Wazungu, give me sweets

I figure that it's about time to talk about some of the people that I've encountered here, since they have been as integral to my experience in Africa as the wildlife and landscapes.

Firstly, I've had a lot of great opportunities to work on my princess wave. Whenever we drive anywhere in our Cruisers, people always stop and stare. But the reaction of children is by far the best; put simply, they love us. They would just stop and wave at us all day. And some get so excited that they run after our cars as fast as their little legs will carry them. And we just wave and wave and wave.

I feel that I have to make a confession here: I'd say that at least half of the time, these kids run after us yelling two main things: "give me sweets" or "give me money" with a bit of "hello, how are you?" and just some plain old whooping at the top of their lungs. We basically either ignore those pleas, or just respond to them "hakuna sweets," which means "there are no sweets." After three weeks here, it still hasn't gotten old.

When we're on the ground in towns or villages, we tend to create a similar sort of stir. In our local village, the mamas (Maasai women) start swarming our cars before we've even stopped moving, preparing to bombard us with sales pitches for their jewelry. On market days, they literally will not leave us alone, following us around wherever we go.

The kids will follow us around too. Without the distance of the car between us any longer, they are slightly more shy, although they warm up pretty quickly. Since I really like playing with them, I'll have foot races against them or make up hand games to play or show them how to pound and explode it. It's really fun to play with kids that are so interested in you.

One day, we drove to a school outside of Loitokitok town to help a local hospital group serve the community. We weighed babies, gave out vitamins and deworming mediation, and administered vaccinations. We were arrived, before we had even gotten out of our cars, we heard a group of mamas walking out way and singing together. As they sang, we went through their long receiving line, shaking each of their hands, and the hands of the children around them. They led us singing into the schoolyard.

When they had finished singing, they lined up all of the kids (there must have been at least 70 of them, but maybe more than 100) to sing to us too, though I think that yelling is a more appropriate description of their serenade. When they had finished, it was expected that we sing something for them (which was not surprising since when we visited a Maasai boma or homestead, pretty much the same thing had happened by way of greeting). So we treated them to a bit of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Ain't No Mountain High," the Hokey Pokey (which was a HUGE hit, probably because we did the dance moves to it too), and finally the Macarena.

That last one was my idea, because I thought we could get the kids to do it with us. They didn't really get that they were supposed to copy us, so I ventured up to their mass and took one of their hands in mine and did it for her. Then all of the sudden I had a crowd swarming around me, reaching their hands towards me, asking me to show them next. I finally got them all doing it, and some of my fellow American students followed my lead and got the other kids to do it too.

I think that most of the kinds just really liked touching me because I'm American and look different from them. So I let them. I went through the crowd and tried to offer my hands to as many as possible. If I stopped and sat, some were so bold as to touch my hair. (They are really fascinated by hair here, as pretty much everyone, men, women, and children, shave their heads.) I admit that I always thought it was weird watching politicians wade through crowds offering their hands out to everyone, but when I was there, I could just tell that it would mean so much to these kids, that I wanted to give some of myself to them.

On the other side of things, yesterday we went out into the field to conduct interviews of the local community about farming and agriculture, and one little kid who had never seen white people (wazungu) before started bawling at the sight of us.

There is so much more to write about the people whom I've encountered (particularly about the Maasai and their beliefs and traditions), but I feel I have already written a lot for now. I will leave you with the knowledge that I received my Maasai spear today, which if thrown properly will kill an elephant, giraffe, lion, etc. with one blow. Lessons are pending.

Killing for class and eating

I warn everyone reading this that I'm about to be fairly graphic, so if you don't want to hear about it, don't keep reading.

We just killed a goat a few hours ago. I saw the life of a goat taken as its legs were tied up, as two men held it down, as a third sawed at its throat with a knife. I saw the red blood sit poetically splattered on green leaves and grass. I heard one faint bleat, watched it struggle, and slowly stop moving. I saw after moments of stillness, its legs begin to curl and stretch, and the body to convulse, to shake--a reaction of the nervous system. When it stopped moving, we began to cut.

