One of the really encouraging signs in Tanzania is how Tanzanians are using their own national parks more and more. I remember not too many years ago, you’d never see anyone but a foreign tourist exploring these national treasures.

Of course, development and time have helped. So have many foundations, like the William Holden Wildlife Foundation which take Kenyan school children into the national parks.

But it means that weekends are crowded. So I try to reduce the game drive to its main features, and that’s the hippo pool and views of flamingoes on the lake.

The hippo pool was much better than two weeks ago when I was here. Another mystery, since the lake was down. But again, the streams into the lake were flowing better than two weeks ago, the pelicans and yellow-billed stork were back (which means there’s fish in the lake, again). And so there were many more hippos, and they looked healthy… unlike Tsavo.

The cars were parked at one point three astride as visitors, locals and many school kids put their arms on the wooden fence and watched the 60 or so hippos in front of a backdrop of many other animals and birds.

At our picnic lunch Hayley jumped up screaming! Well, it wasn’t a cobra (remember, we’d just been at the snake park), but it was ants. And fortunately, not the really bad kind, just the really annoying kind.

We stopped at the viewing point on our way out of Manyara towards Ngorongoro. It seemed greener, although the lake was lower, but the few westwards along the escarpment was worth a portion of Bill’s camera photo chip!

On our day driving from Tarangire to Ngorongoro, we did the mid day game drive in Lake Manyara National Park. More than any other park, I love the forests here and would visit it even if there weren’t a single animal.

The forests contain a huge number of tree species, many towering into the sky and many wrapping around themselves like strangling figs. The leaves on many plants are huge, and Sykes monkeys and silvery-cheeked hornbills are everywhere.

We go here to see the hippo pool, and we weren’t disappointed. Clearly, all of East Africa has not had good rainfall, but this is not an area in drought. The streams are running well through the park and everything is green. Yet the lake is remarkably small, and there are even grasslands growing at places that use to have water. I hope this isn’t a long-term permanent phenomenon.

But there was plenty of water where the main stream meets the lake, and lots and lots of hippo. When I was here in March, it was parched, and there were very few. So there was a bit of recovery.

Afterwards we went towards lunch and stopped before the Msassa turnoff on the cul-de-sac that sweeps onto the plains. They were filled with wildebeest, zebra, and a line of giraffe walking slowly along the lake shore.

Then, we saw the lion. Lion in the grass. I was with our only real photographer on the trip, Michael, and he pulled out his long lense. Soon, we realized the lion were hunting.

Later we would learn that there were four mature lion downwind from the lead hunter who was crouched in the grass. This is a pretty standard hunt for lion: one places itself really close to the oncoming prey and will chase it into the others.

We were some distance from them, and so in binoculars and through long lenses it looked like a huge female giraffe walked right over the lion in the grass! Why didn’t she spring?

Because coming right behind was her teenager. Had the lead lioness waited all of three more seconds, I’m sure she would have pulled down the youngster, but she sprang too early.

The youngster bolted away, and mother came running back, her feet kicking before she even found the lioness. Other giraffe joined here. The mature lioness waiting downwind got up, dejected, and the lead hunter headed back to her cubs who were waiting patiently under a small acacia tree much nearer us.

The veld now knew the lions were there. Wildebeest and zebra ran way. The lions walked somberly back towards the cubs. They’d be able to do nothing, now, until dark.

Michael took 198 pictures of the event! How sweet is digital photography?

The immediate fault is with the Chinese, an almost off-handed exportation of the racism and exclusionism in their own society. The secondary fault is with corrupt Tanzanians, who are proving they’re almost as bad as the Kenyans. And the way was paved for it all by the fight for democracy by the west!

Let me link the dots in this wadoadoa.

Madoa mbukubwa
Last month, David Maige, gathered some of his family for an afternoon outing to Lake Manyara Lodge, one of the most beautiful places in Tanzania to enjoy a cup of tea. The lodge is perched on one of the most dramatic examples of the Great Rift Valley, directly over Lake Manyara National Park with spectacular views.

He was stopped at the gate by guards who told him that the hotel was a “no-go for natives.”

