Some final thoughts, observations, anecdotes

We are home now, after a 16 hour flight from Cape Town to Atlanta, a layover, and a last two hour leg home. It is Delta's second longest flight, the longest being from Johannesburg, not much longer. It wasn't as grueling as we had expected. With meals, movies, writing, sleeping, the time seemed to pass. A few things that I neglected to write about before: The Maasai We passed a number of Maasai villages in our drives. The typical houses are small, with cone shaped thatched roofs. We frequently saw Masai people along the road and in the fields, men, women, and children. Many times they were herding cows and/or goats, men and also teenage boys. They wore typical clothing, bright colors and a cape-like material tossed over one shoulder. We also encountered them at the rest stops along our drives, often selling souvenirs and jewelry, or, especially the women, offering to pose with us for photos. We also saw them at the lodges, where the women were making and selling beaded jewelry. At one lodge, I marvelled at the skills of two Maasai women making a basket. One woman strung tiny gold seed beads onto a wire from a pile in her lap. The other one coiled already threaded wire into a basket. I had already purchased a beautiful basket at another location, and have been trying to limit my buying and even letting go of some of my collected handicrafts and oddities. But I of course bought another basket from the women. Beaded handicrafts are found everywhere we went, and are also common in other African countries. I know of beaded jewelry from a number of places. In Tanzania we saw jewelry, baskets, coasters, animals, much more in hotel and rest stop gift shops. At the airport yesterday I saw a life size Nelson Mandela made entirely of beads, very impressive. And also a not quite life size but also impressive giraffe. In the crafts market in Cape Town, the same crafts were available and many more. Many were the same as the ones we saw in Tanzania. I am not sure if they make the same crafts in both countries, or if some are imported from other countries. There were clothes, wooden carved masks, animals, furniture. And a variety of stone carved items. And paintings, none very appealing to us, that we guessed might have been made in China. (Loring read a book a few years ago about the industries in China producing art and crafts for foreign countries.( ie paintings of Paris scenes) And much more than I can describe. One shop had a vast quantity of beautiful African beads like the antique clay trade beads. I was tempted but resisted. I asked and was told that they came from Ghana. One shop had designer clothing both in stock and that could be custom made. I saw on their website that they had pop up shops yearly in Berlin and New York. I tried on several and was told they could be altered in a few hours, but didn't find the right one. And they were two or three times the price of clothing I'd seen in other places. On our last day, I did purchase a tunic made specially for me from material I chose, with the vendor assuring me that he could have it done and delivered to me in two hours. (we were leaving then.) I gave him a deposit and then had second thoughts about how wise an idea that had been. But true to his word he delivered it to our hotel only five minutes late. And I love it. There was one huge shop and gallery in Tanzania that we stopped at two different times, obviously arranged for the tourists. They had a vast array of many kinds of art and crafts, much of which liked, mostly quite large. They assured us the works could be removed from their frames and rolled up to be able to be carried home. But my concern was more the lack of wall space at home to display anything more than what we already have collected over the years. I think I was pretty reserved in what I did purchase, although not as much as I hoped to be. A couple of baskets, the towels with recipes I already described from the museum in Cape Town, gifts for the kids and two year old Julian. Carolina had requested, jokingly, an elephant and a warthog. We got her a small beaded elephant. Warthogs were harder to find, probably because they are ugly. We did find a bottle opener with a handle made of a warthog tooth. I think she'll like it. We got a set of wood nesting bowls for M and M. Julian gets a T shirt from Tanzania, and a shirt with a safari truck and elephants from South Africa. Loring bought a shirt with with an African pattern, probably the only clothing item other than t shirts he's ever purchased in our travels. I had wanted to buy something with a tanzanite stone, a gemstone found only in Tanzania. But I had no interest in a fancy expensive piece of jewelry, a good thing since tanzanite is very expensive. Most pieces ranged in the thousands of dollars. What I found is a silver ring in the shape of the African continent, with a tiny tanzinite stone marking Tanzania. The perfect souvenir! A few words about clothes, the ones we brought. We were told to wear neutral earthy colors, browns and beige and green. Supposedly bright colors attract the animals' attention. (But didn't we want to attract them?) And no blue, because that attracts the tsetse flies. Tsetse flies, shit. I was worried enough about mosquitos, to which I have a bad, sometimes allergic reaction. One of the first days on safari, I was bitten about a dozen times by insects that looked like house flies. I asked Nixon, our guide, what tsetse flies look like. He said these were tsetse flies. I felt sleepy for a while but think it was all in my mind. And sleeping sickness has a lot more symptoms. We rarely encountered any mosquitos, and hardly any tsetses after the first day or two. All of the lodges had mosquito netting around the beds, romantic but unneccesary. We were also told to bring our things in a duffel bag, I am guessing because they are easier to cram into the vehicles. We did, and fit everything into ones that are carry-on size, the way we like to travel. But ours were by far the smallest bags in the group. And some people were staying for less time than we did, and not going to a city in addition to the safari. What do people bring, unless they bring a separate outfit for each day of a trip? One more thing: let me describe some of the names of groups of animals we encountered, in addition to a tower of giraffes. A group of zebras is a dazzle, one of hippos is a bloat, a group of elephants is a parade, and one of flamingoes is a flamboyance. This is not something I learned on our trip, but something I learned about long ago. I don't know if these words or their equivalents are used in Africa or anywhere beside the United States. One more thing to research. But I have long thought of writing a children's counting/alphabet book that uses these group names. Maybe this trip will inspire me. I think I will end this account here, although there is so much more I could tell. I write this blog first for myself, as a journal I can look back on to remember where I have gone and what I have done. But I am pleased and flattered when others read it, so thank you. I hope I have entertained and informed you. And now, time to start thinking about my next adventure.