What I did on my summer (no wait fall, no spring) vacation

The school here has a break every year in October. If we were in the US this would be called a fall break. But since we are 7 degrees south of the equator October is definitely not autumn. Technically I suppose it’s spring—but that’s assuming we have 4 seasons which we do not. Here it is hot and rainy, hot and dry, and just hot.

Anyway, the school was closing for a week so we decided to go on vacation. But first we had to figure out when the vacation would actually start. You see the four weeks leading up to fall (sorry spring) break have been Ramadan which is the time for fasting in Islam. Since Tanzania is approximately 50% Muslim, the government follows all Muslim and Christian holidays. The end of Ramadan is marked by the festival of Eid-el-Fitr which is a national holiday. But the beginning of Eid is dependent upon the sighting of the new moon—which is apparently somewhat more complicated than looking up at the sky and seeing if there is a moon. We were told that Eid would start on either Friday or Saturday and if it was declared for Friday then there would be no school and our vacation would start one day early. I decided this was the Tanzanian equivalent of waiting to see if you’d have a snow day. Phone tree lists were distributed and there was lots of gazing at the sky on Thursday hoping to see a sliver of a moon…

No such luck. The kids went off to school on Friday and Bob went to the office. On the plus side I got a few extra kid-free hours to pack for our vacation. We were planning to leave at the crack of dawn for a long drive to a lodge in the Southern Highlands. We’d been told that it takes anywhere from 8-13 hours to get to our lodge (broad range huh?). I’ve already written previously about my loathing for car trips so I was not looking forward to this…especially since our car had been making a very strange and only recently diagnosed noise (the bearings).

On Saturday we left at 6:15 AM which is something of a minor miracle considering I am perpetually late and we had to pack a week’s worth of junk in the car. Since it was so early and was also a holiday there was very little traffic in Dar. As we got out of town we saw lots of families dressed in their nicest clothes off to the Mosque. Lots of women were decked out in pretty new khangas and boys and men were wearing long white robes. We drove through Mikumi National Park (free safari!) and were fortunate enough to see lots of warthog mamas and babies, a buffalo, and plenty of impala and zebra.

We continued on through the Great Rift Valley, a giant valley that runs along East Africa from Mozambique all the way up to the Middle East.

The bottom of the valley is sparsely populated; all we could see were giant baobab trees and occasional tables piled high with giant buckets of onions for sale. Apparently they really like onions here because they sure sell a lot. At this point we were very glad that we had the portable DVD player with us; there’s just so many times you can thrill the kids with “Look! More onions!” Just past Iringa town we turned down the dirt road that would take us to the Mufindi region and the farm where we were staying. Two and a half hours on a dirt road is a long time; did you know that is 9000 seconds? But it really was quite pretty. We kept going up and up and up until we reached 7000 feet. There were forests of eucalyptus trees and bamboo as well as many tea estates. Finally, we reached the Fox Highland Fishing lodge.

The lodge is run by the Fox family; Geoff and Vicki have been living in this area for 48 years.

They have a number of other safari lodges across Southern Tanzania but this is the only one that is not located in or near a National Park. Basically it is a working farm. They raise cows, sheep, and pigs and also grow vegetables, coffee, and tea. They have nine cabins, a lodge and numerous activities for families. People say it reminds them of the Scottish Highlands but since I’ve never been there I have no idea if that’s really true. But it is spectacular. For five days we did not get in a car or use a telephone. It is so much cooler than Dar and very quiet. We went hiking, fishing, and horseback riding. We played pool and had sundowners overlooking the valley below. We played croquet, lawn bowling (which I think must be the British equivalent of curling), and baseball. Josh conquered a giant boulder;

all three kids rode horses for the first time; and everyone caught a fish.

One of the funny things about going on vacation in Tanzania is you almost always see someone you know. When we went to Mikumi Park we saw Ben’s teacher. This time we saw half the school. There were six other families there from Dar with kids at IST. Kinda strange… Fortunately everyone got along and so there was lots of fishing, racing, wrestling, and hill rolling.

We also got to see a sheep dog herding demonstration which was quite cool except now Benny wants a dog. The kids did not want to leave at all; none of us did. Our plan was to stop halfway home and spend the night. However, when we got to our stopping place the kids asked if we could keep going. Hmm… maybe we’ll survive road trips in Tanzania, after all.

File this one under "things we didn't expect to do in Africa"

Last month we got to go on a tour of an active duty naval destroyer. The USS Forrest Sherman made port in Dar es Salaam. We were told this was the first time a US military ship had docked here--which seems sort of impossible--but it sounds cool, so what the heck. The Embassy invited Americans and Tanzanians who were affiliated with the Embassy for a tour. It took Bob and I about 2 seconds to say yes. Well actually Bob said yes for me, since he had to work. With three kids and especially two boys aged 6 and nearly 9 how could we not go? There were three tours scheduled. We decided to take the latest one in the afternoon so that the kids could have a chance to come home from school and do their homework first. Apparently everyone else decided to do the same thing because there were so many parents with kids that there wasn't enough room in the vans. But we all squeezed in and some folks took their personal cars and we were off to the bandari (that's the port for all of you who are rusty on your Swahili).

The ship was even cooler than I had hoped. The kids weren't quite sure what to expect--and since Ben had given up his swimming playdate to go--I had my fingers crossed that this wouldn't be a bust. They were not disappointed. We got to see the deck of the ship with the 5 inch cannon, the bridge, and the command center.

When we went to the bridge they let the kids sit in the captain's chair.

Ben thought it was awesome.

Josh did too.

We'd never been on a naval ship before so all of this was new to us. And a lot of it was just like what you imagine or see in the movies. There were lots of ladders to various levels and oval shaped doors with the funky wheel you turn to open and close them. OK, maybe schlepping Josie up and down all those ladders wasn't the funnest thing to do but at least I got in a work-out. The best part was the command center. (But you'll have to take our word on that; we couldn't take pictures there-sorry). It was a dark, air conditioned room with different stations where they can monitor radar, launch missiles, and do all that other stuff you see in spy movies.

So of course the experience got me thinking: it's ironic that we had to come all the way to Africa to get a new perspective on, and first-hand exposure to, the US military. We don't have family or friends who are in the service so we've never given it much thought. But here many people are either current or former military and lots of people have gone or are considering going to Iraq. They go for all sorts of reasons: because they think it's the right thing to do, because the money is good, because it can help them to get a better job in the future. All valid reasons.

So I guess the take home message here is that I’ve learned to appreciate all the things that our military folks do and the sacrifices that they and their families make. I may not agree with everything but I’m grateful for what they do.