Safari Njema

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go on a Safari in Ruaha National Park, which is located about a 3 hour drive from Iringa. Ruaha is the second largest park in Tanzania, and it boasts the country’s largest population of elephants, yet it is one of the least visited parks because of its remote location. This was good for us, as we had the place pretty much to ourselves. We rented an 8-person minibus with a pop top roof, and it proved to be an ideal vehicle, despite its close resemblance to a daladala.

The park entrance sign.

Our crew consisted of the 3 EI interns, Jen, Sacha and I, along with a new EI UK volunteer named Ellie who has just arrived to teach Math and Science in a secondary school that EI sponsors. On top of the EI people there was Paul, an American potter volunteering at Neema crafts, Tom, a British guy on his “gap year” who is volunteering around the world, Andres, a Spanish computer scientist teaching at Tumaini University here in Iringa, and finally Liza, a German girl who works at the Lutheran Diocese headquarters. So there was quite a variety of cultures in our little group, even though we are all Westerners. The tour company also sent a driver, Kunra, and a guide, Upendo (Love), to accompany us.

We left early Saturday morning, and arrived at our campsite just in time for mid-morning tea. The place was not busy, as we were the only customers staying there and the employees were just setting up our tents when we arrived. Satisfied at the site (we didn’t know what to expect for 5 dollars a night), we moved on to our destination. Upon arrival at the park we all had to get out and pay the park fee, which is about one dollar...if you’re a Tanzanian citizen that is. Any other nationality gets the privilege of paying a mere 2000% increase on that, but I can’t complain, I would have happily paid more then 20$ to enter a world most people only see on television.

Immediately as you enter the gate there is a river teeming with crocodiles and hippos (what is the plural for hippopotamus? Hippopotamuses? Hippopotami? Apparently my spell check doesn’t know either). The crocodiles pretty much just sat there in the sun, its amazing that they are so quick and strong seeing as they appear extremely lethargic to me. The hippos would usually be under water, raising their massive heads for air every once in awhile. A couple of them came up out of the water to enjoy the sun, but they are also quite docile, as they primarily do their foraging at night. I should also mention that there are over 450 species of birds in the park. I am not much of a bird person, but Paul is, so you can imagine throughout the course of the safari someone frantically pointing out each East African yellow breasted stork-legged king fish hawk eagle thingy that comes within the radius of the moon of our vehicle. I don’t remember what any of them were called, but I did see Zazu, the bird from “The Lion King”. There is a reason why I didn’t take Ornithology in Uni.

Moving on, Paul, Tom and I quickly discovered that we could comfortably sit on the roof of the van in a much better vantage point for spotting animals, and that is where I spent the remainder of the trip; most of the others took turns because the sun was extremely hot up there (I thought the wind nicely counteracted the heat, personally). The first big land mammal we saw was a giraffe, and it was pretty incredible to be within feet of such a remarkable animal in the wild. As we drove on we found a few giraffes together, and soon a herd of zebra were crossing right in front of us. I was surprised to see the two species living together so closely, but Upendo told me that the zebra often stick with the giraffes because of their ability to spot predators coming from a distance. While it was awesome to see these two species, I am embarrassed to admit we began to see them so much that we stopped paying much attention to them after awhile.

Me with a zebra in thebackground.

Conveniently we got a flat tire right at lunch time so we had our lunch while it was being repaired. During lunch, Paul came up with the idea of stripping thorn bushes that are so common in this part of Africa and selling the thorns as toothpicks. I have to admit, I have used them as toothpicks on a few occasions and they work extremely well, albeit they are a bit sharp (we proposed putting a warning on the label, but then came to a consensus that we could never sell them in the USA because of the American penchant for lawsuits).

We were back on the road after a short break and soon saw a herd of elephants and some gazelle in a dried up riverbed. They were quite far away but we were able to sneak up quite close on a large male elephant who was busy head butting a tree. We watched him for some time and then moved on. By this time I was very happy with what we had seen but I really wanted to see lions. Our guide said that we would be lucky if we got to see lions as often they can be hard to find.

As I started calling the lions with a “hereeeeee simba, simba, simba” reminiscent of Ernie calling the fish into the boat on Sesame Street, we turned a corner to spot 3 lionesses under a tree in the shade. The call had obviously worked, and we watched them for a quarter of an hour until someone spotted a zebra “lying down” under a tree in the distance – with another lion. We excitedly drove over to the spot, and gazed upon an extremely rare scene, a lioness guarding a freshly killed zebra. Here we could get very close to the kill, within about 20 feet. It felt like the lioness could have jumped up on the roof and grabbed one of us effortlessly if she pleased. Fortunately, she was content with her zebra.

A lioness enjoying her meal.

After a while one of the other lions came over and switched spots with the current guard; the new arrival began to feed on the carcass. We were close enough to hear the ripping of flesh and see the blood dripping down her chin. After watching the spectacle for at least half an hour we left and saw some more giraffes, zebras and gazelles. On the way back we went by the kill again and this time there were three lions there, two of them were relaxing under the tree and the other was feeding on the intestines of the zebra. I also noticed a crowd of vultures at what must have been the kill site, as you could see drag marks over to the tree. We watched the three of them go about their business for some time and started heading back as dusk approached. On the way home Tom was desperately searching the treetops for leopards, but to no avail. The guide said that it was extremely difficult to see a leopard, and she had only ever glimpsed two of them in all her years doing this.

The night was great fun, we had a bonfire and played games until 11, and said goodbye to Tom as he had to catch a bus at 4 am to Malawi. We rose at 5:30 am, as we only had a few more hours until our 24 hour permits ran out and we wanted to get the most of our trip. We entered the park sleepily and were cruising along at a good pace when Ellie suddenly called for us to stop. I looked over and there it was, one of the rarest animal sights one will see, a leopard. He was sneakily stalking along in the way that leopards do, his elaborate spots acting as brilliant camouflage against the tall, dry grass. We reversed to follow his stride and he ducked down in the grass, I kept my eye on the spot and after a while he rose again. We kept following him and apparently he didn’t like this because he ducked again and this time must have crawled off as he did not reappear in the same spot.

We kept watching but eventually had to move on; the driver wanted to check once more and reversed farther in the way the cat had been traveling. Sure enough, there he was, further away but definitely visible. We then noticed that he was moving towards something, a lone impala munching grass nonchalantly. Unfortunately we spooked the impala and he was looking right at us with ears fully perked. We watched the leopard stalk around behind the impala but it wasn’t moving very quickly and the impala moved away over time. We then lost sight of the leopard but I am convinced if we hadn’t cramped his style he would have caught that impala. Nonetheless, it was an amazingly beautiful scene to witness, and we felt bad for Tom having to miss his favorite animal. We quickly sent him a text about our spot to make him jealous.

Time was running low and we were on our way out of the park when we made one last spot, one that you couldn’t miss. On our left there was a herd of nearly 300 cape buffalo crossing a riverbed. There size and numbers were awe-inspiring; we could hear the combined sound of their hooves pounding the hard ground and their snouts snorting through the dust. We watched them have a couple of mini-stampedes and then moved on. Overall we saw giraffes, zebras, elephants, lions, buffalo, gazelles, impalas, hippos, crocs, warthogs, kudu, dik-diks, monkeys, hares, bushbucks, many birds, and a leopard. This accounts for four of the “big five”, the fifth being rhino, which is not found in Ruaha, so we did pretty well. Overall it was a priceless experience, and I have a new appreciation for national parks and protected areas all across the world where animals can live naturally, away from humans and our enviornmentally devastating activities.

More pictures can be found by clicking the "Safari Njema" link under "Pictures" in the top right hand corner.