Bi Kidude – As Old as My Tongue
January 22, 2008
By Freddy Macha
I am seated in this hall with roughly, fifty people, watching a film. Beautiful, cosy, intimate, Arcola Theatre is based in the Turkish quarter of Stoke Newington, north London.
For several weeks the Africa Mine Music and Movement festival has been here.
This late Sunday afternoon we are looking at a film from Zanzibar and every now and then you can hear me chuckling in the silence of mostly non-Kiswahili speaking audience.
This is because although the movie is sub-titled, most times the translation misses certain moods that you cannot pick up while reading a foreign language.
In other words I am proud to be observing something from my own culture. This is rare and unique, as I am the only Tanzanian in this space.
The other person that would exchange Kiswahili words with me is Englishman, Andy Jones. It took him three years to make this documentary on Zanzibar`s Taarab singer legend, Bi Kidude.
As Old As My Tongue gives a lesson on East African history, culture, music and the role of Swahili women in society.
In their advert flyer, the Screen-Station producers say Bi Kidude (real name Fatma Baraka) is `probably the oldest singer on the world stage today.`
Old? That is the first point. Old has these days become 35 to 50 years in Africa. Poverty and diseases are killing our people prematurely.
But Bi Kidude tells us she was born poor, her father, a coconut climber (mkwezi) and began singing at the tender age of ten in the 1920�s.
She performed with the legendary musician Siti Binti Saad eulogised by writer Shaaban Robert, fifty years ago. Bi Kidude continues singing Siti Binti Saad`s songs.
Both Shaaban Robert and Siti Binti Saad are, sadly, gone but Kidude, which means a tiny thing, (she explains how the name came about) is still here.
While replying to questions, film director, Andy Jones is asked whether Bi Kidude, was affected by the tough politics that we relate to Zanzibar, including the bloody Revolution of January 1964.
`She sang while Arabs ruled. She sang while the British ruled. And she sang around the times of the Revolution and is still singing amidst today�s conflicts of CUF and CCM.`
This makes her as old as modern Zanzibar. That is why her age is so fascinating. Some cynical islanders claim she is cheating, that she is in her 90`s. Others say 105. Bi Kidude herself declared recently, she is 113.
Whatever the number, one truth lingers. Here is a cherished great grandmother still smoking her cigarettes (even the film`s poster uses this image) drinking beer (and Konyagi, some say), sweeping her house and cooking ugali with fish and spinach (as shown in the film). She is also doing the most significant thing.
Touring around the world including (as witnessed in the documentary) Paris and England�s World Music and Dance festival (WOMAD) in 2004 and 2005, respectively.
The portrayal is just as about her music as her life style.
One of the reasons that artists are said to be mirrors of society is the ability to reflect culture and customs.
Bi Kidude plays drums, sings and leads Ngoma ya Unyago ceremonies in Zanzibar.
We see the Women Only rites of passage dancing. It might appear erotic to the foreigner�s eye but it is something fast disappearing especially in East African cultures.
`During Unyago women are taught sex and how to be with husband. Theory and practise.`
Quips a woman in the film. And technically speaking, the best quality of as old as my tongue is that those in it, including Bi Kidude herself, act, freely tell their stories, playing the role of both narrator and participant.
In most documentaries you have the constant interference of the film-maker.
The good thing about Andy Jones is to let Bi Kidude be her own voice, from beginning to end.
Consequently, this work is almost a good lesson for aspiring cinema makers wanting to cast their egos aside and let life narrate it`s own tale.
Plus a subject that has always bothered me.
Reading many warm reviews my attention is especially drawn to London`s Guardian (Sultans of Swing) in January 2007:
`Zanzibar`s music traditions, are it seems, becoming more popular among foreign fans than the young local people who take their home grown music for granted.`
While over a century old, Bi Kidude is certainly a living legend, a treasure of African music, an example of women of great achievement (winner of the international 2005 WOMEX Award), she seems to be appreciated more by foreigners, as exemplified by the one who just made this movie.
We hear a local Zanzibar producer lamenting how her Taarab music is not played in local radio stations especially on Tanzania mainland.
Despite her icon status, the musician is still treated as a nobody, almost a freak.
Sounds very familiar. Another such legend was the late Hukwe Zawose who (unknown to many in his home) used to be the most recognised international figure from Tanzania second only to Mwalimu Nyerere.
Like Bi. Kidude , Zawose was hardly heard in our radio stations.
His Gogo Ilimba (or Mbira) stuff was described as Tanzania`s classical music by London producer Gabriel Prokofiev.
Gabriel, a remarkable musician, speaks Kiswahili and had stage managed Zawose many times; just like Andy Jones became part of the retinue of Wazungu helping value our own exceptional talents, treasures and stars.
The moral? Let us try and applaud, appreciate Bi Kidude and her music while she is still alive. Documentary will soon be out on DVD.
