Ndutu - Olduwai - Ngorongoro - Lake Manyara - Arusha - Moshi
With the last unknown quantity, the last critical point - Serengeti's roads, safely behind us, we relax. Home's still eight hundred kilometres off, but it's free-wheeling all the way, even if the first part's up hill. Today's lap takes us from Ndutu camp to the welcome of old friends - Kilimanjaro, the gentle giant, and the lads that run the Uhuru Hostel in Moshi. The boys will have their two best rooms waiting for us.
It's goodby to the plains and a long climb up to the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. Just at the point where plains and mountains meet, a signpost stands and points along a turn-off to the left: To Olduwai Gorge. This is the famous site of the Leakeys' excavations, the place where the oldest human, or proto-human remains were discovered. Pieces of two types of homo were found here, one of which is regarded as the direct ancestor of homo sapiens. He and his less successful buddy have very long Latin names but in our car he's known simply as All-the-Way George.
After a short drive down the turn-off we arrive at the gate-house. We pay the entrance-fee, buy some postcards, accept the offer of a guide, and visit the lavatory. As we come out of the latter, a big car containing an elderly lady and several large spotted dogs is just preparing to leave. "That's Mrs Leakey," says Renate. "I recognise the dogs from the postcard." On the spur of the moment she runs across and gets an autograph (Mrs Leakey's, not the dogs').
We drive down into the gorge. As gorges go Olduwai is a pretty fourth-rate affair - a shallow scar zigzagging across the plain - more like a disused corporation rubbish pit really. Archaeological excavations have been suspended for the Rains. Our African guide is knowledgeable, but alas, almost unintelligible. He has delivered this lecture so often that he's fallen into a sort of automatic sing-song that has little connection left with the intonation of any known language. He takes us to the lower excavated sections, explains the different strata to us and tells us which finds were made in which stratum. He shows us some bits of fossil bone: the shoulder-blade of a prehistoric rhino embedded in a large chunk of rock, a femur from the same beast - or was it the shin-bone of a dwarf giraffe? Aren't rhinos prehistoric enough as they are? God only knows what the prototype must have looked like. There are no human relics on show - too vulnerable to leave lying about, I suppose. Still, we're willing to be enthusiastic, but it's hard, and getting harder: sun, heat, dust. The sun has got me by the back of the neck and is forcing my head down. The stones begin to swim before my eyes. But salvation is on the way. Two Masai warriors round the bend in the gorge and give us friendly greetings. Switching from Swahili - which rivals Arabic as the language of greeting - the taller and more Masai-like of the two Masai goes over to English. "Where you go?" "Moshi." "Aha!" (recognition) "Come from Musoma, Musoma on lake," I venture. "Musoma?" (non-recognition) "You live here?" I ask pointing to the floor of the gorge beneath my feet. He laughs, "Ndio!" He's a proud-looking young fellow, long and narrow as if fashioned in the image of his own spear. Long-headed, with high cheek-bones and a nose somewhat aquiline. With his head thrown back a little he looks down his nose at us through hooded eyes. It's like being appraised by an Aztek aristocrat. A far cry from All-the-Way George, rest his soul. There wasn't much of the aristocratic about the model of his skull we saw at the gatehouse. And yet he was a very great aristocrat in his day, I suppose - and recognised as such by his fellow-creatures, which is more than can be said for this Masai warrior standing before me.
Having thus exchanged pleasantries we begin to drive off slowly in the car. The two Masai amble along behind. It suddenly dawns on me that they'd wanted us to take their pictures (one of their few sources of hard cash) but had been too proud to put the preposition themselves. We stop. The guide offers to negotiate with them for photos. After a two-minute discussion he reports back: they are willing to let us take as many photos as we like for two shillings a head. They drop easily into a relaxed and natural pose. They could teach professional models a thing or two, but I suppose they are professionals too, in their way - by way of a side-line (a side-line as yet: pride is still important). We take several shots: the Masai with the kids; me and the tall one with our arms round each other's shoulders, etc. I give the tall one two one-shilling pieces. To his mate I give one one-shilling piece and two fifty-cent pieces. The latter doesn't seem too pleased. The guide says something to him. He still looks sceptical but pockets the money - well not exactly, having neither pockets nor trousers to his name. "He has never seen the small coins before," explains the guide.
