Village trekking
Monday, June 18th, 2007Oh by the way, the previous post happened on my b-day – I’m the big 35 now! Boy, the difference is amazing…
Anyway, we arranged with the Visitor Center, as per our bible, the Lonely Planet, a 4 day trek through the mountains.
Day 1: 6 hoursish from Lushoto to Lacozie (sp). We went through the rainforest, saw a few monkeys. Lunches ended up being fried bread called chipati (kind of resembled naan), avocado, cucumber, tomato. Dinners were like this really good spinach dish, cabbage, rice, and some type of meat (which I didn’t eat – which I’m REALLY GLAD I didn’t). Starting that day, John was not feeling good at all and ended up having traveller’s diarrhea. Isn’t that great? Just like the day we started the Inca trail in Peru. We stayed at a basic guesthouse that had squat toilets that had a bucket next to them full with water that you put in a cup and threw down to wash the toilet paper down and if you wanted a “hot shower”, they would boil the water on a fire for you and you could take a sponge-bath. There were a few places with electricity, but most of the houses did not.
Day 2: 4-5 hours to Rongwi. The first day was definitely the longest. Since it’s village trekking you go up and down and up and down on these hills. And in Africa they don’t mess around with those cute little switchbacks we have on hiking trails in the states. You go straight up and straight down. Usually with a bucket of water on your head. I think it’s amazing how these women can balance huge bushels of wood, water…I saw one woman with 7 watermelons on her head. After the end of this day we stayed at this mission. It was so cool. A bunch of super great nuns and priests. I didn’t realize how educated you had to be to become a priest. The funny thing is they LOVE BUSH! Probably because they’re being overrun by the Muslims, and they’re of course, Catholic. They had a generator that gave electricity from around 7 pm to 9 pm. We had really good food for dinner including something that resembled pot roast. The nuns boiled us some water for a much needed sponge-bath.
Day 3: 4 hours from Rongwi to Mtae. It’s kind of amazing because as we go through the forest, there are women in the trees cutting down the branches so all the trees have branches only on the top parts of them. Since they don’t have electricity for the most part in the area they need the branches for firewood. What happens when the trees run out of branches? I have no clue…John was having the most fun with the kids. They would say Mzungu (white person) like a chant – but since there aren’t that many white people that come through here they’re a bit scared of us and he tried to get some of them to give high-fives and they’d run away.
Day 4: Bus ride to a bit outside of Lushoto and then a small hike up to Irente Viewpoint. Oh my gosh, the bus ride from *^%#(). It was so rocky because the road was so bad – thank goodness we didn’t eat anything (did I mention we had to catch the bus at 4 am). After a couple of hours we got off outside of Lushoto and went up to Irente Viewpoint which had the most amazing view. We then had a “picnic breakfast” at Irente Farm and then headed back down to Lushoto.
It was an amazing trek and we loved it. The people were soooo nice. The one thing we learned that I just find amazing is that you are taught in Swahili in primary school. If you want to go to Secondary school (which they are working on to make it free, but right now it costs a bit to go to Secondary school) then it’s taught in English. In primary school it’s only 1 subject out of the day and then you have to turn around and go straight to English. It’s so crazy. And the enforcement of kids going to primary school (supposedly it’s mandatory) is not very good. We passed tons and tons of kids but enforcement is at the village level and, really, are you going to turn in your uncle that decided he doesn’t want his kids to go to school? And have your uncle sent to jail. Hmmmmmmm…..
Anyway, we’re now sitting in Arusha awaiting our Safari in 2 days. Yippeee!!
JohnCin