Source: Guardian
Exploring Zanzibar; a Tropical Island Adventure – By Annabel Skinner
January 1, 2008
Exploring Zanzibar; a Tropical Island Adventure – By Annabel Skinner
Zanzibar wraps its reality around you like a lingering fairytale. This tiny archipelago of Indian Ocean islands that once lured sailors, Sultans and slavers to its far-distant shores is so charismatic that it sweeps you into its shadowy romantic past and sunlit present all at once, and finally sets you down, all sun-bronzed and laden with spices and island art, and memories of an exceptionally sparkling and colourfully abundant sea.
The main island is small and easy to explore, with glorious white sand, palm-fringed beaches rewarding you for just a couple of hours’ drive to the North coast and the same to the East, along mainly hopeless but endlessly fascinating roads flanked by simple homesteads, roads worn more by foot or bicycle and frequented by chickens. There is a time warp here, this place where the past is so responsible for the present, where mobile phones, internet connections and television are all relatively recent, and where the history and culture is so imbued that you can simply stretch out beneath the dappled shade of the coconut palms and soak it up. Welcome to Zanzibar, and a world apart.
Sailors and traders from the first century AD came to the lands of ‘Zinj el Barr’, the Black Coast, bringing beads, porcelain and silks to trade for gold, slaves and spices, ebony, ivory, indigo and tortoiseshell. They waited for annual monsoon winds to fill their dhow sails and bear them across the Indian Ocean; today’s visitors usually arrive in a small ‘plane or ferry from Dar es Salaam. But these still afford a measured approach, allowing a breathtaking vision of sparkling cerulean waters over sandbanks and reefs, and then into Stone Town, the ancient island capital, still more of a town than a city, a maze of winding pedestrian streets in a hotchpotch of rooftops, a mass of corrugated iron overwhelming the historic stonework beneath.
Helplessly entwined in its own history, the people of Zanzibar are the Swahili, evolving from the influx of mainly Arabian and Persian immigrants who settled on the East African coast and islands to trade and escape the political upheavals of the Gulf two thousand years ago. Their cultural history was founded in sailing dhows, similar to those that glide by its shores today, boats that brought people, language and cultures and long centuries of power wrangling.
The Arab immigrants were overthrown by the Portuguese in the 15th century, until the Sultan of Oman finally saw them off for good in 1698 and started building the Stone Town of today; the Old Fort on the harbour was built on the remains of a Portuguese church dating back to 1600. Visitors to Stone Town still encounter the grandiose vision and dominant architectural style of a confident young Sultan who transferred the seat of his sultanate from the contentious capital of Muscat to the breezier climes of Zanzibar in 1832, and then began palace building in earnest, and seeding the coconut palms and clove plantations which soon defined Zanzibar as the ‘Spice Island’.
Driving through the island centre now, it is worth stopping to explore the spice plantations, where a guided walk for passing tourists is likely to be more lucrative than vast crops to export, but it is a fine sensual pleasure to crumble cinnamon bark straight from the tree, to breathe the scent of cloves drying in the sun, to taste and guess the spice from a handful of pods and powders. These are well used by the chefs and kitchens in beach hotels, where fishermen daily bring the catch of the day to be grilled, baked, battered or blanched with assorted Zanzibar spice.
The coast is dotted with hotels, self-contained beach hideaways that relish their privacy and provide various levels of style and comfort. I have been to most and head north by choice, to the northernmost peninsula which is occupied by Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel. The name is a very literal Swahili translation, but it says nothing of how this beach is secluded and the coral sands are blanched very, very pale. It does not tell how the wonderfully translucent and clear the sea is here, where a coral reef surrounds the shore creating a shallow wide expanse to explore until the tide rises high and then turquoise waves crash onto the beach. It is a naturally beautiful place.
Turtles come ashore to lay their eggs when the moon is full, and the surrounding reefs are a thriving colourful world to snorkel and dive. Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel is essentially respectful of its place, each room constructed from local wood and coral rag to create a number of thatched round houses along the beach, with lodge rooms in gardens behind. Soft sand pathways link the central thatched and open-sided restaurant to the rooms, pool and dive centre, providing the comforts of a fine hotel with a rustic, beach hideaway style. This is a fine place to lie back and soak up Zanzibar, crack open a coconut, watch the dhows on the far horizon and look forward to spice-scented, star filled African night.
African monkey trail – by Kate Humble
January 1, 2008
African monkey trail – by Kate Humble
The pilot turned and shouted above the noise of the engine. “If those animals start to cross the runway, we’ll need to abort the landing.” My husband Ludo and I could only agree – “the animals” were bigger than our tiny plane. This was our introduction to Ruaha, a little-known national park in southern Tanzania. Those who know it rave, not just about the beauty of its landscapes but about the variety and sheer number of animals that live in and wander through this pristine, unfenced wilderness.
