A family's African Odyssey
Dar Es Salam is not part of the tourist circuit, and we stand out as we wander the streets and markets of the city (rather aimlessly) ! But after our time in the bush, it is good to be back in a crowded city.
The Kariakoo market, East Africa’s largest, is a warren of crowded alleys and underground passages is teeming with purposeful life.
Tanzania’s commercial capital (and capital of the ex-German East Africa – until 1918), Dar Es Salam, the Abode of Peace in Arabic, is a pleasant city, best described as “sleepy ex-colonial backwater meets vibrant African city”.
The old colonial public buildings, “five foot way” shophouses lining the streets and stately bungalows in the suburbs would be right at home in Penang or Singapore.
On the 19th of September, our last night in the Selous, under a voluptuous full moon, we celebrate the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn festival in style.
On a small verandah overlooking the Rufiji river, we set up three lantern-like candles and carefully carve up into four equal parts a mooncake brought all the way from Hong Kong for that purpose. Sipping our last supply of lychee tea (that one, brought all the way from Singapore!), we gaze contentedly at the moon and wonder whether the proverbial rabbit is still up there keeping the Moon fairy company – or whether, over Africa, perhaps her friend is a bush hyrax instead of a rabbit…
The Rufiji River, is the beating heart of the Selous. A large, 600km long meandering river populated by battalions of Nile crocodiles and hippos.
We get off the boat onto a sandbank in the middle of the river to fish, surrounded by crocodiles – confident in the knowledge that “crocodiles won’t attack humans when they have enough fish to feed on” (according to the guide).
The Earth, before the spread of Man, must have looked much as the Selous does today. Beautiful, savage, unsullied, with the waltz of life and death in Nature unperturbed by Man.
The animals here are not used to Man, and are elusive. Our encounters with them are all the more special because of their rarity. But it is that primeval landscape which grows on us and progressively casts its spell on us until we feel that we are in a state of timelessness, no longer observers but part of the Land.
We fly from Zanzibar to the Selous game reserve on the mainland of Tanzania where we will spend three days in a small riverside lodge.
The Selous, Africa’s largest game reserve, at 55,000 sqkm, is almost 50 times the size of Hong Kong. Its varied landscape includes semi-arid savannah, hills, swamps, rivers and lakes, lush forests. Remote and hard to get to, the Selous does not get many visitors and the few days we spend there will give us the greatest feeling of isolation since the beginning of our trip.
Jetlag is the Great Motivator for exercising. And so Andre goes for another early morning run, on the beach, before the village comes to life and the tourists, well-fed and lobster-red, begin to trickle onto the beach like the tentacles of a gigantic, flabby jelly fish.
The tide is low, fishermen are coming back with the catch of the night and the beach seems imbued with a quiet sense of purpose.
There is nothing superficial about the beach at that time of the day when the workers of the sea have logged in another honest night’s work. Too busy or too tired to acknowledge the quiet runner in their midst.
While Andre went back in time during his brief visit to Hong Kong, Laura and the boys were resolutely moving into the future.
Both boys got certified as junior Open Water divers and spent the week exploring the depths of the Indian Ocean, seeing humpback whales, sea turtles, crocodile-fish amongst others.
And Laura was conversing in seemingly fluent Kiswahili (to my untrained ear, at least !) with the hotel staff !
Andre teleports back to Hong Kong (albeit using archaic technology which results in a 23 hour journey back !) to wrap up some business at the Company while the Laura and the boys stay at Nungwi Beach, on the Indian Ocean, in Zanzibar.
The journey from Chek Lap Kok airport to Central is quite surreal. Flat roads (no potholes, no bumps !), gleaming new cars, billboards advertising luxury brands (the new opium!) . It takes me only a couple of days to be back on modern time.
In Africa, I had made Time my friend, rather than a target to be achieved or challenged. Here, it only takes me two days to start wrestling with Time again, seldom coming out on top.
For the next seven days we will be travelling on a mobile safari with our young guide, Josh, third generation of an American missionary family settled in Tanzania. Josh is in equal parts passionate conservationist, wise Bushman and summer camp counsellor.
We will spend a few days exploring the Tarangire National Park, which hosts Africa’s biggest concentration of elephants, and will then visit with the Hadzabe, East Africa’s last tribe of hunter-gatherers located in the remote Yaeda Valley.
This is a safari in the classic tradition of the Golden Age, minus the G&T, gun bearers and luxury. We carry everything we need with us for a week in two vehicles – water, fuel, food. We camp in simple tents, pitched right in the middle of the bush, take “bucket showers” and dine around the campfire, using headlamps to navigate around the camp at night. The camps we set up along the way are completely “porous” and every morning we find the trace of the animals who have wandered through during the night.
