Alligators to Africa: Adventures of a Veterinary Student: Travel to Mikumi (Tuesday, July 21)

We piled in cars this morning for the four hour drive through Morogoro and Mikumi National Park to Mikumi town, our first stop for this session. As we drove farther from Dar, the sprawling tin roofed houses built wall-to-wall thinned out, slowly but surely. The environment just outside Dar was dominated by palms, with tall trees and an almost jungle-forest feel, but as we drove west--and inland--the palms gave way to shorter brush and scrubland, peppered with baobabs and the occasional cashew tree. The people we saw along the roadside began to have chickens (koo koo), goats (mbuzi) and cows (ngombe) instead of carts laden with snacks, clothes, or palm leaf baskets. We drove west, looking out over the Uruguru Mountains, and the land transitioned to mainly farmland and empty scrub, with only small villages of mud houses with palm leaf thatch roofs scattered every so often.

Scenery on the outskirts of Dar

About three hours from Dar, we reached Morogoro and stopped at the market there for a stretch and bathroom break. As we got into the bathrooms, the group of girls I was with realized that while we figured out how to say bathroom in Swahili (vyoo or choo), we hadn't remembered to ask the words for women's and men's. The first Tanzanian man who came to use the bathroom after we got there was very confused to find a group of about eight white women standing and staring at the bathrooms, waiting to see which one he went into. As soon as the bus pulled up, men and boys pedalling everything from bananas (ndizi) to live turkeys surrounded us, asking if we wanted to buy. I mastered "hapana asante"--"no thank you"--very quickly at that point! Bose, one of the Nigerian women (and a non-Swahili speaker at that) was happy to haggle with one of the men over a belt, convincing him to punch a new hole in it for her before she bought. We loaded onto the buses again, and were off for the rest of our drive to Mikumi town.

The town of Mikumi lies on the western border of the national park by the same name, so we got to drive through the park on the main thoroughfare, the TANZAM highway that leads from Dar to Zambia, and the only paved road in the park.

The entrance to Mikumi

It was almost 30 minutes past the border of the park when I spotted the first wild animal of the drive--a single male impala. Then about 5 minutes later, Meing'Ataki, the Ruaha National Park head ecologist and our unofficial Tanzanian tour guide for the drive, spotted a whole herd of impala off the other side of the car. We saw a few giraffe off in the distance, a troop of yellow baboons running across the road, and a warthog running along past the bus. I spotted a cape buffalo resting under trees in a lowland, and we saw a whole herd of elephants--a matriarch leading a baby and a number of what looked like juveniles. The whole experience was very exciting, especially since this was just a taste of what we get to do and see for the rest of the trip.

Our first elephants!

We made it to the western edge of the park, and stopped at the Tan-Swiss Hotel, our lodgings for the next two nights. After unloading our bags we had a quick buffet lunch and got into our rooms: "bungalows," which were really nice, with big comfortable beds--and mosquito nets--and flush toilets and (really cold) showers. Deanna and Rudovick Kazwala talked to us about the organization of the course and some introductory things about Tanzania and its national parks, then we had dinner, hung out for a bit, and went to bed in preparation for an early morning tomorrow.