360 Degrees Longitude

The nice man with the machine gun at passport control wanted two hundred dollars for four visas. Cash.

We knew visas were fifty dollars each, payable in good ol’ Yankee currency, before we stepped on the plane in Dubai, but I didn’t want to withdraw a bunch of dirhams only to discover that I couldn’t exchange them in Tanzania. Our strategy was to hope we would find an ATM in Tanzania before we reached passport control. We didn’t.

As I explained our predicament to Mr. Machine Gun, he replied, “No problem. There are ATMs outside of the airport near the taxi stand. Just be sure to come back.”

I left September, Katrina, and Jordan as collateral to ensure my return and proceeded past passport control and out of the airport. As promised, outside of the airport two ATMs, on different networks, awaited. But there was also a pride of cab drivers waiting for a fare and a legion of beggars waiting for relief. All eyes were upon me. Due to low transaction limitations, to get enough cash I had to make eight separate transactions, four on each network. I pretended to be invisible as I stuffed an inch-thick wad of Tanzanian shillings into my pocket. I shuffled off to exchange them back into dollars for our visas.

Access to cash was our biggest problem in Tanzania. It would also be the catalyst for our appreciation of the people of a tiny village in the Usambara Mountains.

The power was out citywide in Dar es Salaam, the largest Tanzanian city, and it was expected to remain out for two weeks due to lack of replacement parts for a key generator. That every third or so shop owner was ready with a portable generator told me that power outages were not uncommon. This was my first experience in a large African city. Gone were the shiny chrome buildings of Dubai. In their place was dense, chaotic traffic and street peddlers lined up elbow to elbow, each more desperate than the last. The effect of fumes from generators mixing with trash rotting on the sidewalks and in the gutters was choking.

This was the kids’ first experience in a third world city. “Why is there so much trash in the streets?” Katrina asked as she leaped across a pothole.

“Most likely no collection service,” yelled September as we passed a particularly noisy generator.

The garbage-in-the-street question was the first of many that the kids started asking. Why won’t they accept Tanzanian shillings for visas? Why are there so many people trying sell the exact same things?

We were spared any generator noise and fumes at our hostel; this also meant we were spared electricity. What could we expect for five dollars a night? Going without power was actually very nice. We spent a pleasant evening in the courtyard of the hostel talking with some of the other guests as Jordan zapped flies and mosquitoes with the handheld, battery-powered zapper he’d acquired from a street peddler.

Beth, a middle-aged woman from Philadelphia who worked with the Peace Corps, was vocalizing some of her frustrations. She was in Dar, as it is known locally, for a few days before returning to the village where she was trying to raise AIDS awareness.

“The ugly truth,” Beth said, “is that ‘safe sex’ has taken on a sinister twist in the bush areas.” With a cautious glance at Katrina she continued. “’Safe sex’ is taken to mean sex with younger and younger girls who are not yet infected.”

We had brought the kids on the World-the-Round Trip to experience the good and the bad of humanity. Just over 24 hours after arriving in Tanzania, Katrina and Jordan were already asking hard questions about why this place was so different from others we had visited. I had been wondering that myself, and had yet to find a very satisfying answer.

With no power in the city it was very dark in Dar es Salaam and the Milky Way was stunning in the African night. Even though Katrina wasn’t meant to be part of our conversation with Beth, as we had learned in our first weeks on the road there were no private conversations in our foursome. As soon as the syllables “… younger girls” had left Beth’s lips, Katrina spun around and looked at us and said, “What? What are you guys talking about?”

It was a segue into a discussion I really didn’t want to have. Beth quietly slipped away and we spent the next hour or so discussing everything from AIDS to the meaning of life, corruption in governments, garbage collection services, and the vastness of space with Katrina and Jordan.

I had naïvely thought that these philosophical discussions would occur almost daily on our trip. Not that I liked talking about AIDS with my kids, but the vastness of space is right up there on my top ten list. I had presumed our year together as a family would be spent learning about each other on a new level, debating politics, and discussing the wonders of science. What we found was that the days were filled with the trivialities of existence, just like at home. So, to be able to have a long meandering conversation with my kids under the starlight on an African night was worth the entire trip.

We stayed in Dar just long enough to purchase bus tickets to Arusha, the center of Tanzania’s safari circuit. We were careful to use the bus company recommended by our guidebook as “least likely to break down.” I grabbed a local paper in English for the ten-hour ride.

