Isdori and the Elephant Tooth

We waited in the Land Rover outside the yellow office building. I in the passenger seat looking out beyond the building toward farmland and bomas, looking out somewhere in the distance to where Isdori might live. Scott was in the driver seat. “I hope he doesn’t stand us up,” he said.

Scott had been wanting to check out these elephant bones for several weeks now, ever since we walked up to Monduli Juu and, on the way, came across one of our students, Isdori, herding his cows. We had told Isdori where were going and how we were in search of a rumored elephant reserve. That following Monday in school, Isdori told Scott of bones that were located on the way to Monduli Juu, remnants of an unfortunate encounter between two elephants and downed electric lines.

There had been much talk of seeing the bones between Scott and Isdori, even the likely possibility that Scott might be able to procure an elephant tooth. So there we were, the two of us in the borrowed work vehicle, waiting by the side of the road near the yellow village office building. This was our meeting spot with Isdori. Isdori and Scott agreed on a 30-minute window, between 8:30 and 9 am, to wait for the other. With no way to communicate with Isdori outside of school, all we could do was wait.

It was Sunday – church and market day – so there was a lot of activity on the road. Families dressed up in their Sunday finest. Massai women carrying babies on their backs and huge rice bags filled with unknown contents on their heads. Young boys with only one or two goats instead of their normal herd – the unlucky ones that will be sold in the market. There was an energy and hint of possibility characteristic of any Sunday in Monduli.

We decided to move the Land Rover in case the yellow office building itself was blocking Isdori from seeing us, and just as we were about to settle in for another stretch of waiting, Isdori came running from the other side of the street. He jumped in the vehicle and off we went toward Monduli Juu.

‘Juu’ means above or up in Swahili, so Monduli Juu is located above the Monduli Scott and I live in, within the Monduli Mountains. We didn’t drive all the way to the next town, but somewhere in between, parked the vehicle and ascended into thick, thorny brush and into the woods. Isdori was our guide as there wasn’t a clearly defined footpath and on the way we saw a few scattered bones and older elephant scat. We finally came upon a pile of large, old bones, and Scott, ever the biologist, was in awe. From the pile he picked up vertebrates and ribs, pelvis bones and femurs, all large enough to have been inside an elephant.



Isdori allowed Scott to pick around and linger a bit, but the main attraction was yet to come – the pair of skulls. We walked a bit farther, through some twists and turns of the woods. When we looked toward the sky, we saw the culprit electric lines, no longer down. In less than a minute I could hear that Isdori and Scott and had found one of the skulls – I was always lagging behind. They were hovering over it. I caught up to them and as Scott pointed it out to me – a big grayish lump lying on the ground – Isdori was in the process of turning it over for further inspection. He only picked it up a little bit before he dropped it and charged towards us. “Bees,” Isdori said. Bees had made their home inside the skull and we had disturbed them and, as any group of bees would be, they were upset. “Can we move quickly?” asked Isdori, who with his few years of English doesn’t yet possess succinctness or the knowledge that he can be brash in certain situations. Scott quickly followed up with, “RUN!”

I hadn’t been as close to the skull as Scott or Isdori so I didn’t realize the gravity of the situation – that a swarm of bees was trying to attack us – plus I knew I couldn’t run away as fast as they could through the thorns and brush so I let them pass me as they hightailed it up the hill. I was close behind and when we got to a distance far enough that the bees had trailed off, we collected ourselves. Isdori had been stung once, Scott twice, and me null.

The second head – the one minus a beehive we hoped – was lying a few feet away from the first. We walked the opposite way to get to it and, when our hopes were confirmed, carried it into a clearing for further inspection. It wasn’t the whole skull, but the top half minus the bottom jaw. We could see the part where the trunk would’ve attached, the tusks – those valued parts, we suspected, had disappeared long before the elephants were bones – where the eyes would’ve been. When we asked Isdori about any remaining teeth he said he had thrown one, possibly the last remaining one, down the hill toward the road and would look for it when we went back down.

We stayed in the woods for a little while longer revisiting the pile of bones, remarking on their massive size and picking them up again. But soon, despite his unwavering politeness, Isdori’s impatience started to show and he asked, “Can we go now?” It was fine. Scott had has his fill of large animal anatomy. So we walked down through the brush, a different way that avoided many of the thorns, and out of the woods into the blue sky day.

True to his word, Isdori began searching the grass for the elephant tooth that he had thrown down there some weeks earlier. It only took him a few minutes before he produced before us a large, yellowing, and dirty elephant tooth about the size of Scott’s fist – a back molar. This was the prize of the day.


We jumped back into the Land Rover and headed down the hill towards Monduli Chini (‘chini’ means down or below). Before we got to the bottom, we spotted a little boy herding goats and Isdori asked us to pull over. Isdori was looking for his own herd of cows that he had abandoned to show us the elephant bones. They had a short exchange in Maa, the language of the Massai, before Isdori hopped out of the vehicle, said a quick farewell, and went off in search of his cows.

More Views From Meru

View of Kili from Meru.


In the bottom left corner of this photo, you can see Saddle Hut camp, where we stayed the night before the summit.


Scott and I at the summit of Little Meru the afternoon before we made the real summit. Little Meru was at over 13,000 feet. I look very happy in this photo and I was really happy. It was a gorgeous afternoon. My knees hadn't failed me yet. Little Meru was deceptive as it helped perpetuate the idea that the real summit wouldn't be that hard.


Sunrise at the summit.



During our descent. View from the crater rim of Mt. Meru with Kili in the background.


View of the ash cone inside the crater.

It’s been three days since I was on top of Mt. Meru and my legs are still feeling it. Having sore calves and thighs is torture when you rely on squatters.