Maige, who was born and raised in Manyara and is now an employee of the national parks, reported the incident to Tanzania’s Minister for Tourism, Shamsa Mwangunga. As reported in Tanzania’s Guardian newspaper, Maige said, `Honourable Minister, as domestic tourists, Tanzanians are facing discrimination at the hotel. We are not allowed to approach the facility, let alone getting in and being served.”

Ms. Shamsa hightailed it up to Manyara, made a surprise visit to the lodge and confirmed the barrier policy. Over tea over the Great Rift, Ms. Shamsa was told by two property heads (again as reported in the Guardian), “Our hotel is close to a residential area, and so we felt it necessary to control unnecessary influx, taking into account that we have suffered three robbery incidents.”

Kali ya wadoa
The first three lodges built on the Tanzanian northern safari circuit were in the early 1960s by a Swiss company: one in Ngorongoro, one in the Serengeti, and the one under discussion at Lake Manyara.

By today’s standards they’re very simple, often called plain, but I’d rather think of them as Frank Lloyd Wrightish. The problem was that as soon as travelers began using them, they stopped working. The outside was beautiful, but the inside didn’t function. Water supplies had been poorly engineered, and it wasn’t too long before water rationing at all three lodges was in place. Sometimes not having a toilet is better than having one that doesn’t flush.

Less than a decade after they were opened, Tanzania and Kenya had the great fight that sealed the borders between the two countries. Kenya embraced Wall Street. Tanzania embraced the Rising Sun, and terrible shortages of all things necessary to hotel management were no longer available in Tanzania. Things went from bad to worse. Water rationing no longer occurred, because there was no water at all.

In those fateful days of the 1970′s, EWT would often bring food and water with our safari vehicles if we were staying at those lodges, which at the time were the only lodges there were.

Bad engineering. Loss of patrons. Complete lack of use. At 20 years old they were already museums.

Wadoadoa wa PingPong
As I’ve often written before, the 1980s heralded the RETURN OF CAPITALISM to all of Africa, including Tanzania. Today, Tanzania has some of the most beautiful lodges in Africa.

In days of swank and style, it was even harder to do anything with these three poor lodges. Most of the time, they were owned and operated by the Tanzanian government. You could get great deals and stupendous views without water.

To its credit the Tanzanian government tried everything to offload the albatrosses. A number of good companies partnered with the government to try to rehabilitate the lodges, including several very reputable South African companies, and even the giant French Accor company (that owns Sofitel and Novotel). But to no avail. Ownership went back and forth between hopeful private enterprises and the Tanzanian government.

Kidemokrasi kidoa… labda, kidogo
While all this was happening, prior to the end of the Cold War, the west had opened the bank vaults to any country willing to embrace “democracy.”

President Reagan instituted a new and very important officer in all embassies world-wide, the “Democratization Officer.” Democracy meant capitalism. The World Bank insisted that everything, even small little parastatals like organized big game hunting, be privatized. Aid flowed virtually without any accountability, if only the country gave the U.S. embassy’s Democratization Officer and the New Capitalism a rousing welcome.

Tanzania privatized mining. Airlines. Electricity. Big Game Hunting. But every day the American Democratization Officer came to work, those three historic lodges were still owned by the Tanzanian government. Shame, shame. More money, please.

U.S. Aid financed engineering consultants, business consultants, financial partners, ecotourism partners, and soon everybody was getting a little bit of American money to do their thing for these poor three lodges, and there were so many routes for funds that nobody could count the total.

Unbounded, unaccounted for, U.S. Aid. So lots of private people and companies owned, at least for a little while, these three lodges.

Still, no water.

One report by the IPP Media in Dar-es-Salaam estimated that the total inflow and outflow of U.S. and other western capital for these poor three lodges could have rebuilt the entire tourism industry in Tanzania multiple times over. What happened to all this money?

Not only in tourism, but in any industry with such rampant transfer of unaccounted for funds, a lot blew into the opened pockets of people positioned along the route.

Mafuta madoa
China has had a historic presence in Tanzania starting in about the 6th Century. Later, they built Tanzania’s railway. But the surge in capitalism in China meant China needs oil. BP Shell had long given up on the East African coast, but not China.

I’ve written recently how China may have discovered (or think they will) oil in northern Kenya. With mind-boggling speed, they built a road 300 miles into the desert to get ready. I have wished and dreamed for this road for 33 years. It happened in six weeks between two of my safaris!