We were killing this goat mainly so that we could examine the contents of its stomach, in order to truly understand what rumination was, how it worked, and why it has proven to be such a successful adaptation for grazers. We were killing this goat, examining the contents of its body, and then we were going to eat it.

The skinning began. The askaris (guards of our camp, they are basically super-Maasai) moved about deftly with their knives, starting at joints on the legs and under the shoulders. They gently tapped along the skin membranes to separate the layer of fur from the coveted innards. One by one, students moved forward to try their hand at skinning.

Would I try? I didn't want to touch the goat, and I had had difficulty watching the killing itself as well as the skinning, but I wanted to be able to say that I had done it. All in.

I tried my hand at it. Pulling the already dislocated skin away from the meat with one hand, I tapped at the seams of pelt and tissue with the knife, carefully bending my wrist repeatedly like the nodding of a head. I worked around the stomach, peeling the skin closer towards the spine, and along a leg. The white, thin connective tissue easily gave way to my knife, while the pinkish-yellow muscle required a more persuasive force.

Later, I held a cut-off hoof. It was still very warm, and I couldn't bear to hold it. I tried to get rid of it as quickly as possible, eventually just throwing it on the ground.

I watched as the askaris cut open the abdomen, blood pooled inside, as they removed the organs. the stomach expanded and expanded. The intestines spilled out. The smell. I forced myself to watch.

They passed around the heart and lungs. I touched them, did not hold them, got blood on my hands. I held the liver, which was still warm, but not covered in blood. I watched them go through and open the four chambers of the stomach, seeing and understanding all that we had studied about rumination.

And then, we went to the fire pit and roasted the pieces. The guys in the group ate the testicles (the Maasai believe it gives them strength); the females were not allowed to do so. I do not like the taste of goat, though I definitely prefer the liver to the regular muscle-meat.

I had never seen a life taken from so close up before. I had never so directly seen where my meat comes from before. I'm glad that I made myself watch, touch, and taste.

I'm in love

Friday was just another normal day of class. We got up, went on a nature walk for Wildlife Ecology class, had lunch, and then went on safari. Ain't no thing like a chicken wing.

At the gate of Amboseli National Park, we opened up the roof windows of our Land Cruisers (one for each of the three back rows), kicked off our shoes, and stood up on our seats, now ready with our binoculars, cameras, notebooks, and field guides for some animal observation.

We saw ostriches, impala, wildebeest, gazelle (Thomson's and Grant's), elephants, an oryx, wart hogs (they look exactly like Pumba from The Lion King, which, incidentally, means wart hog), hyenas, giraffe, buffalo, zebras, hippos, and lions, among others. I got a bruise on my life side from where I was leaning against the opening of the roof, but that didn't matter--we were zooming around wide open spaces.

Having grown up in New York City surrounded by tall buildings, what struck me most was all of that wide open space and blue, blue sky. We zoomed through the roads, wind whipping through the planes, stirring up my hair into awful knots and coating it in dust. Grasslands, barelands, wetlands, wooded lands, dry lands, swamplands, we passed through it all. Freedom in the watchful eye of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

And there were the animals. If I thought that we saw a lot of ostrich and wildebeest and zebra close to the entrance of the park, that was nothing to the immense volume of animals we saw at the swamps (which were really just more like watering holes) that are the park's lifeline. Around the water were grazing literally thousands of animals, mixed in peacefully together while the water glittered blue and white in the hot sun. A Maasai herded his sheep and goats (or shoats as they're called here) through the mass of wild animals, while elephants and hippos reposed deep in the waters.

It was the most amazing feeling. And truthfully, my mind kept casting itself back to The Lion King, which really was my only reference point for anything on this scale. I didn't need my iPod, "The Circle of Life" kept playing itself through my head. Something about that song really does capture the rhythm of the life out there.

Wonderful.