Yoga Safari
This seems the ideal place to
talk about another kind of active safari. At Arusha's Ngare Sero Mountain Lodge,
guests can book private yoga classes with instructor and lodge manager Stacia
Leach. She also offers classes if arranged in advance at Ngare Sero's eco-camp
at Lake Natron. Another good idea that Stacia has for yoga
practitioners is the combination of daily yoga practice and meditation with a wildlife
safari. I love the idea because quiet thought is compatible with wildlife
appreciation.
See Yoga Safari under Tour Info - Active Safari.05-10-2007
Boundary Hill Lodge
www.tarangireconservation.com
I spent two nights here late
July. One of the owners and directors, Hartley King, came out one of those
nights from Arusha to explain to me about the lodge, its history and its mission.
Boundary Hill is fifty
percent owned by the Maasai of Lokisale village to the east of Tarangire National
Park. It is
located in its own 164 sq km Lokisale Conservation Area (LCA), set aside by its
owners, the Lokisale Maasai. Tarangire Treetops (now owned by Sopa Lodges) is
the other lodge within the LCA, but only Boundary Hill shares ownership with
the Maasai.
The Lokisale Conservation
Area is one of four which makes up the Tarangire Conservation Area (TCA), a
total of 585 sq kms, the purpose of which is to provide opportunities for local
communities to be involved with management of their own land so that peaceful
co-existence with wildlife is maintained. Without the land which the TCA
protects, the future of Tarangire National
Park and
its wildlife species is threatened.
Why is this? The Tarangire
eco-system comprises some 20,500 sq kms and supports the national park; game
controlled areas where hunting is allowed; and the village-owned land of the
TCA. Tarangire National
Park was
formed in 1970 to safeguard its status as the dry season sanctuary (July –
October) for large herbivores such as elephant and zebra. When grazing
resources become scarce at the end of the dry season, and the rains start
(November – March), this wildlife migrates out of the park's confines of 2600
sq kms into the TCA. This migration allows Tarangire National
Park to
regenerate.
It is imperative to maintain
wildlife's unrestricted and safe movement during this wet season migration, but
this is difficult. In the past, elephants, zebra and wildebeest took many
different routes out of Tarangire into its hinterlands. To the west of the park,
a growing human population of cultivators, unfriendly to migrating wildlife, has
all but eliminated the old migration routes. Only a few of those original
migration pathways remains today, none more important than those east of the
park which now comprise the TCA. It is possible that what happened to the west
of the park will happen to the east as well. Human populations are ever
increasing. The Maasai cannot subsist on their cattle alone and many of them
must farm. Other damaging land uses impacting the migration are charcoal-making
and small-scale mining.
Boundary Hill Lodge is
perched on Boundary Hill, a granite outcropping overlooking the vital wet
season dispersal area of the TCA. I watched sunrise from my bed in room #3
while enjoying "bed coffee" delivered to my door. Cape buffalo and elephants
moved below in the direction of the park, a ten km distance from the lodge. (For
a view from the toilet see under Gallery!) It is a relaxing place where
time should be built into the schedule for simply enjoying its beautiful
location. But if one cares to think about more sobering issues while on their safari,
Boundary Hill is also the place to grasp the complex problems facing Tanzania's national parks as they become more and more
surrounded by polluted lands and unfriendly human populations to wildlife.
05-10-2007
Book Reports
Wangari Maathai's Unbowed: One Woman's Story: Kenyan Wangari Maathai is the first woman in
eastern and central Africa to earn a doctorate; the first female professor at
the University of Nairobi, and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace prize in 2004.
When she heard of her win, she planted a tree to celebrate, which was
appropriate for the founder of the "Green Belt" movement, a
grassroots women's group which, beginning in the 1970s, has planted over 30
million trees in Kenya and beyond to halt deforestation in Africa.
The Green Belt has also provided jobs and the means to lift 10,000 women out of
poverty. Unbowed is Maathai's
remarkable memoir which documents the many challenges she has faced head on in
a traditional world which favors men, among them beating and imprisonment by
Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi's government for protesting the clearing of a
forest for a Nairobi housing development. She signed her police report in her
own blood from a head wound. After Moi lost the presidential elections of 2002,
Maathai was elected to parliament. She is now Assistant minister of the
environment.
Her detractors seriously
underestimated this woman. This is a book to inspire about Africa
instead of to disillusion.
A passage from her book: "Trees
have been an essential part of my life and have provided me many lessons. Trees
are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches
to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that
no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance."
For more information about
the Green Belt movement see www.greenbeltmovement.org.
Marie Javins Stalking
the Wild Dik-Dik: One Woman's Solo Misadventures Across Africa: In 2001, Javins came up with the idea to travel
round the world within a calendar year without taking an airplane, for the
benefit of fans of her blog at www.MariesWorldTour.com.
(A similar premise of Jeff Greenwald's 1995 The
Size of the World.) Stalking the Wild
Dik-Dik isn't about the entire world
tour, only the African portion of it. In the introduction Javins writes that her
2001 travels introduced her to an Africa that she didn't know existed—dignified,
vibrant, with a sense of community and caring lacking in our own culture—and
falling in love, she returned to live there for six months of 2005. I settled
in to read about those epiphanies on African soil that had so changed her and which
drew her back, but that book hasn't been written yet. Instead Stalking the Wild Dik-Dik read like a
check list of African destinations and sights. Every so many chapters, Javins returned
to her claim that Africa had transformed her; she asked the tough questions
that travel in the developing world ultimately raises—do you give to someone
who asks for help when you have just spent money on a balloon safari or at one
of the best hotels on Zanzibar? Her answers were typically as abbreviated and
superficial as her travels through the continent. There was a line in the introduction
which warned me that I wasn't going to relate to this travel writer: "I
sleepwalked through most of Asia, having been there just one year before."
05-10-2007
Recommended Websites
www.safaritalk.net "Passionate about
Africa": This is where you can find out about who
is making a difference on the continent, especially in the field of wildlife
conservation. Safaritalk is the creative efforts and hard work of the "Game
Warden" who returned from his African travels determined to make the site his
contribution to the cause of raising awareness of safari travel to something
more than checking off sightings on the list of "big five".05-10-2007
If you have a few hours to spare in Dar es Salaam
And
you seek books on Africa and African subjects go to the Novel Bookstore
at the Slipway shopping complex in Msasani. Novel has other outlets besides,
one at the Sea Cliff Hotel shopping complex and another on Ohio Street in the city center next to Steers restaurant,
but the original one at the Slipway has the best selection in my opinion.05-10-2007
If you have a few hours to spare in Arusha
Try
Miriam's massage. There are plenty of masseuses in Tanzania, but I have often found them lacking (I was
spoiled for life by Russian masseuses when I lived in Central Asia), until now. Find Miriam in a little room above
the Jambo Makuti restaurant in the center of town. It isn't the ideal place for
her to work with the noise of the restaurant below, but you will soon forget
about the surroundings under her magical touch. Cost: $20 US for one hour.05-10-2007
Tidbit 2
"When
one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the
world."
John Muir
05-10-2007
