Sunday, March 14, 2010

Kitisi

Kitisi is a village just outside the Ruaha National Park. Since the animals don't know where the park boundaries end, they venture into Kitisi all the time. They usually keep their distance away from the houses and people, but they wander all the time into the farms which are mostly on the outskirts of the village. And that is where we were camping. Underneath a tamarind tree. In fact, twin tamarinds. It was quite a unique looking tree and we camped right below it.

Kitisi is the place which I had mentioned in my previous post about Mzee - the site where the lion walked by the tents and scared the hell out of NM, the place where the impala headed straight towards Mzee's tent in terror and leaped over it. Anyway when we reached Kitisi, it was a nice afternoon and we put up our camp rightaway. There were lots and lots of pesky flies and I had to improvise my attire (more on that later) using my hat, my glasses and a handkerchief to keep them away from my face, much to the disapproval of my wife who thought that I looked completely ridiculous. I ignored her negative comments and protected my face from the flies with my 'ridiculous-looking' improvisation till the evening, when the unsuccessful and tired flies finally called it a day and flew away to rest. We could hear a couple of lions in the distance and the trumpet of some elephants. All other animals were wisely keeping their distance from the village or maybe there were present but just not announcing it to us like the elephants and lions were.

Night fell and Mzee regaled me with the story of the visit of the lion when they had camped there last time. I was told that when a lion roars/grunts near your tent, your tent vibrates and you can actually feel the sound in your chest. Unfortunately none of the lions roared next to our tents when I was there. They roared from a respectful distance so as not to disturb my sleep. I think the real reason is that they might have seen scared of me after seeing me in the afternoon in my fly-proof improvised-attire.

The next morning, I did something I had not done for a long long long time. I think I was 19 and in Goa the last time I had done something like this. I don't know how to say it politely so I will just describe the something as 'crapping in the open without a toilet'. Not the best of topics, but it has to be addressed. Ruaha National Park, being a park had very good toilets, probably the cleanest camp toilets I have seen anywhere in the world. But Kitisi being just an unmanaged site outside the park, had no such provisions. So you took a shovel with you, dug a hole, squatted, did your business and covered all traces of it with the dug-up dirt using the shovel. However I saw 2 problems with the whole process:
i) The first day I dug up the hole in the morning and I did not like the time spent digging the hole, when there were more urgent matters to be attended to. My process-improving solution was to dig up 4-5 holes behind some bushes right that afternoon for use during the rest of our stay there. Everyone else in the camp thought that the idea of pre-dug holes was funny but I just thought it practical and even invited them to use it.
ii) The holes had to be far off from the camp for obvious reasons of privacy and cleanliness, but also not that far that you were no longer in the relatively safer area of the camp. Safety was a major concern because you did not want to become the next meal of a lion or or just be squashed by an angry startled elephant. This has to be one of the most embarassing ways to die. Even if you don't die and just try to escape, running from danger with your pants down is not only difficult but also quite ego-deflating. I had no solution for this, so I just hoped that I chose the distance of the holes from the camp wisely.

A few things at Kitisi remain stuck in my mind. When we went out on our daily data collection effort, we walked by a few farms and I noticed some pieces of cloth tied to the wooden rickety fences along the farms. On enquiring about it with Mzee, I was told that these pieces of cloth were soaked in a mixture of oil and a kind of crushed green peppers (called pili-pili in Swahili). They had been placed on the fence since that was the only thing that kept the elephants away. Elephants despised pili-pili. I thought that was quite a smart approach to protect your crops. I remember how much they sting. Once I was chopping some pili-pili for dinner and I accidentally wiped my face right after that and it burned. It burned for a few hours. Washing my face with water lessened the burning sensation very slightly. It just spread the burning feeling to the other parts of my face. Thankfully I had avoided my eyes. It could have been much worse. I am glad I did not pee rightaway either.

