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It is a relatively short drive from Iringa to Tunga Malinga lodge in the Ruaha National Park, and we are there in time for lunch of beef and rice (just for a change!). This is another typical park lodge, thatched huts (banda) with squat loos and basic showers, but clean. There is no electricity, and this time not even any electric light, although each hut is provided with a hurricane lamp.
Day 16. Sun 6th October Iringa to Ruaha
DaveMidgley2005-10-22 12:40:23
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It is a relatively short drive from Iringa to Tunga Malinga lodge in the Ruaha National Park, and we are there in time for lunch of beef and rice (just for a change!). This is another typical park lodge, thatched huts (banda) with squat loos and basic showers, but clean. There is no electricity, and this time not even any electric light, although each hut is provided with a hurricane lamp.
The staff are very friendly, and don't mind being photographed preparing our evening meal!
In the afternoon Jonas, the manager of the lodge, takes Kate, Sue and me for a walk around the nearby village, and to see the local school. It is Sunday and so the school is closed and the villagers are mostly relaxing and brewing up the local beer, which looks like porridge. We are welcomed into the village with a great deal of enthusiasm and no little curiosity. The camera trick works as well as ever, and, on seeing the image, one woman asks Jonas if I am a magician. We are offered a taste of the latest brew, but politely turn it down, not only because we have been warned that it opens the bowels with great speed and efficiency, but also because there only seems to be one plastic cup, and most of the villagers have already drunk from it. Jonas explains that although the inhabitants of this village, which is on the main road into the park, will have seen white people before, there may be many vistors for outlying villages who have not. Indeed, when I try to make contact with a Masai girl with magnificent earings and headgear, she shrinks back into a building, and I don't push the point.
One woman is very proud of her son, who is working at his sewing machine, and begs to have a photograph taken. I shal send a copy of this, and some of the others, to Ken in the hope that he may be able to distibute them on his next circuit.
We meet several Masai on the road, including a striking young woman who must be well over six feet tall, and
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See photographs from:
Tanzania Gallery