We landed on the mud air-strip, coasting past the herd of feeding elephants. Ruaha, normally bone dry, had received its annual rainfall in just a month, and was lush and verdant. The drive to camp turned into a game drive. Male kudu with corkscrew horns and masked faces peered out at us. A herd of buffalo snorted and stamped. A lone lioness, the remains of a young giraffe beside her, rolled and stretched blissfully in the grass.
Mdonya Old River Camp is just that. Camouflage green tents are set along the banks of what was once the Mdonya River, and a larger tent serves as a dining room. The whole lot could be dismantled in 24 hours, leaving few signs it ever existed. The manager, Nick, showed us to our tent and warned: “Don’t leave anything outside after dark; we’re having a bit of a problem with a hyena. She’ll eat anything. Last night she had a go at one of the kerosene lanterns.” And that really is the beauty of this camp. It doesn’t shut out the wildlife – quite the opposite. A month before, a pride of lions killed a buffalo outside one of the tents. “We didn’t have any guests in that tent at the time,” Nick said. “We just put people in the tents farthest away and left the lions to it. They stayed around for a few days. The guests loved it.”
The rain had brought new life to the bush – newborn impala, baby giraffe and tiny vervet monkeys clinging to their mothers. But it also meant that, with food and water everywhere, the game had dispersed. We were at the mercy of chance and every sighting was a treat. Travelling was challenging: vehicles became stuck in treacly mud, and airstrips became unusable. We flew out of Ruaha, dodging rainclouds, heading west. From the window we saw hills become mountains, the bush become forest and then the grey expanse of Lake Tanganyika, the size of England, separating Tanzania from the Congo.
Western Tanzania is largely inaccessible. Gombe is its best-known reserve. Jane Goodall lived there from the early 1960s, studying and making astonishing discoveries about our closest relatives, chimpanzees. Gombe doesn’t really have facilities for visitors, but 200km (125 miles) south is the larger Mahale National Park, home to several groups of chimps. Kyoto University has had researchers there for more than 40 years. Visitors to Mahale’s few tourist camps have a good, although not guaranteed, chance of seeing chimpanzees in their natural habitat, going about their daily business unconcerned by a human audience. I had only seen chimpanzees in captivity. They are big, powerful, extremely intelligent, human enough to make you think you might understand them, animal enough to make them inscrutable. I was drawn to them as much by fear as by curiosity. But before Ludo and I and John and Diana, two Americans also staying at Greystoke Camp, could venture into their territory, we had to pass a test.
Last summer catastrophe struck the chimps of Mahale.
They started dying in alarming numbers of a flu-like disease. Magdalena, a vet who worked at Gombe for years and now runs Greystoke Camp, was part of the team trying to establish where the disease had originated. There was suspicion that the “flu” had been caught from humans, and strict precautions had been established to prevent any recurrence. Researchers and tourists have to stay at least 10m (33ft) from the chimps, and wear masks. Any hint of a cold and you are not allowed in the forest.
Once the aircraft landed on the shores of the lake, we boarded a boat and sailed south. After about an hour we saw a beach, empty apart from an eccentric-looking thatched building, and a small knot of people – our welcoming party. The rest of the camp was hidden beyond the tree line. Behind the beach, the forest: dark, daunting and for the moment off limits.
We spent the afternoon on the lake with Greystoke’s guide, Safe. Ostensibly there to point out crocodiles, hippos and hundreds of bird species, he was also carefully monitoring us: any sign of a cold and we would not be seeing any chimps. Blissfully unaware of this, we were celebrating the sheer joy of being in such a place with a large gin and tonic, all talking at once, so we barely heard Safe’s shout. “Chimp!” he repeated, pointing towards the bank. Disbelievingly, we turned – and there was a black face peering, a little indignantly at us, from a tree. “It’s a wild one, not one from the habituated group,” Safe said. “You’re very lucky. Hardly anyone sees them.” Silent now, we looked from the chimp to each other and back again, hardly daring to believe what we were seeing. Tears brimmed in Diana’s eyes.
Imagine then how we felt the next morning, when, having been given a clean bill of health, we found ourselves 10m from Alofu, the alpha male, lying on his back, arms flung wide, snoozing with a couple of younger males. Pushing through the undergrowth, we came across another little group, a female catching a nap while her baby was entertained by another young chimp.
On our final morning we abandoned breakfast. The trackers had spotted the chimps obligingly close by. We hadn’t seen them the previous day, despite six exhausting, exhilarating hours tracking through the forest. Now we stood, staring upwards as the canopy shook. Leaping bodies crashing through the branches, hooting calls filled the air and made our hair stand on end. As we climbed reluctantly back on the boat to leave, we were joined by one of the camp’s staff wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “98 per cent chimpanzee”: DNA, we agreed, we could all be proud of.
Kate Humble presents Springwatch on BBC Two. Her website www.stuffyourrucksack.com offers information on what to take on holiday to help local communities.