One day we were processing the samples in the afternoon. Test tubes, chemicals, centrifuges etc were all over the place around us. I guess we must have looked like people of some medical knowledge because a woman walked towards us with her baby on her hip. The baby was hardly a few months old and was fast asleep. The woman who looked quite distraught walked directly to my wife and said a few things to her in Swahili all the time pointing to her baby. I had no idea what was being said, but one look at the baby confirmed what I thought she was saying. The poor baby was covered in rashes. Its face,arms and legs were scaly and covered in rashes. At first glance, it looked like the baby had eczema. We felt so sorry for it. The woman said that she had taken the baby to the local dispensary but they did not have any medicines. The closest town, Iringa was about 3-4 hours away and she had not taken the baby there yet. We apologised, saying that we were not doctors and there was nothing we could do. But she was so desperate for help that she almost insisted that we give her some medicines. Seeing her so desperate was very very moving. My wife finally gave her a generic over-the-counter kind of topical cream for rashes that we had and told her that the cream was meant for adults and not for babies. So she had to be really careful to apply a very tiny quantity on a small area of the baby's legs to see if it caused any problems first, before using it elsewhere. The woman seemed very grateful to have atlast finally got some help. We never saw her again the rest of the days we were there. So I hope that the cream worked in some way in alleviating the baby's discomfort. I thought about all the tiny little things that we who live in cities rush to the doctor for and I felt ashamed. It felt really unfair that one section of the world's population had access to medical care more than they needed to have and another section had nothing at all.

We had the option of washing ourselves either at the Tungamalenga river or just bringing the water back to the camp and wash behind some bushes. I chose to wash myself at the river so that I had all the water I needed. I went there to actually look for a river, but what I found was a little puddle of water, barely 12 feet in diameter and it was surrounded by tall chest-high grass and some bushes. On a closer look at the puddle of a river, I realized that it had an underground source. The water was cool, fresh and had an aroma of the minerals in the soil. This was the same place where Mzee had scared NM during their last visit to kitisi. I stripped and started washing myself, when the thought that a lion could be lurking in the tall grass came to me. After all it was almost evening by then, which is usually the time they start to get active. In such a case, my only option would have been to to run naked. Quite embarassing. But not as embarassing as running away with your pants down like I described before. Atleast I would be clean if I got killed now. Although I had gone to the river to ensure that I had enough water to wash myself, I think that it was probably the fastest and least water-consuming wash that I have ever had. If any place has water shortages, all they need to do is prohibit inside bathrooms, and let some lions loose.

We left Kitisi and on the way out we had to sign out at the village ward office. The office was opposite a school and children were walking to school. All of us signed out in the village office's visitor-register and returned to the car except for Mzee, who kept chatting with the village ward officer. All of us patiently waited for him in the car and soon we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by the school children who were staring at us curiously. We waved and smiled. Some of them waved back, but most of them just stared at us. It was getting a little awkward with us just sitting there and about 50 odd school children standing a couple of feet away and staring. So I finally said 'Habari za asubuhi? (How are you this morning?)' to the closest boy and he laughed out loud and said 'Good morning'. I replied, "Good morning." I wish I had not opened my mouth because that set of a chain of the largest number of individual 'good mornings' that I have heard in a space of 5-10 minutes and of course, we could not be rude. So my wife and I kept saying Good mornings for the next 5-10 minutes to as many children as possible, praying that Mzee would finish his conversation and come back quickly. Even NM was getting antsy about Mzee not coming back. Finally he did, and we set off on our way back. The children running after our car and waving goodbyes frantically.

2 comments:

dk said...

We need, no demand a photo of you in that fly contraption.
By the way it must have been an wonderfull experience. You lucky bugger.

Jaideep Nair said...

DK, If I publish my photo in my fly-proof ensemble, all my friends will disown me. For the sake of everyone involved, those photos should never see the light of day.

Yes, it was an amazing experience. I was truly lucky to be laid-off at the correct time!

By the way, don't call me lucky, when you practically have the tigers of Bandhavgarh right in your backyard. You should definitely spend a few days there!