February 24, 2002

Dear Friends,

I hope this new travelogue finds you all well.

Things in this part of the world are fine. We have finished one semester and have begun another. The rains are coming slowly, so there are occasional breaks in the heat and everywhere the countryside is very lush. I traveled safely to Rome and successfully completed all my business (gaining back about 10 pounds in the process, yeah!). The big news here is that due to a post-election shake up in the Salvatorians, we will be losing our #2 man in Morogoro, Fr. Lazarus. He has been “promoted” to Novice Master and is moving to the south, a two day trip from here if the roads are good. We will all miss him greatly. We both feel that we made a pretty good formation team these past few years.

In today’s travelogue I thought I‘d try to describe my alternate life as a bush hog: someone who drives visitors around the nearby national park looking for wild animals. I am inspired to write about this mainly because we had visitors here from the US this week with whom I toured the park and the experience is still fresh in my mind.

First the park. It is called Mikumi and is located exactly 100 kilometers from our house in Morogoro. It’s a straight shot on a blacktop road. The park is one of the smaller ones in Tanzania, but still it covers thousands and thousands of acres. I think it boasts just about every game animal in East Africa except for the rhino. In the dry seasons it is hot and dry, everything is brown and dusty. This time of the year, the rainy season, it is hot and green and muddy. So you can see, one always has a choice.

Next the truck. Our community car is a real missionary vehicle: a beat up, yellow, 4-wheel drive Toyota pick up, vintage late 80s early 90s. People describe our truck with the same kind of euphemistic condescension they use for homely girls. They “have nice personalities”; our car “has a good engine”. But the body sure is beat to hell. But since this is the vehicle we use to train new drivers, there is really no sense in getting too concerned about scrapes or dings or dents. More will invariably come.

The drive to the park is easy. The park officials at the gate are quite friendly and equally inefficient. The entrance fee is low: $20 for a non-resident, and $5 for the Toyota. The guide is an extra $10, but well worth it, especially in the rainy season. For you see there is a big difference between a national park here and a theme park back in the States. Here nothing is guaranteed but the unexpected. You may see many animals or none at all. They may be far away or in your lap. The ride may be smooth or bumpy; it may even be completely halted if you get stuck in the mud. And no help is available. There is no AAA. You have to get out and walk back to the ranger station, if the lions let you. At that point, a good guide is all that separates you from complete disaster. I think it’s worth the ten bucks, however laconic, incomprehensible or surly the guide may be.

I have learned that the very best day to go to the national park is always “yesterday.” If you ask the guide about this or that animal he will invariably tell you that “yesterday” there were six lions right here; or “yesterday” there were 20 elands standing right there; or “yesterday” you could get through on this road with no problem. Unfortunately, I always tend to go to the game park “today.”

Weather is also important, and so is time. You don’t even what to think about being out in a game park in the rain even with a guide. And animals are much more active in the early morning hours and in the early evening than in the heat of the day. But again, you don’t what to be out there once it gets dark.

The roads in the park are really not roads. It is much more accurate to call them trails. Of course sometimes, especially in the rainy season, you have to abandon these trails altogether in places and drive blindly through the tall grass, coached along by the dancing index finger and gentle grunts of Alex, our guide. The trails go on for miles and miles with only an occasional pile of stones supporting an indecipherable sign. The fact that the park doesn’t issue a map frees you from the anxiety of wondering precisely where you are or where you may be headed. Again, Alex comes in very handy.

The first thing we must do after gaining admission to the park is visit to the “social building” near the village-like collection of buildings in which the guides and their families live. There we buy soda and some cookies and chocolate...whatever the guide says we will need. It makes no difference whether we brought provisions of our own because this is all part of the trickle-down economics in Africa. We hire the guide and he takes us to his people who make their living by selling us unnecessary things. Since it is just the beginning of the trip there is the vague sense (though no one says it aloud) that the success of our sightseeing, (i.e., how many animals we encounter) may all hinge on how happy Alex is with the number of sodas we buy. Insofar as it later turns out that we never stop anywhere to eat or drink in the park, all the supplies eventually go back to the guide’s family or back on the shelves to sell again. Neat.

A few hundred meters from the social club and we are off the road and on the trail. The guide asks how long we would like to tour. Because today the guests are somewhat older, I suggest 2 hours or so. He suggests 3, and we end up touring the park for about 5. But once you really begin, the time flies. No one knows where you will see anything...in the distance or just around the next curve. So you drive along in a constant sense of eager anticipation, even when it seems there is nothing to see for miles around. And you never know what might await you...a 6 meter long python, a rogue elephant, a harem of impala, four-foot tall migrating storks, herds of zebra, giraffes, and wildebeests (gnus), or even lions.

For all the times I had been to Mikumi, this was the first time I saw lions. It was really quite thrilling. On our drive out into the bush our guide stopped to exchange information with other guides in the 3 or 4 vehicles we passed along the way (the park is far from cowded). My Kiswahili is still not very good but I could often make out the word “simba” lion. After the last such exchange, our guide told us he was confident that today, 25 kilometers from here, we would see lions. After some hours of driving, and after seeing many interesting animals I can’t take the time to describe now, we were bumping down a rather nondescript stretch of trail that felt eerily like West Texas, with sparse, short grasses and shrubby trees, when suddenly the guide indicated I should slow down and then stop. He pointed to the side of the road and beamed: “There...lions.”

At first we thought he was joking. His finger was trained on nothing more than an overgrown bush. But then someone in the back seat gasped, “Oh, my God! There’s one! Two! Three!” And slowly, we were able to distinguish in the shade of that bush 3 huge, heavily maned male lions half napping, half weighing their interest in us.

Slowly, Alex navigated me around the bush. All the while we were never more than a few feet away from the lions who (thanks be to God) seemed quite unperturbed by our presence. My apprehension focused itself on rolling up the window and making sure the door was locked (go figure). After having made one complete circle, Alex instructed me to back up for a better view. I thought this was wise, feeling we had already been uncomfortably close to these beasts for too long, and figuring also that maybe we could see them better from a greater distance. So, imagine my surprise when, after backing up, Alex gave the command, “Now, drive straight into that bush! Right now! Go!” This is the moment of truth when either you trust your $10 dollar guide or not. I did, and into the bush we went.

I won’t tell you that I know for sure that the front of the Toyota actually touched one of those big male lions, but it certainly could have. In any case it did the job the guide had intended. The lion got up, and dismissing us as completely uninteresting, sauntered out from under the bush and across the road. Before disappearing among the brush on the other side we all got a good look at how impressively large a full grow lion really is. No cat or dog you have ever seen can compare to it. It is more approximately the size of a young cow, though infinitely more graceful and more menacing. Words fail. After the spell was broken and our hearts stopped pounding in our ears, everyone burst into excited conversation, and heaped praise on Alex for making the day so memorable.

So enough of the game park for now. I hope that in the years ahead many of you will have the opportunity to visit here yourselves and to experience these and many other such wonderful things found uniquely in Tanzania. Sometimes it’s important to get away form the man-made and to be touched by the greatness of God revealed in the wonder of creation. And there are few places more awesome than here.

Though things are not quite definite, I hope to be back in the States for home leave this summer...almost surely for the month of July and maybe also for August. I will fill you in with details in my next travelogue, perhaps in May. Till then I wish you all a mild remainder of the winter, and a warm and sudden spring.

Love, Fr. Daniel