Reproduced from the The Times June 16, 2007
Veiled secrets
January 1, 2008
Veiled secrets
SLAVERY and sultans shadow the East African islands of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanzania, north of Dar es Salaam.
Slavery is the key historical issue, but with domes and minarets piercing the skyline, it is the stone legacy of the sultans that entices visitors. Stone Town, the old part of Zanzibar City, on the western coast of the main island, is the place to discover it all.
Merchant ships from Persia, Arabia and India have traded with Zanzibar for 2000 years, leaving a potent blend of Eastern and African culture. The islands were long owned by the sultans of Oman, who took over from the Portuguese in 1698. By 1840, Zanzibar was so important for Omani trade with East Africa that its capital, Stone Town, became the sultans’ headquarters.
Like many places in Africa, Zanzibar has reinvented itself as a tourist destination. Since 1964, when the last sultan was overthrown, Zanzibar has been a separate state within mainland Tanzania. It is made up of two large islands: Unguja (Zanzibar Island) and Pemba, plus several islets. Its capital and only large settlement is Zanzibar City, which embraces New City and Stone Town. I spend time in the pungent, narrow streets of Stone Town, the economic and cultural hub of old Zanzibar and now a World Heritage site.
Outside Stone Town are clove and coconut plantations, long, perfect beaches and coral reefs, rare, long-tailed red colobus monkeys and, on the small island of Nungwi, giant sea turtles, all in a humid tropical climate. But in Stone Town I walk beside carved Arab doorways and slave cells, feel the cobbled streets beneath my feet, look up at cool verandas and experience the potent sense of 2000 years of connections between Africa and the East.
Best monument to the slave trade: After the abolition of the Zanzibar trade in 1873, the Anglicans built a cathedral on Stone Town’s Creek Road, where the old slave market used to be. The place where the altar now stands was once the whipping post where slaves were tested for toughness: if they wept, their price went down. The marble around the altar is blood red. Beneath the market are their cramped cells.
Best door: The ornate, studded doors of Stone Town have a clear Persian influence but a distinct style. The maze of alleyways is dotted with these immense, elaborately carved doors. It was a custom in Zanzibar for a builder first to order his doorframe and then build the house around it. In 1857, adventurer Richard Burton commented: “The higher the tenement, the bigger the gateway, the heavier the padlock and the huger the iron studs that nail the door of heavy timber, the greater the owner’s dignity.” The most interesting door, behind the House of Peace Memorial Museum, dates back more than 300 years, which makes it reputedly the oldest in Zanzibar.
Best social quirk: Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim because of the influence of the Omani sultans. The women are supposed to cover themselves modestly but the gaiety of Zanzibaris is evident in the fun the women have with their cotton wraps, worn over their heads and as skirts. The girls wear a brightly patterned scarf, called a kanga. A Zanzibari girl might wear a kanga with a message on it directed at someone in her social group; one I spot says, “Don’t compete with me, you can never beat me.” Another girl, realising the message is directed at her, might go home and change into a kanga that says, “A confident person requires no reason to practise envy.”
Best-named attraction: Built in 1883, the House of Wonders was originally a royal palace. There is a 3.3m door gilded with texts from the Koran, and 12 other magnificently carved doors, reminders of the vast and showy wealth of the sultans. In one room I see traditional, ornate ebony furniture and, on the other side, European couches in flowery, 1960s kitsch, the influence of the other wives, perhaps.
The climax of Sultan Barghash’s flamboyant building spree, it has tiers of balconies, a clock tower, and a grand position on the waterfront behind the Forodhani Gardens between the Palace Museum and the Omani Fort. It houses the dreary-sounding but quirky Zanzibar National Museum of History and Culture.
Best resort: The white sand, azure sea and small pine forest on Mnemba Island, just off the northeast coast of Zanzibar, lead me to suspect Ursula Andress will pop out of the ocean at any minute. The entire island is a resort, and with only 10 evenly spaced villas, it feels as if I own a secret paradise. Apart from the waiter who brings me a drink to accompany the breathtaking sunset, the only disturbance is from the little Suni antelopes that occasionally scamper around my villa. www.mnemba.com.
Best guided tour: If you have ever wondered how nutmeg, ginger, tamarind, guava, carambola, menthol or cloves are grown, a spice tour is for you; such guided tours provide local knowledge you might otherwise miss. Highlights are the lipstick tree, with pods that produce a vibrant red dye, and soapberry trees, with berries that lather like soap when you rub them. Tours from 9am to 2pm include a lunch featuring spices encountered on the tour. Eco & Culture Tours, with an office on Hurumzi Street, offers a genuine medicine man as a guide. More: www.ecoculture-zanzibar.org.