Local papers are always an interesting read. Prominently highlighted on the cover was a story about a little boy who was mauled to death by a leopard while on safari near Arusha. This was, of course, exactly where we were headed and our activity of choice once we arrived—the viewing, not the mauling. I decided to keep this information to myself and turned to local politics. Tanzanian elections were coming up. One of the presidential hopefuls claimed to know a famous scientist in America, and the candidate’s platform was built on the promise of using this connection to cure AIDS in the next eight months. But he would do it only if elected. It would have been funny instead of sad if the guy had been considered the lunatic fringe by the electorate, but he was a serious contender.

A few hours on the bus and we had left the confines of the city, but the trash of the city still followed us. The major culprit was the lowly plastic bag, similar to what you might get at the local supermarket, but black and much thinner. There wasn’t a square foot along the side of the road that wasn’t carpeted with black plastic bags for at least the first two or three hours out of the city. Plastic simply doesn’t biodegrade, and the concept of landfills and what they are supposed to be filled with simply hasn’t entered the public consciousness. It is a problem continentwide.

Once we were well out of the “no turning back” range of Dar, the bus’s engine started to emit a noise that sounded like my ’68 Schwinn Sting-Ray when I clothes-pinned a playing card in the spokes to get the “motorcycle engine” effect. The bus driver pulled over, opened the hood (accessible from inside the bus), and after a few whacks with a hammer, we were happily motoring again. But not for long.

“There’s that sound again,” September said. The driver once again pulled over and removed the cowling that covered the engine. But this time he gave the hammer to a gentleman in the front seat. For the next several hours as we made our way to Arusha, whenever the sound returned, the gentleman in the front seat administered a few random whacks while the driver continued to motor happily down the road.

Dubai, with its 24-hour cable TV real estate channel and the wannabe Team Ferrari racetrack for rent seemed a lifetime ago. The United States seemed as though it was a previous existence. I certainly would never have seen a passenger whacking a bus engine with a hammer in the United States, or anywhere else in the Western World for that matter. I recalled a trip to New Zealand several years prior; the bus we’d been on developed a noise and the driver pulled over and we were stuck on a remote mountain for hours until help arrived. Things may be done differently here, but who’s to say which is better?

When we stepped off the bus in Arusha a mob scene ensued. “We have the best safari in town!” one man shouted as he tried to grab my hand. Another man, walking off with my luggage, pointed to the first man and proclaimed, “He is a thief! You do not want to do business with that man!” Bodies were pressing up against us, tearing at all of us, trying to pull the four of us and our luggage in different directions. Each was desperate to tell us that they had the best safari and hostel in town.

Tempers in the crowd were starting to flare and for a moment it seemed a fight was going to break out over who got our business. Even though we were outnumbered, simply raising my voice dispersed the mob efficiently. We pulled out our guidebook and went to a hostel that it recommended, leaving behind many very disappointed people.

Once settled into the hostel I remarked to Jordan, “Kinda makes the carpet salesmen in Istanbul seem like kinder, gentler entrepreneurs.”

Either I was making more out of the scene than I should have or the kids were becoming road hardened, because Jordan ignored the comment and asked, “I wonder if they have that same kind of cherry soda like they had in Turkey.”

Arusha is the gateway to the Serengeti and we started to research our options to experience this natural wonder. Our guidebook warned us to choose a safari operator with care. Some operators try to cut costs a little too aggressively, which could leave you stranded in the Serengeti without an operating vehicle, food, or communications. Worse, the odd criminal has been known to try to pass himself off as a guide.

We chose a four-day budget camping safari run by a company recommended by our guidebook. We eyed the VISA ACCEPTED sign in the window as a good omen.

“We charge a ten percent fee for credit cards,” the owner of the safari company said as I pulled out my Visa card. That seemed a bit steep, but due to small transaction limits on the ATM networks, it would take a few days to accumulate enough cash.

“Actually, the person who handles our credit card transactions is out sick.”

“Well, uh … she is going to be out for a long time. We don’t know when she will be back.”

“I see.” We eventually learned it is a rare business in Tanzania that accepts credit cards, even if a sign advertises such. It takes capital to run a business the way Westerners like us would expect. However, essentially all African businesses run on near zero capital and they have learned to adapt. The safari company simply needed our cash up front to pay for items like food, gas, and park entrance fees.

