Duma Duma Duma

Yesterday we did more interviews. We talked to one family where one of the kids was making motor boat noises the whole time and another kid who peed right next to us as we were talking to his mother and grandmother. We also talked to another family where only the grandma was home. She was old and I’m pretty sure she was senile. She would babble for about five minutes and then the guide would pretty much just say “she doesn’t know.” At one point he said “her son’s keep bees and they use honey but she doesn’t know beeswax.” It was great. Haha.

After the interviews we came back to camp and discussed we had learned. Apparently they use trees here to cure STDS and treat AIDS. They also think that planting trees makes it rain. There are some really interesting beliefs here…

Yohanna is back in camp and doing pretty well. I was so relieved to see him back in camp! It's unclear on whether his collar bone is broken or not but he's got a pressure wrap on it and is obviously in a lot of pain. 

Molly suggested that we make Yohanna a get well soon card. I made him a tinga-tinga inspired one with birds on the cover because one of my favorite moments with him was when we were bird watching and he just said "I like birds." I had all of the staff and students sign it. Pascal had the funniest note. He wrote "no more riding on motorcycles. If you fall off again I will fire you." It was hilarious because Pascal is a driver and he has no authority to fire Yohanna. I think it was just his way of telling Yohanna to stay safe in the future.

At dinner I finally saw Yohanna so I gave him his card. He had the best reaction to it. At first he smiled and said "for me?" Then he saw the birds and said "Oh, soon I will be able to fly." Then he opened up the card and just got this huge smile on his face when he saw all of the notes and signatures. After he had looked at the inside of the card he hugged it to his chest and walked around with a huge smile on his face for a few minutes.

Today we went to Ngorongoro Crater. I woke up around 5 this morning and was so excited for the day I just laid in bed and smiled. I thought I was too excited to go back to sleep but then I promptly did.

We had to wait a long time to get a pass to enter the crater and the main building was closed for renovations so we had to figure out how to amuse ourselves. Christian ranted about how much the office staff sucked for pretty much the whole hour that we waited. Some of us stood around and chatted. The best was the group who started playing vegetable showdown. Vegetable showdown is the game we played the other night were two people duel by acting out an adjective and a vegetable. They got Kioko to play and that was great. He pretty much just jumped around and waved his arms like the kid he was dueling with but it was really funny. At one point the two dueling students ended up rolling on the ground across the parking lot. Christian just looked over at them with a confused and said "next thing we know the baboons will come and join their game." I laughed and said "it's all fun and games until someone gets bitten..."

After the first gate but before the second one we stopped for a lecture. It was so cold! It was windy and we had our lecture behind a little hill so that we could get a break from the wind. It must have looked ridiculous to all of the tourists to see us all sitting in a huddle (we were literally sitting on top of each other trying to get warm).

The first unique animal sighting that we saw was three lions. When we first drove up it looked like there were two dead lions but then they moved and we saw that 1) they were alive and 2) there were actually three lions. There were two males and a female just lounging and soaking up the sun.

The second cool thing we saw was a cheetah. It was sitting when we drove up but then it seemed to get uncomfortable with all of the cars so it got up and started walking away. -News update: I am currently sitting by the fire. The maasai students just asked me why we are so flexible. I am sitting with my legs crossed so I was confused until they showed me their efforts to cross their legs. Anna goes "they can't do anything!" And then it was clarified that the maasai can't sit with their legs crossed. Next we need to show them yoga.- It wandered into some reeds and then came out a while later. It wandered away and we followed it. I'm so glad that we waited and followed it because it broke into a jog to pass the cars. After it got past the cars it took off sprinting into the center of a mixed herd of wildebeest, zebras and gazelles. The herd took off and we lost sight of the cheetah for a while but when they settled down and we still couldn't find the cheetah we figured out that it had failed to catch whichever animal it was gong after.

After a few minutes the cheetah popped up out of the grass and started walking towards some of the gazelle. It wasn't paying attention to the wildebeest and a bunch of them started to gang up and follow it. The wildebeest gained speed and dropped their horns until the cheetah turn around and threatened them by swatting at them and dropping into a crouch. When the cheetah tried to get up and walk away again the wildebeest started to chase it again and the cheetah was forced to stop walking and face them again. So it ended up that the cheetah was just sitting and watching the wildebeest who were watching him. It was funny because there were zebras wandering in the middle of the standoff who seemed completely oblivious to the fact that there was a cheetah there. After a while the wildebeest got bored and started to wander away but as soon as the cheetah stood up they all turned back and watched it again. Since the gazelle were alerted by the wildebeest behavior and the wildebeest wouldn't leave the cheetah alone the cheetah ended up just walking away. At that point we had watched the cheetah for about an hour and a half and decided to go find something else. It was very interesting though because it made you wonder about all of the challenges that cheetahs face to eat. The whole time I was watching the cheetah all I could think was how amazing it is that cheetahs haven't gone extinct.

After the cheetah we saw a zebra that had been recently attacked. It has scratches on it's neck and shoulder from the encounter. The zebra obviously wasn't feeling very well; it was standing right on the road and didn't move when we drove up.