Best drink: Taken in the shade while escaping the tropical midday sun, dawa is mostly vodka and ice but tastes of lime and honey. Dawa means medicine or magic potion in Swahili, for reasons which can rapidly become clear. The top floor of ETC Plaza, at the corner of appropriately named Suicide Alley and Shangani Street, is a good place to try dawa and the bar comes with ocean views; like Zanzibar, this drink is never bland.
Best hangover cure: Everywhere I go, people stand barefoot beside the orange dirt roads, selling sugarcane. I use a knife to slice the raw cane and lick the inside. Taken with a glass of water, it refreshes for the rest of the day. I also recommend corn sold on the streets: it tastes dry and like toffee.
Best mode of transport: A dalla-dalla, or a Zanzibari bus, is a beaten-up Toyota pick-up truck with a wooden roof and wrought-iron sides; these should carry 20 passengers but often 40 pile in, the extras hanging precariously off the sides. A dalla is five Tanzanian shillings, which is what the journey originally cost. They are still very cheap, about 300 shillings (26c) a mile. The No.2 dalla-dalla travels 20km north of Zanzibar town to the Mangapwani slave cave where, after the trade was abolished, slaves who were about to be sold were kept hidden in hollowed-out coral cellars.
Best street food: East Africa’s best street market is held every night by the waterfront at Forodhani Gardens in Stone Town. In the twilight, grilled fish and meat on skewers and octopus look and smell enticing. The crowds can be a little pushy, but it is a great place to wander even if you don’t buy. I have already eaten, but it is still hard to resist the food, fresh and sizzling in the dark.
Best shopping: Fine Zanzibari wooden chests are not quite as good as a door but are still hammered and studded, and have secret compartments. Some of the finest examples are in the Abeid Curio Shop opposite the cathedral. But how to get one back home? Spears and knives pose a similar problem. For those with less ambitious tastes, watercolours of the Stone Town doors are intense and enchanting. I buy one for about $15 in an art studio in the Omani Fort. The abstract carvings of the Makonde tribe are also eerie and powerful, with columns of interwoven human figures.
Bustling Mchangani Street in Stone Town consists of stalls crammed with kangas of every colour and grade of magnificence. Cathedral Street has some of the opulent furniture hastily left by rich Arabs after the 1964 revolution. I also visit Zanzibar Curio Shop in Changa Bazaar for a taste of pre-1964 wealth. And I return to the night market in the Forodhani Gardens for cheap Masai jewellery and carvings.
Best story: Princess Salme, daughter of the sultan of Oman, was born here in 1844 and shocked her family by converting to Christianity after falling pregnant and eloping with a young German merchant. When she died in 1924 she still had the dress she eloped in and a bag of sand from a Zanzibar beach. Her book Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar (by Emily Ruete, born Sayyida Salme) makes good pre-visit reading.
Best sundowners: Africa House Hotel on the coast in Stone Town was the English club from 1888 onwards and still has a colonial expat feel to it. It is a perfect place to end a walk around Stone Town: you can watch the sun sink into the Indian Ocean, with a dawa in hand.
Best end to the evening: Tower Top Restaurant at Emerson & Green Hotel, 236 Hurumzi St, Stone Town, a five-minute walk from Africa House, is world class. Atop a hotel, in a tower straight out of Arabian Nights, the restaurant seats about 20, most lounging on Arabian-style cushions and eating off low tables. The fixed-price menu includes dishes such as battered pepper shark and curried fishcakes with chutney and yoghurt. Enjoying a five-course meal, I look over Stone Town with all its faiths and facets, at an Anglican church, a minaret and a Muslim temple. There is a warm breeze from the Indian Ocean. Children scramble to collect kangas put out to dry on hot tin roofs. A violinist in a white robe plays eerily beautiful music, as if trying to raise a magic carpet, while his robe moves in the breeze. www.emerson-green.com.
Best last word: Locals greet tourists with jambo and enthusiastic tourists say jambo back, thinking they are saying hello in Swahili. But locals instead say mambo vipi, Swahili slang for “stay cool”. Use it to say hello and goodbye and impress the locals.
Reproduced from The Australian – Michael Stothard – August 09, 2007
On safari in Tanzania
January 1, 2008
On safari in Tanzania
If I had to survive in the bush, I’d kill a buffalo,” announces my son, Michael, aged 19.
“How?”
“I’d get a huge stone and crash it on his head.”
The young Masai warrior who is with us begins to laugh, long and deep. This is clearly the funniest thing he’s heard in a while. It’s like a Masai telling us he would survive in London by asking a passer-by for £100. “The buffalo weighs two tons,” our guide chortles. He turns the idea over in his head. “Hit a buffalo on the head with a stone…” he repeats delightedly.
Some trips are holidays and some are much more than that – voyages into another way of thinking and feeling. A journey into the Tanzanian bush is a journey into another dimension. From the threadbare airport at Arusha, our small plane wafted Michael and me to Manyara airstrip; from there, we were driven to the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge. The first glimpse takes your breath away. Ngorongoro is an 11-mile-wide volcanic caldera with a lake shimmering in the middle. Its 1,600ft walls turn the crater into an amphitheatre, a savage playpen for the animals that gather there to feed, drink – and be eaten.