Back in the car the guide gives us the gist of his negotiations with the Masai. They had wanted five shillings a piece. He had told them (without reference to us) that we wouldn't pay this and that if they insisted he'd give them no water next time they came to his house asking for it. The guide seems very pleased with himself. We are somewhat less pleased with him. What he has just threatened is one of the most immoral acts known in African peasant society. It's exactly the same kind of ingratiating 'solidarity' with Europeans which we've sometimes seen practiced by Asian shopkeepers and businessmen when faced with African authority - just one step lower down the ladder. Thus does the old poison of imperialism still work its way down through the social organism. A strong social purgative is called for to get this sort of thing spewed out at the other end as quickly as possible. As things stand at present the Masai are at the bottom of the ladder. They look down on no one, yet, in their charming way, they look down on all of us. But theirs isn't really a pride born of contempt for others - rather a rare assurance of their inate human dignity. Farewell, my Masai herdsmen! Cherish it well, that pride of yours. Wrap your red mantle tightly around it. Bring it with you when you finally throw in your lot with the rest of us. There's something of all our futures in it.
Having bidden goodby to our guide and Olduwai we get back on to the main road and start climbing. At 2,800 metres we level out along the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. "It is one of the Wonders of the World," announced Mitchell on a previous safari, and then found that Grzimek had already said it. How can I put it then ... It's the Lost World - no I got that out of the Haggard Rider by Conrad Doyle or somebody. Let me put it this way: it's too stupendous, too beautiful for words. Renate keeps nudging me to look at it through gaps in the trees round the rim. I try not to look so I won't be obliged to try to describe it.
You know, I think I'd even agree to be a rhinoceros if I could live in Ngorongoro ... Guide (pointing out a red-haired rhino looking suspiciously like a Highland steer to his open-mouthed charges): "Do you see that strange looking rhinoceros over there, the one lying down chewing the grass with a faraway look in his eye? He appeared in the Crater quite suddenly a couple of years back. A curious story. I'll always remember the time. It was three days after we lost a tourist, a Scotsman. He went down into the Crater alone - forbidden you know - and never came back, poor chap. Eaten I suppose. Anyway, we first saw this particular beast three days after his disappearance, as I said, and we decided to call him J.B. Mitchell in memory of the Scotsman, J.B. for short. (We got the name from the lodge register.) Well, you know, though we tried hard enough, he never has learnt to answer to the name, the stupid brute."
Down we go again. Down twice. First down the outer wall of the Crater and then, after a stretch of undulating plateau, down the eastern wall of the Great Rift Valley to the shores of Lake Manyara, the colour of an elephant's hide under a turbid sky. But before the final descent we pay a quick visit to the hotel on the edge of the escarpment, overlooking the lake and the Manyara game park.
We sit at the table in the garden, near a dinky swimming-pool, order tea, and with brazen faces eat the packed lunches we've brought with us from Ndutu. A batch of package tourists is just arriving. A European who appears to be in a position of great responsibility hurries towards their accomodation at the head of a trotting, white-clad detachment of African attendants carrying luggage. The man in a position of responsibility hisses at them sotto voce, but we catch it (we caught it mate!), "Smile you lot. Get a smile on your faces. These tourists come here and want to see smiling African faces. If you can't smile there's no job for you here!"
"Waiter!" shouts a voice from a nearby table. "Sah!" Over rushes a citizen of the independent republic of Tanzania, smiling like he's got a bad bout of neuralgia all down the left side of his face. Manyara - a beautiful name.
We negotiate the escarpment, hum along the side of the lake for some time and then it's back on to tarmac after many days. Behind us one last glint of Manyara; in front the massive wedge of Socialist Peak rising steeply from Arusha, birth-place of the historic Declaration. We can't stop in Arusha but pass through it and on to Moshi, just in time to catch old Kilimanjaro getting into his night-clothes.
One short stop before the Uhuru Hostel - at a filling-station. Can they fix our horn? Two young men and a boy who looks about thirteen put their heads together over the horn. The thirteen-year-old orders tools which the other two obediently bring. Kneeling in the dusk the boy starts to take the horn to bits. My apprehension grows. Why didn't we wait until tomorrow morning and take it to a proper workshop? Time passes. Now and then the boy asks Renate to try the horn. Not a peep. I get out our electric torch and shine it on the spot where the junior car-surgeon is operating. "Try it now," he says. Renate tries, and it works. "He's only in the First Form," one of the young men tells us. I ask if the lad works here. "No, but he spends most of his time here when he's finished school for the day."
First the Masai, then the Manyara waiters, and now this brilliant young mechanic (for the mending of the horn was a brilliant piece of deduction) - all citizens of this Tanzania, all possibilities: pride and poverty, or subservience and the scrapings from the tables of the rich, or victory through real self-reliance. As we prepare to draw away the filling-station attendant leans in at the window and says, "There's lots of boys like that around here."
From there it's straight into Uhuru where we're feasted in great style by our young friends and spend a peaceful night in the guest-rooms prepared for our arrival. We are home already, though the Dar es Salaam University Campus is still many hundreds of kilometres away.
©Renate Mitchell. May not be reproduced in any form online or offline without explicit written permission.