Africa is sweet, like lemon.

Monday, May 26, 2014

I guess you might expect me to start this post with a long and humorous narrative of our experiences with an energetic and obsessively inquisitive two-year-old boy on the plane ride from New York to Johannesburg, but I’m not gonna do that because, with the aid of some handy bribery material (his brand new Leap Pad), Caden was the perfect little traveler. I’m not biased! This isn’t just my opinion that I’m sharing. Everyone on the plane who sat around us thought so as well. That Leap Pad we got him was a lifesaver! He had so much fun exploring everything in it, watching the first 30 seconds of each video over and over again, turning it on and off, messing with the volume behind my back (we tried to keep it quiet for the sake of the other passengers) taking off the headphones, putting them on, unplugging them and then wondering why they didn’t work, etc. Other than that, there’s not much to tell about that leg of the trip. Caden played with his toy; we watched a few movies and had a few meals, etc. We arrived in Africa fifteen hours later.

No, I’d rather start with my first real experience of Africa: the three-hour drive from Beira to Chitengo. This drive was my true introduction to Africa: the people, the landscape and the road. We passed through several villages and saw many of the local people, cinderblock houses painted white and surrounded by brick and metal fences, mud huts with their conical thatched roofs, market stalls of old wooden boards and rusty corrugated metal, and a few little stores built the modern way. Ryan was in the front seat with Vasco Galante, an important person here at the park who speaks more languages than I can remember and who helped us get all our gear through airport customs without having to bribe any of the guards. That was a miracle in and of itself, but how he convinced the guards that Ryan’s dart gun wasn’t some newfangled machine gun is beyond me. He got us all loaded up in his crew-cab pickup and on the road in pretty good time. Caden and I were in the backseat and pretty soon into the drive Caden fell asleep, so I got to pay more attention to the conversations that were going on up front, which I don’t normally get to do. Although, honestly, I didn’t pay that much attention to the talk or the Portuguese radio station Vasco had on. I was pretty much plastered to the window watching this new world go by. The only thing that kept me from looking like a total tourist was that I didn’t have my camera out.

The drive from Beira to Chitengo was fun. Luckily there wasn’t much traffic, or I should say there wasn’t much traffic that we’re used to. There were very few personal-sized cars, and we didn’t see too many big tankers or trucks for hauling lumber and other things, but there were craters and craters of potholes strewn along the road. The drive was continually broken up by vehicles stopping, halting, and rushing forward. Swerve right to miss potholes. Swerve left to miss more potholes and oncoming traffic. Stop before you hit the car in front of you…  We were passing big rigs on the right with a quick honk so they’d know we were there and wouldn’t swerve right into us to avoid the potholes in front of them. Driving on the left was optional, we learned. It’s what’s expected, but some people would pass a car and just stay in the opposite lane until they had to move for oncoming traffic, and some others just seemed to prefer the middle of the road. We made three stops along the way. One was to get water bottles for the drive and dried strips of mango from a store that Vasco told us was a safe place to stop if we were ever out driving by ourselves, the second stop was to buy fresh bananas, and by fresh I mean probably picked that day from a tree in that village, and the third stop was to pick up a technician who needed a ride into the park. Whenever we stopped, or got stopped behind some truck that wasn’t ready to move around its pothole, grinning boys would bring bags of nuts and handfuls of soda pop to the car window. Along the drive we also saw women in beautiful skirts and dusty shirts, balancing gallons of water or baskets of whatever on their heads and holding babies in their arms or carrying them slung on their backs wrapped up in more beautiful fabric.

I’m probably forgetting something, but there was just so much to see!

The sun sets differently here, as strange as that sounds. It’s light, it’s light and then suddenly it’s dark. There’s not really a “dusk” time. The sun just sets and that day is done. By the time we got to the dirt road that would take us to the park gate it was dark and there wasn’t much to see. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the scenery at that point anyway. I was distracted because Caden was awake and wanting some of that fresh banana, and I really, really needed to use the bathroom!