The lodge is a hobbitlike community of thatched cottages, right on the rim. Step inside, though, and operatic silk curtains sweep down beside french windows overlooking the crater. There are immense beds, opulent in purple; the tissue box is made of porcupine quills; crystal beads hang from a chandelier. And when we returned from our first game drive, my “butler” had run an aromatic bath drenched in rose petals. I sank blissfully into the bubbles.
Down in the crater, the animals are so used to vehicles it was as though we were entirely invisible. Magical, bizarre, deeply luxurious, this is an astounding place. There are hippos, black rhinos, elephants and many thousand zebras, wildebeests and gazelles. We watched two young lions chase each other across the open plain, giving their deep, vibrant, almost comforting roar.
In the evening, after a dinner to make the gods jealous, we sat in leather chairs by an open fire, drank sherry and played poker – easy to feel like a god here. In the early morning I watched a cloud drift over the crater, while all around our cottage the buffaloes grazed.
THE NEXT leg of our safari was a searing contrast. We took a tiny plane out into the Serengeti, 120 miles from the nearest town, to a tented settlement without running water. This is Tanzania Under Canvas, and it moves every few months to chase the great migration of wildebeests and zebras.
My tent was right on the margins of the camp, and it made me uneasy, especially when I was told nobody had a gun. My whistle and torch didn’t feel like much protection from the lions. Not that staying there is a hardship. Like Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, it is run by CC Africa, and the mischievous camp manager, Bruce, welcomed us into the canvas “living room” erected just a week or two before our arrival, with its crystal glasses, leather-bound books and khaki sofas.
But there really are lions in the camp at night. I would have felt safer sharing a tent with Michael, and Bruce conceded that was perfectly reasonable – because then I would be only half as likely to be attacked. “It isn’t that he’d save you – it’s that while the predators munch on one, the other can escape. It’s the principle behind large herds.”
Later, I read from Out of Africa as I tried to sleep. “The views were immensely wide,” Karen Blixen writes. “Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart.” On any trip, the best literature of the place intensifies and enlarges your experience. But for all Blixen’s delicacy of language, I still couldn’t sleep.
EARLY NEXT morning we stepped out into the gentle danger of Africa. A red dawn stained the skies, and I felt the space of a whole continent – at once exhilarated and relaxed by the rising murmur of insects, the famous light. That first day we saw a cheetah, a leopard and a pride of lions with their cubs. Most impressive, though, was the thunder of the wildebeests as they stampeded over a hill, carried by dust clouds like an apocalyptic vision. Watching them, I found myself thinking like a lion: here was a banquet it would be impossible ever to finish. Later we witnessed the fear and despair of baby wildebeests parted from their mothers, as vultures went jauntily about their business nearby.
“Where there’s death there’s life,” said Ivan the ranger, matter-of-factly – yet he helped us to save one youngster by encouraging it to follow our vehicle.
But fear is part of the deal here, as I came to understand. Here you are not gods, as you are at the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge, and the experience offers a different kind of intensity. Spending all day watching the predators, and most of the night listening to them hunt outside your canvas wall, you soon begin to identify with the primal stimuli of the bush. You forget your wearisome human pride, and lose that sense of difference between man and other animals. I’d expected the worst thing about Tanzania Under Canvas to be the strip of tent separating me and the bush. It turned out to be the best.
From The Sunday TimesJuly 1, 2007; By Sally Emerson
News: Lake Natron’s Flamingoes
January 1, 2008
News: Lake Natron’s Flamingoes
The Tanzanian government has been asked to reconsider a proposed soda ash mining project in Lake Natron.
Experts say the project is a threat to the flamingos in Lake Nakuru and other Rift Valley lakes. BirdLife Africa Partnership members and associates from 23 countries meeting in Nairobi warned that the proposal by Tata Chemicals and the Tanzanian government to construct a soda ash extraction plant at the lake in Tanzania would disrupt the breeding of flamingos.
Lake Natron is the World’s most important breeding site for the Lesser Flamingo, a bird listed in the World Conservation Union red list of threatened species.
It accounts for 75 per cent of the world’s lesser flamingos and is the only site in the region where the flamingos have bred for the last 45 years.
Experts say during breeding, flamingos are sensitive to disturbance.
“Regional extinction of the Lesser Flamingo will in turn have far reaching impacts on national economies and the tourism industry in the region,” warned the conservationists. They petitioned the Tanzanian government to reconsider the proposed development, given the potential negative impacts of its implementation.
“We call upon all governments, both in Africa and globally, all organisations concerned, and all people of goodwill who care about biodiversity and the environment and future generations to stand up against the proposed development.”
