Red and Green Patterned Bugs

We were up early and as always it isn’t early enough.  The driver is waiting.  The sun has now begun its ascent.  The place we’re staying at has a pool which were never able to swim in.  I walk out to the far ledge, which looks down over Tarangire Park.  Last night, a mere football stadium’s distance away there were elephants milling about, eating down there.  It’s still too dark to see anything now, but there are marvelous noises, everywhere. 

Tarangire park is filled with elephants.  They seem placid and content but one gets a sense of their power looking at the only living thing in the park bigger than the elephants: the baobab trees.  The thick, mighty baobab trees all have scars along the trunks.  Apparently the elephants know they can find water within and do what they need to with tusks and mass to force their way in to the trees, which otherwise seem to made of granite. 

We park by a toilet facility where we are aloud to get out of our land rover.  Down below is the  Tarangire River, which still flows at this time of year.  Yesterday we’d saw a male lion resting by the water’s edge.  I walk up to the fence and over to the bluff and look out at the unspoiled park land.  I can’t see anything but a few gazelles grazing.  Walking back to the car, stand for photos on this mound, by that fence.  On the ground were a troop of remarkable, red and green patterned bugs, which neither I, nor our driver, could identify.  Insects are the sorts of things you necessarily miss, driving about in a land rover. 

Later than night we are a world away, on a roof top of an old wooden home.  In one direction is the tower of a mosque.  Turning forty-five degrees there is a solemn old church tower.  The call to prayer crackles out over the revelry and the music.  I spy a tanker or two out in the water and closer to the shore a remarkable dhow.  My friend explains that the large colonial building off towards the sea is the House of Wonders which belonged to the Sultan and was the first Zanzibari building with electricity and an elevator.  I have been reading about this place for a while now.  I’ve only been here a few hours and I’m already in love with Zanzibar.  Yes, let’s go eat.  I’m ready.   Soon we’re sitting on the floor in a room with thirty-foot ceilings listening to an oud and a drum.  I’m so glad to be here.

Wednesday 07/05/17