In Tanzania, they’ve been looking and looking and looking for oil. Capitalism works best when you don’t admit it. But I must admit I can’t find hard evidence for the following presumptions, so in the spirit of true capitalism, here goes:

In January, 2007, I took one of my safaris into the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge (one of the poor, little hotels) for tea and a terrific view. We had heard the lodge had just shifted ownership, again. There was a bunch of young Indian Tanzanians in the lodge looking very hopeful. I asked what they were doing, and one gave me a card that said “Hotels & Lodges, Ltd.” and identified himself as the new owner. But he wouldn’t give me his name, and there was neither a name nor contact address on the card!

The rumor on the circuit — recounted to me multiple times — was that an Indian Oil Exploration company that was owed a lot of money by the Tanzanian government to help China find oil, was given these poor three lodges instead of cash. If I didn’t have to spend so much of my time finding lions, I would be deeper into Google to prove it. Any help will be appreciated.

China’s method for doing business in Africa is exemplary capitalism: “International observers say the way China does business—particularly its willingness to pay bribes … and attach no conditions to aid money—undermines local efforts to increase good governance,” claims the Council on Foreign Relations in its excellent June, 2008, monograph on China, Africa & Oil. Sounds like the Chinese would make excellent Democratization Officers.

Mwisha Madoa
In March last year, I took my group again to the Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge for tea and the great view. There were guards at the door who didn’t want to let us in, this time.

There was construction going on, they said, and it might be “dangerous.”

I saw workmen. They were Chinese workmen. And they were wearing pyramid straw hats. I managed to get in, anyway, and I was told that tea was no longer Tsh. 1000/- (about 10 U.S. cents), but now U.S. dollars 5, because it was “now good tea from China.”

I paid U.S. dollars 5 for each glass of tea. It wasn’t any better. The view was outstanding as always. And in between looking over breath-taking Ngorongoro Crater, I chatted up the barman who said the Chinese now owned the hotel and we’re remaking it for Chinese tourists expected to flood into Tanzania faster than crude out of the Zanzibar reef.

“Can I come back?” I asked meekly.

He wasn’t sure I’d be let in the next time.

I’ll be trying again in a few weeks. I’ll let you know.

We drove from Tarangire Treetops to Lake Manyara in about two hours, and it would have been shorter except for the requisite stop at the Mto-wa-Mbu market. If I’ve been criticized for anything throughout my career as a guide, it’s been that I don’t give people enough time for shopping.

But this stop was particularly productive. Ken Winge, the owner with his wife, Sandy, of one of Galena’s finest little stores (Galena Wine & Cheese) has adopted woodworking as his life’s avocation. Any visitor to his beautiful new workshop/barn can’t help but think he’s preparing his living space as a future museum.

Ken wanted not just some of the beautiful curios you can buy, but some of the raw wood so that he, too, could fashion something. That’s not the easiest assignment I’ve ever been given! A lot of the wood carvings found throughout the circuit come from woodworkers far away. And those that do have “workshops” nearby have difficulty themselves getting the wood.

I learned from Ken that the common names we’ve all been using aren’t really correct. I’m a particular fan of rosewood, or at least what everyone here calls rosewood. They make especially beautiful bowls and I admit that this safari I acquired a curio myself, a rosewood elephant!

Final analysis has to await something more scientific, but Ken’s first impression is that rosewood is actually bubinga, much lighter than true rosewood. He also believes that most of what we call ebony is African blackwood. The new nomenclature doesn’t diminish the beauty or rarity of the wood, by the way.

Well, Ken found his hunks of African blackwood since my lead driver, Tumaini Meisha, happened to bump into a cousin near the market who took Ken’s artistic motivations to heart, and guided him through both the miasma of curio stalls then the ultimate bargaining.

We entered Manyara shortly afterwards and how different it was from 12 days ago! The low lake level remained a final indication that the season has been very dry, but it had to have been raining hard for the last several days. The veld was beautifully green running from the lake shore to the woods, and the streams were all nearly full. Where we had seen only a handful of hippos at the famous entry of the largest stream to the lake 12 days ago, this day we counted more than 60!

