Chinatown, NYC: Christmas Eve Dinner

Mom and Cam Ly

Scott and Mom

Cam Ly and Brian

Chimps!

At age 55, this chimpanzee was the Mzee (old man) of the group.

 

Grooming.

The younger chimpanzees have much lighter faces. The one on the left was about 6 years old and just wanted to play.

Journey to Gombe

As Scott cut up a pineapple on the shore of Lake Taganyika, I thought about the last time we had been by a lake – just the day before we had waited in a big bus on the beach of Lake Victoria.

It had been early morning. We had boarded the bus before 6 am so I was in and out of sleep. Scott was outside the bus on the phone using up credit and across the aisle, out the right side window was a grey Lake Victoria. It was drizzling. The first leg of our trip was between Arusha and Mwanza and day two was supposed to bring us to Kibondo, but here we were on a big bus on the beach of Lake Victoria. I turned to the woman next to me and used broken Swahili and hand gestures to ask, “When is the bus leaving?” She spoke and pointed at the large ferry that was, at the time, unloading cars and people. It dawned on me only then that we were waiting to get on a ferry. I pulled out the Lonely Planet and confirmed that, indeed, a sliver of Lake Victoria interrupted the road from Mwanza to Kibondo.

In Kibondo we immediately jumped on a dalla to Kigoma, the access town to Gombe National Park. After realizing that it may take us seven hours to get to Kigoma, we decided to get off and spend the night in Kasulu, a thriving western town halfway between Kibondo and Kigoma.

In this part of the country, blacktop roads are rare and the dirt is hard-packed red soil, the kind of soil that gets everywhere and turns everything a burnt orange-red color. The roads are rough and endlessly potholed, so the dalla ride this morning from Kasulu to Kigoma was more than hair-raising; it was downright scary. To think that a dalla ride may bring us great injury is nothing new for me – I have that thought on almost every dalla we ride on. But this morning as the dalla was being driven seemingly recklessly on these pot-holed red dirt roads, even Scott was nervous, and that says a lot.

After reaching Kigoma at 9:30 this morning, we took a short taxi ride to where large, wooden water taxis were waiting to take passengers and goods to destinations around Lake Tanganyika as far off as Burundi. We boarded the water taxi a little after 12 and secured seats along the side of the deep boat. For the next hour, we watched as load after load of goods were brought on – 25-kg bags of detergent, sheet metal, a mattress, suitcases, plastic chairs, tires, children.

Aboard a water taxi on Lake Tanganyika.

 

It took us a total of three days of traveling but we finally made it to Gombe National Park, one of the western-most parts of Tanzania and home to chimpanzees. After out last failed attempt back in August, it almost surprises me to be here.

The Beginning of Goodbye

I woke up to the banging of the front door before 5 this morning. Allison, our roommate for the past five months, was leaving. She had to catch a 6 am bus from Arusha to Dar. Yesterday had been such a series of goodbyes and tears that by the time Allison and I said goodbye last night in the house, I just wasn’t in the mood. But it hit me this morning when I woke up and realized she was gone – I might never see her again. It’s strange to live and work with someone in such close quarters for a period of time (our desks at work were side by side) and have that feeling. It was just the three of us – Scott, Allison, and I – for a month before our house grew to five and now six. But through it all, Allison was by far the most considerate and generous housemate we lived it, and a friend.

Even though the last day of school was yesterday, Scott and I will be spending the next two nights with many of the students in Moshi for Sports Weekend. So that gives the whole leaving process a bit of a cushion. We said goodbyes yesterday but we knew we still plenty of student time to look forward to. Maybe not plenty of time, but still more than nothing.

But there were some students that we legitimately said goodbye to, a few of them our favorites, like Lais Lazaro. Usually when I see Lais, his eyes light up and we have extended, prolonged conversations of greeting. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to teach Lais this go-around so whatever time I did get to spend with him was valuable. But yesterday, every time I saw Lais he had this forlorn look on his face. He spent some time in the library yesterday composing a goodbye letter to us. I only know he was doing this because when I walked toward him, he turned over the sheet of paper he was working on. In his letter to us, he referred to Scott and I as family. I wish Lais was going to Sports Weekend, but his forte has never been in athletics, although when he does play basketball or crazyball, he does so with a particular bounce of someone who truly loves it. Lais’s gifts are in the sciences and math and he really is gifted. I’d like to think that we’ll see him again.

The house is starting to wake up. The sun is shining bright and the birds are singing their usual songs. It rained shortly this morning cooling the ground a bit but I can tell it’s going to be a hot one. Scott and I still have to pack up our room before leaving around noon today. We’ll go to Sports Weekend in Moshi, then spend Sunday night in Arusha so we can take off early on Monday morning for one last Tanzanian adventure. Gombe National Park eluded us last time, but we’re determined to get there now.

First New Favorite

 

I should be grading final exams right now. If I just sat down and disciplined myself (like Scott; he is so good at sitting down for hours and just marking), I could get these done in a few hours. But I take tiny breaks to eat dinner, eat a mango, heat up food for our night guard Samson, take a bucket bath, cut my toenails, write a few emails, check my bank account, write these words.

I want so badly to capture this time. That’s all this blog is – an attempt to capture moments and thoughts, and I’ve been so poor at it. I’ve let these months in Tanzania go by without really doing it justice in writing.

I’ve missed opportunities to write about students – new and familiar – who have captured my heart, like Seuri Karisian. He is the young smiling Nyangula in a picture posted a few entries ago. I just got that photo printed so I can give it to him; he had asked for a copy of it a couple days after I took it. So many students ask me for copies of photos, but his request I’ll honor. To me, it seems impossible to not have favorites. I grew to love him – not because he’s the smartest student, not because he’s the most charming or cutest or outgoing but – because he kept filling in his reading log long after everyone else had stopped. I started the reading log in an effort to make the students’ free reading time (DEAR time = Drop Everything And Read time) more substantial and meaningful – after every book read, an entry should go into the reading log that mentions the title, author, main characters, setting, and why the student liked or disliked the book. It’s not hard but it’s something the students took seriously for about a month and then let peter out. I did the same. I think I checked their logs once in the whole semester. Despite this, Seuri K. was diligent with filling in his reading log until the very end of the semester. Not only did he log every book he read, he logged every book I read out loud to the class. And you know what? I think it helped him. His English writing skills have improved a lot and I owe it to his careful reading and his careful logging.

I also love him because he’ll ask questions like, “Teacher, can you bring me a bike?” or he’ll suggest we take a photo next to a bush because it’ll make it seem like we’re in the forest. I’ll never forget the time he had a huge open gash on his knee and when Scott cleaned it with an alcohol wipe, Seuri just laughed, a light, airy, high-pitched laugh. For this go-around, he was my first new favorite.