyanza to the west.

Nyumba 1971 House 1977

The house above is what we built and lived in at Tarani Kijiji cha Ujamaa in Mara Region. When I moved over to Kilimanjaro I built a similar house but using dimensional material; corrogated metal (bati) and Taveta stone which is a local soft volcanic rock which can be cut with a panga, machete. The metal roof was superior only in that it lasted for more years than the grass. The grass was free and rendered a house much cooler inside. In my metal roof house, I added the shower stall out the back and the overhead tank painted black for hot water. I found an old cast iron cook stove for a little heat and cooking. You can see the snows of Kilimanjaro in the background. 25 years later the little metal roof house is still in good condition and being used for a chapel. The thatch house is just a memory.

Kilimanjaro - 2005

I taught for a year at Kilacha Farmers Training Centre near Moshi in Tanzania (1976) I and some students were designing and fabricating tools for agriculture. One of my dearest friends is Maleaki Mmbando and his wife Audrey. I get back to Mwika as often as possible and stay with them up on the mountain. Kilimanjaro at this altitude is a climate like late spring in Virginia (year-round) You have gentle rain and bananas and coffee outside your door and plentiful water coming down the mountain from glacier melt. If you want cold you go up the mountain; if you want hot, you do down. Last year my elderly father and I paid them a visit and were hosted with great joy. Here is the Mmbando family with my father and I. Maleaki operates a metal shop near the banana market in Mwika. I try to assist with equipment I carry over as baggage on the plane.

Hunting for Food 1972

Rangaria, in the white coat, owned the Peugot pickup and Zed, who had broken his arm, and I took off one evening and set up camp out in the bush and shot a gazelle for supper. We kept running over thorn bushes and getting flats and you can see the truck up on a jack. On the roof of the truck is the remains of the "Tommy". Rangaria is carrying my Model 94 which is a 32 Special. Ammo totally unavailable in East Africa. I took about 60 rounds and after 3 years still had some left. It was killing not for sport but for food. We ate wildebeast, zebra, gazelle, impala, eland, cape buffalo, hippo but preferred the smaller game as it was so much easier to dress out and load in the bush.
Slaughtering a couple tons of buffalo and getting it loaded in a truck is not a cake walk. We would go for zebra and wildebeat mostly. Very good eating. And the whole village would celebrate. Siso has an old Remington 30-06. He is Luo and Rangaria is Zanaki but we all spoke Swahili.
Actually it is now required, to hunt buffalo, calibre 375 or greater. We used smaller calibre; in this case 300 Win Mag, 308, 30-06 and the 32 Special. It took eight shots to stop the buffalo and we had to follow him into the scrub, in retrospect, not a wise thing to do with small calibre. Siso and I are pretending we killed it with the 32 Special. Don't let that fool you.