For three days, Scott, Ben, and I devoted our lives to climbing roughly 10,000 ft to summit a 15,000-foot mountain. For anyone who knows me, this does not sound right. I do not summit big mountains. I don’t care to and I don’t spend my time doing it. My original plan was not to climb all the way. In fact, prior to about a week ago, I had little interest in Meru at all; it was Scott’s thing. He managed to convince me to tag along with him and Ben (Ben is college student from Boston. He’s homestaying in Monduli with an old headmaster that’s working part time at Orkeeswa. Prior to our Meru trip, Scott and I had had only one face-to-face conversation with Ben) by reminding me that Meru is located within Arusha National Park, a park that we’ve talked about going to. He said the first two days of the trip would just be hiking and exploring the park, something we’d likely do anyway. I could get to the second hut and hang out while he hiked to the summit the third morning and we’d all hike back down together. This sounded like a good plan. What really made me want to go was the chance to see some big animals, which we hadn’t yet done.

The Wednesday night before our planned Friday morning departure, we realized that, contrary to what the 2008 Lonely Planet Tanzania said, we’d have to climb Meru with a tour company. This expense would be on top of the daily park fees, the hut fees, the mandatory armed-ranger fees, and the rescue fee. It ended up costing us each US$365 to climb the fifth tallest mountain in Africa.

A lot of people use Meru as practice for Kilimanjaro. Kili is supposed to be not as challenging of a climb, but with 5,000 feet of more height, it’s the altitude that proves to be the challenge. So, even during the low season, there were probably five other groups that were planning to summit Meru the same time we were.

Barring some minor delays, confusions, and getting yelled at by a ranger, the first two days of hiking were ideal. After encountering our first big animals on the drive through the park, during our first day of hiking we also saw some Colobus monkeys (which, with their long white and black hair, closely resemble skunks), bushbucks, warthogs, water buck… and many signs (large circular piles of scat) of buffalo.

Scott and I walked on forested trails with trees heavily draped with grandfather’s beard, through an intricately strangled fig tree, and on switchback after switchback past various viewpoints of Kilimanjaro. Once we started covering ground and left behind the other groups, we were able to walk undisturbed by voices, guides, and armed rangers and that’s all Scott wanted from our trip – a chance to walk alone on a mountain.


I should’ve stuck to the original plan, which was just to hike the first two days and hang out at Saddle Hut while everyone else climbed to the summit. Meaning I could’ve slept. The ascent to the summit was commencing for various groups anywhere between midnight and 2 am on Sunday. Between 6:30 pm Saturday night and midnight on Sunday when the cell phone alarm clock went off, I laid in bed fraught with indecision, between hazy dreams and wake, never quite reaching rem sleep. Even as Scott, Ben, and I were getting up, I questioned whether I should go. My main impetus for even considering it was the fact that so many other people of average fitness level were doing it, so why shouldn’t I? (Even as I think back to that morning, I can recall my nervousness level).

We left the bunkhouse and made our way to the kitchen. Our guides had said they’d prepare some potato soup for our journey but the kitchen was dark and empty. We went in anyway and started preparing tea and coffee. Slowly, other hikers, porters, and guides started filtering in. The kitchen became filled with the buzz of apprehension – or was that just me? Every time I went from the kitchen to the bunkhouse or the bathroom, my headlamp providing a faint path of light, I felt the chill of the cold wind and all I could think about was how crazy the whole venture was – people getting up in the middle of the night to hike up to the top of a mountain in the cold. This was not my scene. My scene would be staying in bed, in the warm, snug sleeping bag and wishing everyone else a safe journey.

But there I was, sitting on a small bench in the kitchen sipping potato and corn soup out of a mug. Our guides had finally showed up and shared something substantial and warm. Scott was standing up, anxious to get started. It was 20 minutes past our scheduled 1 am departure time. Two other groups had already left.


It takes on average between 5 and 6 hours to reach the summit from the Saddle Hut and our goal was to get there for sunrise. It was a gain of 1000 meters, like the other days, but for some reason the final push was harder. Scott would disagree with me, but it was. Maybe it was the altitude. Maybe it was the piercing wind and cold temperatures. Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe it was the fact that during part of the ascent, on one side of us were some of the largest, sheerest cliffs in the world. Of course, I couldn’t see them going up, but just that knowledge scared me. Whatever combination of factors it was, it was enough to make me second-guess myself.

Scott had been nobly keeping his pace down to stay with me and help me at every big step (I swear I wasn’t like that the first two days), but when we were within minutes of the summit, I told him to just go ahead. I knew it was killing him to not race up. I knew it would kill him to miss the sunrise. I knew it was killing him that there were other groups ahead of us. So after an obligatory, “Are you sure?” Scott darted away and soon disappeared. Even Ben, who during the first two days of hiking had been lagging behind at least an hour, passed me during my time of utter doubt and self-loathing. I could see the summit and the stiff wooden Tanzanian flag above me, but I did not want to go any farther. Our guide, Malik, wouldn’t hear any of it. I don’t remember what he said. What’s more memorable was what he did – everything that was possible to get me to move short of carrying me. I would’ve preferred to have stayed right where I was as other groups passed me going up and going down. I could’ve been the “Welcome, you’re almost there” person or the “Farewell, have a safe journey down” person. But I continued to push myself as Malik pulled me up by my arm, and eventually I reached the summit.


I’d like to say that reaching the summit of Mt. Meru at 15,000 feet high was a spiritual moment, but it wasn’t. It was a painful moment, or a painful 20-minute moment. I had no energy left to fake being happy or excited. I did the obligatory summit photos, all the while dreading the journey down, which was, as I had predicted, worse than the journey up.

Wrangell Reunion in Africa

With No Running Water...