On the plains were dozens and dozens of giraffe, zebra and wildebeest. In the forests were fabulous elephants, and the red and yellow bishops were back. Frankly, I don’t know where they want last time, and it makes me realize that game viewing might have a strong psychological component to it. The bishop birds never leave Manyara. They had to have been there my last visit, but perhaps we were just all so discouraged that we didn’t look carefully enough.

My son, Brad, was the first to spot the great silvery-cheeked hornbills, too. The park was in its full glory this day, and the one thing that never changes and was just as beautiful even during my last game poor visit, was the indescribable forests of towering podacoprus, mahogany, and tangles of intricate ironwood.

The feast for the eyes was more than sufficient. So it was sensory overload when less than a few hours later we stared down on Ngorongoro Crater from its first viewpoint!

We entered the park around 11:30a coming from Tarangire. A midday game drive in Lake Manyara for safaris traveling north from Tarangire to the crater is commonplace. We take a picnic lunch and sit by the lakeshore watching flamingoes.

We didn’t see any flamingoes. There wasn’t enough water in this usually giant lake for them. At the most famous place in the park, where a large stream runs into its northwest top drawing upwards of 100 hippo and hundreds of breeding birds, we saw around 20 hippo and no breeding birds.

The beautiful varied trees of Manyara were losing their leaves. And it was 95 F! After we guffed down our lunch, we raced out to the Karatu highlands where it was so much nicer.

Droughts have been a part of Africa for all of recorded history. We used to think of them as coming every ten years. But the last real drought in East Africa was in 1992-94, so we are certainly due. But many believe we’ll never get a normal drought, again. Rather, we’ll experience the unusual mini-droughts simultaneously with flooding nearby, which is wrecking havoc on this ecosystem.

Manyara is absolutely experiencing a drought. But Tarangire to the south, and Ngorongoro and the Serengeti to the north, are not having a drought. In fact, the southern Serengeti had some flooding yesterday.

In Laikipia in Kenya (the area in which Samburu is located), there was only one week of rains in November. Normally this area’s short rains begin in November and continue for 6 or 7 weeks. There were areas further to the east that missed the Short Rains altogether. The Ewaso Nyiro River which divides Samburu with Buffalo Springs national park that normally dries for only a week in October has been dry since January 12.

Yet in the Aberdare Mountains, a mere 45 air miles south of Samburu, it was pouring when we were there, and at least for a diagonal strip that we explored from The Ark towards the west edge of the park, it was lush and well watered.

I remember in February, 2007, the first time in memory that the Serengeti was parched at that time (except during the years of drought, and 2007 was definitely anything but a drought). Unschooled observers thought was just an interlude between short and long rainy seasons. (And it down poured before and after.)

This was dead wrong, at least historically. The “short rain-long rain” climate area has been restricted to areas east of a north-south line from Nairobi to Arusha. West of this line was a single rainy season the first half of the year followed by a dry season the last half (where the Serengeti lies). This is beautifully illustrated on a large display at the Serengeti park gate at Naabi Hill.

That difference in a relatively small area highlights the microclimate tendencies of an equatorial region. But now it’s being accentuated. The clear line that divided the two climatic zones is being fractured. And to confuse things further, when it rains, it pours. When it’s dry, it’s a drought. And all of this is happening in an extremely small area from a meteorological perspective.

I asked one of my clients on this safari, George Halley, to help me understand if this was unusual. George is a farmer in Illinois with 3000 acres of corn harvested annually. He explained that not too many years ago his area was completely dry, whereas ten miles away they had more than 4″ of rain in a short time. So to a certain extent, then, micro climates happen everywhere, and always have.

Are we just, then, noticing them more? Or is it really global warming?

I think it’s global warming. George was uncertain if that climatic anomaly happened often in the past on the Illinois prairies. I know that it didn’t happen, here. Obviously not every square inch of ground got the same amount of rain as the next, but there certainly wasn’t as great a difference between Manyara and Tarangire as we all saw this week.

And the quick ending mini-droughts of the sort the Serengeti experienced in February, 2007, have little if any precedent. And certainly the torrential downpours that precede then follow these periods of exaggerated dryness are not historical.

For George and his genetically engineered corn group and state of the art drainage ditches, the effects are less severe than for the poor farmers in Manyara, whose crops are withering or washing away. I think that for those of us who enjoy a better station in life than the farmers in Manyara, we better take another very serious look at the effects of global warming.