People

My two week safari tour was a little different than I expected. I thought I’d be traveling with a group of people. It turned out, although the tour was originally booked up, that because of the Kenya crisis 13 out of the 15 people signed up had cancelled. So when I arrived at the meeting point there was only one other passenger on this huge white truck of a bus. Chloe is a 20 year old uni student from Sydney.
She had spent six weeks in Moshi working at a school building a dining hall. She was nice and pretty quiet. After the first week her part of the tour was finished and I carried on with our guides on my own. We lost Juma the cook too. Though there was a lot of time on my own I met several great people at campsites and along the way that were great.

(Wachira the driver, Musila the guide, Juma the cook)

Wachira was our driver. He’s a large, burly kind of a man, looks like he would be intimidating. But he’s a little boy actually. He had a playful nature about him. When he laughed his smile went from ear to ear and he was very cute especially when I would tease him. It would take him a second before he got my joke and then he would burst out in his laugh. He had some pretty stressful driving days. The one road we were on between Lushoto and Dar es Salaam was so narrow. It was a high traffic tarmac road in good condition but very narrow. Passing cars was difficult. Sometimes I thought we were going to go off the road because of lack of room. People walked along the road too. I was worried for their safety. One guy with a big load on his bicycle had to bail into the ditch to save himself.

Musila was our guide. Both he and Wachira are from Kenya. Musila was good and kind and well organized and made sure I was always well taken care of. The kind of tour that I was on meant they did all the setting up and cooking and taking care of details. Whenever I asked if there was anything I could do to help, Musila would say “Just relax.”


Gecko friends we called the group of 5 who were traveling with the Gecko tour group. They were doing the same week of safari tour as we were and coincidentally camping at all the same camp sites. So we kept meeting up with them. They thought it was crazy that there were only two of us on that bus and they invited us to join them for their evening get togethers. On our last night, at Twiga camp, they invited us to play cards. Chloe decided to go to bed early but I went over and we played for quite a while. The younger crowd, those in their 20s, Laura, Allie, Mike went to bed first too. And Kaye, Torvul and I stayed up wondering what was happening to the young people of today. Kaye and Torvul are from Perth and Kaye is a teacher on her 4/5 doing her round the world trip the other way around.


Jackie and Darren were two of the three campers on the Intrepid tour that was a day behind mine. (It was too bad that they didn’t put the two tours together!) Their guide Victor was a lot of fun too. Jackie and Darren are from New Zealand living in London at the moment. We got along quite well and we’d see each other every other day because we’d stay two nights at each campsite. So I’d get to see them on the second night. They gave me some pointers and tips about going to New Zealand. Jackie’s parents have a B&B on the southwest coast of New Zealand and her father is a teacher. So I think I might just go check it out.


The Masaai are a tribe that live mostly it seems in northern Tanzania and southern Kenya. They still live the way they did 200 years ago, sort of. They live in their stick-mud-dung huts and villages and wear their traditional dress. They are pastoralists and spend their days with their cattle walking many miles over the vast plains. Their diet mainly consists of milk, blood and meat from their cows. Some now supplement with maize and beans for example. I didn’t theoretically meet any Masaai. I observed them though from my seat high in the bus. I had had the opportunity to go and visit one of their villages but I felt too uncomfortable, too much like a voyeur so I turned it down. They are pushy in trying to sell their jewellery and wares. They ask for money to have photographs taken. It just didn’t seem comfortable. They all have cell phones though! I love their sandals. They make them out of tires. Good on them for reusing materials.