Concerned that the Environmental Impact Assessment process was not participatory enough, the conservationists called upon Tanzania and Tata Chemicals to ensure due process was followed.
Southern Tanzania
January 1, 2008
Southern Tanzania
It was 1am when something caused me to wake up. Perhaps it was the silver light from the brightest moon I’ve ever seen streaming in through the fly screens. Or maybe the far-off “weeooow” call of a hyena deep in the bush. I decided to get up.
The bed of polished African timber was so big it must have taken me 10 minutes to crawl from the middle to the edge.The smooth floorboards were warm under my feet as I tottered to the rear of my luxurious jungle house.
Squinting through the mosquito mesh towards the lake my view of the water was blocked by a huge boulder. A boulder that I’m sure wasn’t there when I went to bed…And then the boulder moved slowly to the left – accompanied by a rhythmic crunching of fresh grass and leaves.
I groped for my torch. Not 30ft from my back door, a two-ton hippopotamus was busy eating the back garden.Well, it’s better than having to get the lawnmower out, I thought. And, after all, I was in Tanzania, in the heart of deepest, most mysterious and romantic Africa.
My pet hippo trundled off out of view, pausing only to deposit a gigantic pile of poo under the scrambled egg trees.Scrambled egg trees? That’s what the locals call them. And blobs of fluffy scrambled egg is exactly what the tree’s clusters of bright-yellow blooms look like.
And you can guess where they grow, can’t you? That’s right. Near the sausage trees.No, I haven’t been smoking some illegal substance. Although sometimes in this almost undiscovered part of Africa, you might think you have.
There were moments on my visit to the game reserves of southern Tanzania that resembled a Disney extravaganza.The plumage of the multicoloured malachite kingfishers, snatching little tilapia fish from the Rafiji river, certainly appeared digitally enhanced.The lilac feathers of the hyacinth rollers looked exquisite as they flitted from bush to bush. The reds and oranges of the bottlebrush plants pure Technicolor.
I was in Selous, the largest game reserve in Tanzania, in South-East Africa. And if you crave romantic adventure, you love the wild and the wilderness, if you want to live like a king and come face-to-face with the world’s finest beasts, this is the place.
It’s a 10-hour overnight flight from London to the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam. There, I clambered aboard a 10- seater single prop Cessna Caravan.There were no other passengers so the pilot invited me to sit next to him for the 40-minute hop to the Selous Safari Camp.As we taxied down the dirt airstrip in a cloud of red dust, a small herd of giraffe steadily nibbled the fever trees. “They just think we’re a big bird,” said the pilot. He was only half-joking… Some of the Batteleur eagles you will see in Tanzania have a wing span close to that of a small plane.
The camp was just a short ride from the airstrip in a game-viewing Land Rover. Herds of impala skittered and groups of giraffe cantered to one side as we bounced along to the lodge house.At the safari lodge you can be as busy or as lazy as you like. Ask a guide to take you out on the lake that’s teeming with crocodiles and hippos. There’s no danger – unless you trail a hand in the water!
If the animals don’t actually live in the water they all come there to drink. It’s also home to birds, including spoonbill storks and giant fish eagles.Or you could opt for one of the highly civilised Land Rover drives and breakfast in the bush. Your guide will set up a table and director’s chair where you can enjoy hot coffee, cereal, ham, eggs and rolls while tuskers and cheeky warthogs rumble by in the distance.Then, in the evening he’ll serve gin and tonic sundowners by the shore.
Accommodation is fantastic. Limited to a dozen people at a time, the lodge only sees about 5,000 visitors a year. You stay in a traditional village house, with palm frond eaves that virtually touch the ground. Inside, however, it’s like a luxury tent, with floors and furniture made from local hardwoods, and gigantic beds.
There is a limited amount of electricity and the Victorian-style paraffin lamps only add to the romantic atmosphere.Hot water comes courtesy of an outside woodburning stove while dinner is served around a campfire with guests swapping stories around one long table.After four nights, I took a flight two hours north to Jongomero in higher, hillier and more arid terrain.
The camp, a collection of traditional bungalows set around a timber lodge, stands on the banks of a dry river-bed.Game-watching is again by Land Rover but there’s also more contact with smaller creatures. Jackals and bat-eared foxes cropped up everywhere as did monkeys, troupes of baboons and Africa’s smallest antelopes, little Dikdiks, which are about the size of a spaniel.Early one morning, I had an exceptionally rare sighting of a nocturnal anteater as it scampered back to its burrow after a night’s hunting.
Then that evening, as I got ready for dinner, a gennet – one of the smallest of Africa’s spotted cats – sauntered past my back balcony.Like Selous, Jongomero is “open” – no fences – so animals can and do stroll by. A herd of four young male elephants put in an appearance so often the staff nicknamed them “The Jongo Boys”.
