TANZANIA - DAY 1

We had a 7 hour flight from Istanbul to Turkey on Tuesday so arrived at Kilimanjaro airport in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.  This picture was the highlight of the flight taken from my seat.

By the time we got to the hotel in Arusha and to bed, it was about 3:00 a.m.  Fortunately, Wednesday was was  a 'down day' for us so we did a lot of relaxing and repacking for the start of our safari on Thursday as you are restricted to one small piece of luggage....actually, the tour company provided the bag which they wanted us to use.  The hotel was small but very pleasant and it has a swimming pool.  The staff were all very friendly and we have been learning a few Swahili words.  The pictures below give you an idea of what the hotel is like.

This little guy is called a Dik Dik - they are local to Tanzania.  This is actually a small one.

Tanzania has two national languages - Swahili and English but there are 120 tribes and each one has their own language.  Primary (elementary) school is mandatory and is free but high school has to be paid for by the student's family.  The most expensive of the high schools are, not surprisingly, private schools, the next most expensive are the government schools and the least expensive are the missionary schools.  In order of quality of education in high schools, it's private, missionary, then government.  The government has been in power for 50+ years and needless to say, corruption is rampant, not only in the government but among the police.

The electricity in Tanzania goes out every day from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.  This is because the water in the hydro damns is low.  Their rainy seasons are in November/December – the short one, and in March/April/May – the long one.

One of the large tribes is the Maasai tribe who still dress in traditional garb and rely on cattle farming for their livelihood.  The Maasai men can have multiple wives and we learnt of one man who had 30 wives and 80 children.  Because the classroom size is 40, he applied to the government to have a two school rooms built and asked the government to send teachers to teach his children.  He has since expanded to a third classroom and is taking in his neighbours' children for schooling.  The Maasai women have most of the responsibility in the tribe - they build the houses, run the homes, discipline the children, etc.  The Maasai men see themselves as being responsible for pro-creating, cattle farming and sitting around eating and drinking.  Despite the fact that primary school is mandatory, we witnessed many young boys out with the cattle.  We were told that these boys will be responsible for the cattle and around age 16, their fathers will give them one or two of the cattle for their own.

That's it for now!