Anyway, we finally got into the park and got unpacked into our little cabin, then we went to dinner at the park’s restaurant which, being the only source of food at this point, is kind of the evening gathering place for all the key players here around dinnertime. We got to meet most of them on the first night and all of them seem like great people who are here in Gorongosa because they really love Africa and want to do everything they can to ensure that Gorongosa and other places like it are around for generations to come.

Last but not least, at the very end of the day we met Flavio, a science technician who works specifically with scientists coming in from Princeton. He is a local Mozambican and just a great guy who cares about his homeland and his people very much. He was a great help when Ryan came here in October and he gave me the title of this blog post. “Africa is sweet, like lemon,” is a favorite saying of his, which I think is awesome! In fact, we thought his motto was just as funny as he did the fact that Caden will willingly eat lemons, peel and all.

Vervet monkey on the porch of the cabin next to ours.

Ryan with our little monkey on the front porch of our cabin.

Caden's favorite thing in the park.

Why would I want to swing, Dad, when there's a perfectly good slide right over there? I question your logic sometimes.

 Happy boy.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

We found a little gecko in Caden’s bedroom/Ryan’s office today. I had no idea what it was at first because I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I was on the bed, nursing Caden and craning my neck backward to see this fleshy colored little blob up high on the wall. I had to yell for Ryan to come and tell me what I was looking at.

I love geckos. I think they’re so adorable with their big eyes and little grippy fingers. I was happy to see one here because it might mean fewer bugs getting inside the cabin. I named him Gilbert, although I think Gilberto would be a more appropriate name for a local gecko.

This is not Gilbert. This is his big brother Ned.

Gilbert is little and pink and lives inside the cabin.

Later on we went out for a drive into the park with Mark Stalmans, the Director of Scientific Services here at Gorongosa. He’s essentially responsible for facilitating all scientific research in the park. So anyway, he invited us to go on a drive and Ryan let me sit up front since it was my first time. I took pictures while he and Caden sat in the back. We didn’t see any of the Big Five, or any of the more “iconic” African safari animals, but we did see waterbuck, sable, impala, oribi, kudu, warthogs, civets, and a big old monitor lizard sunning himself in the dirt.

The big old monitor lizard.

 Here's an oribi.

This is a kudu. I know it's a little dark, but we didn't see him until close to the end of the drive. Hopefully we'll get some better shots of one of these guys next time.

 

These are impala.

This is a herd of waterbuck. I don't know if you can tell from the picture but they have these white target-shaped markings on their bottoms that make them easy to recognize.

More waterbuck.

It’s funny, but we’ve traveled enough and seen so many similar looking places that we can be out in the African bush, driving toward the Lake Urema Floodplain and my mind will tell me, “wow this dusty, sandy, scrubby landscape with palm trees looks a lot like southern Texas,” and then I’ll see a fever tree, or a baboon sitting in the grass and contemplating who knows what, or a pile of warthoglets with mama hog at the bottom and suddenly remember I’m in Africa. It’s kind of surreal.

See what I mean?

 

 And the award for best picure of the week goes to...

The park road that we were on, like all the other roads around here I’m sure, was full of potholes and dips and washboards. There were stretches of road so bad that I couldn’t even talk normally. I got some cool pictures though, because Mark was kind enough to stop the vehicle whenever we saw something interesting. Talking with him about the landscape and wildlife, and watching him take an interest in animals he’s probably seen hundreds of times before, it was obvious that he loves what he does here. When it was too dark for pictures Caden crawled up front and sat in my lap. We were bouncing around like the truck was on a trampoline and he fell sound asleep anyway! It was kind of cute to hold him while he slept and watch his little arms flop around with every bump. It was cute, except for the fact that the back of his head was doing a heavy metal drum solo on my chin and collarbone!

Saturday, May 30, 2014

We discovered a new neighbor yesterday evening. There was a warthog nestled under the side wall of the cabin for the night. The cabins are built up off of the ground, which has something to do with facilitating airflow and keeping the buildings cooler during the day, and this warthog had burrowed down into the dirt and made himself a little trough.

Here he is. Not sure if he’ll be back tonight.

Caden kind of made a mess of his bed.

Dirt is awesome!

Have you seen this shovel? It's amazing!

And we close with a respectful moment of contemplative silence on the wonders of Fun In The Dirt. Amen.