One afternoon, rather than walk an extra mile to the nearest waterhole, they tried to drink the swimming pool!When a small herd of zebra got too close they were seen off with hoots and trunk-waving. Dangerous? Not really.The camp’s local guides and guards understand the mood of the animals.
This was demonstrated the following day when my guide Dayo casually announced “We’ve got a puncture” as we watched 200 buffalo at their favourite drinking spot.While the one-ton beasts – considered to be among the most dangerous and unpredictable in Africa – rumbled past us just 30 yards away, Dayo hopped off the Land Rover, jacked it up and changed the wheel, without batting an eye. Guides like Dayo have grown up in the jungle. They know what you can and can’t get away with. I’m astonished how close we get to the lions. But step off the Land Rover and you’d be lunch, for sure.
That was driven home when we came across a boss male, three lionesses and five cubs, faces and whiskers red with the blood of freshly-killed wildebeeste they were feasting on as vultures wheeled overhead.If you fancy a little R&R after your safari adventure the reef island of Zanzibar, once infamous for its slave trade and now better known as one of the world’s great “spice islands”, is just a few miles offshore.There are plenty of resorts along its eastern coast but I chose the Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel on the remote northern tip.
Guests stay in bungalows with fourposter beds and verandahs, while terraced tropical gardens tumble down to a white sand beach on the edge of a coral reef.Service is top-notch and the restaurant and bars are excellent.
The actual village is a 15-minute stroll along the beach. People are poor but friendly and welcome you to the local bars and restaurants. There’s world-class diving and snorkelling and you should check out the Turtle Sanctuary. I went fishing and brought back a 15lb yellowfin tuna which the hotel chef cut into steaks for that night’s barbecue.
Zanzibar has a colonial feel. The capital, Stonetown, seems locked in a centuries old timewarp. I’d also recommend a trip to one of the hidden spice farms, where you’ll see the island’s biggest export – ginger, cinnamon, cardomon, black peppercorns and pungent cloves – being grown.
Ok, this holiday wasn’t cheap but definitely comes under the heading of trip of a lifetime. And the bush camps tend to be full-board basis so all you’ll need is a little extra cash for your bar bill and modest tips.
Most of the Brits who visit Tanzania head for the world-famous Serengetti park, where you’ll rarely be alone. In contrast, at Selous and Jongomero you will rarely see anyone else at all.
Jeff Edwards travelled with Tanzania Odyssey – www.tanzaniaodyssey.com. The company tailor-makes Africa safaris and trips, including three nights at Selous Safari Camp, three nights at Jongomero and, in Zanzibar, four nights at Ras Nungwi Luxury Beach Hotel, and two nights at Beyt al Chai boutique hotel from around £4,000 per person, including all flights. Call 020 7471 8780
Reproduced from the Mirror 27 oct 2007
Grumeti Reserves – Sasakwa Lodge
January 1, 2008
Grumeti Reserves – Sasakwa Lodge
Lodges have come a long way since the early days of safaris, says Lisa Grainger as she selects the best high life amid the wildlife.
Looking through the grainy snaps of my grandparents on safari always makes me smile – and not just because of my grandmother’s leopard-print culottes and ostrich-skin handbag. It’s the absence of comfort: the luggage roped to Land Rovers, the fold-up stools by a fire, the tin mugs, the warm beer, the sausages on sticks.
But then, safari camps in the 1950s were nothing like the African super-camps that have opened in the past year. For a start, they’re not really camps. They’re boutique hotels in the bush, often featuring spas, interior-designed suites, Michelin-star chefs to cook fresh ingredients flown in by private jet, and butlers to deliver it.
It’s not just in South Africa (progenitor of bush glamour) that this sort of safari has evolved. Three months ago in Zambia, two bush houses were opened to accommodate travellers who demand total privacy. In Tanzania, helicopter pads have been built alongside airstrips. In Namibia last year, top American astronomers were flown in to present after-dinner star-talks in the desert. Here are a few of the newest, most exclusive camps on the continent. Prices quoted are per person, per night, on a fully inclusive basis, excluding flights.
Grumeti Reserves, Tanzania
Luxury taken to the utmost. There are just three camps, sleeping a maximum of 56 guests, on this new game reserve and only these visitors have access to the 350,000 acres of grassy plains bordering the Serengeti, the helipad, the 16 polo and thoroughbred horses, the spa, tennis courts, crocquet lawn and the libraries.
Sasakwa Lodge, on the edge of an escarpment, was built in the style of a colonial home – think glossy wooden parquet floors, antiques, grand art, Persian silk carpets and silver, and a private infinity pool with every room. Sabora camp, on the plains, is glam camping taken to extremes. Tents are lined with raw silk, scattered with Persian rugs, and decorated with essentials like wind-up gramophones and silver handmirrors. Beds and baths are adorned with rose petals flown in daily with the seafood.
Reserves of luxury – reproduced from the Telegraph – 21/06/2006 by Lisa Grainger
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