We settled into Arusha for a few days until we could withdraw enough cash to pay for our safari, but we soon found that withdrawing cash from an African ATM involves much more than walking up to it, sticking in your card, and punching a few buttons. First, the things require power to operate, and you simply can’t rely on the power company to supply the stuff. Second, the things need to be stuffed with cash before they can dispense any, but more importantly the maximum daily withdrawal from a Tanzanian ATM is really not very much.

It would take a few days to accumulate enough cash to pay for our safari if the ATMs worked as they should—longer if they didn’t. Whatever. We weren’t in a hurry.

This morning as I stepped out of the shower there was a sweet young thing standing there with her hand outstretched. I was a wee bit stunned. She wanted my dirty clothes so she could wash them for me. The maid in our hostel scrubs the floor twice a day. With a rag, on her hands and knees. There are a lot of very hardworking people here. Yet there is also mind-boggling idleness. Huge numbers of young men sit along the streets for hours doing nothing at all. People flock from the villages to the cities, but there are no jobs to support them.

Walking anywhere in the town of Arusha was like traversing an army-training obstacle course. As I made my daily rounds to the ATMs, I would leap over three-foot-wide open storm drains, squeeze past market stalls blocking the sidewalk, and weave through heavy traffic that showed no signs of following simple traffic laws like, say, stopping at stop signs. As I went about trying to coerce cash from the ATMs, street vendors would try to get me to buy some souvenir or food item, and beggars would simply ask for cash. To them, I was the ATM.

The various street merchants seemed hardworking, trying to make money to feed their families. It was clear that they were very, very poor and many were desperate. Still, it puts the traveler in an uncomfortable position, especially for people like us who weren’t able to accumulate a lot of souvenirs.

Making daily rounds to the various ATMs in the city, it didn’t take long for me to realize that people on the street knew we were accumulating cash. During our third night at the hostel someone entered our room at 3:00 a.m. I leaped out of bed screaming like a wild man, “GET OUT!” as the intruder quickly fled.

“How did he get in? Did you see who it was?” September was firing questions at me.

The hostel staff knew nothing, saw nothing. Suddenly we were in a hurry to acquire the rest of the money for our safari and go. The following morning the safari company arranged a cash advance on my Visa at a local bank, albeit with a massive transaction fee.

Our whole reason for being in Arusha came from years before, when our favorite family pastime was to gather in front of our giant world map with a stack of Post-it notes to discuss where our trip might take us. As plans firmed up, Katrina and Jordan were allotted one Post-it note each. Katrina decided that the Serengeti was the one place she wanted to see during the World-the-Round Trip. Jordan’s choice, The Great Wall of China, was still a few months away.

The night prior to our safari departure was full of anticipation from both Katrina and Jordan. Tiger, a small stuffed animal, had accompanied them ever since we left California. As we lay in bed, Katrina and Jordan were whispering in hushed excitement as they made plans to “show” Tiger the Serengeti.

We met Bariki, our guide, and Tanfi, our cook, the following morning. The six of us would be constant companions over the next four days, covering great distances in a Land Rover, eating our meals together and camping under the stars. The first thing we did as we pulled out of town was to go grocery shopping. Tanfi bought all of the supplies, including two liters of bottled water per day for each of us.

The Land Rover pulled out of the grocery store parking lot and Bariki pointed it down the blacktop and toward the horizon. We had hours of blacktop before we arrived at our destination, and the Lean, Mean Talking Machine started to work her craft. September started with the basics, asking Bariki and Tanfi where they were from. When they found we were from California, they asked excitedly, “Do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger?” We were surprised. In Eastern Europe, Turkey, and Dubai, we were peppered with inquiries about Monica Lewinsky, despite the decade or so since her brush with infamy. Arnold was a refreshing change of subject.

“No, we’ve never met him,” September responded. “Do you like some of his movies?”

I was pretty astounded. Not just because a grown man had never seen a movie, but because they knew a famous movie star, even though they had never seen a movie. Nor had Bariki or Tanfi ever heard of a movie called Star Wars. We were a long way from Kansas.

Frankly, the idea of a safari didn’t interest me. I arrived in Africa with a prejudice developed while September and I were cycling in Alaska, before Katrina and Jordan entered our lives. Although Denali National Park was famous for moose, bear, and other wildlife, after a week of cycling across the tundra we had seen very little evidence of them. I expected a similar experience in the Serengeti, but Katrina had romantic notions of seeing large prides of lions, herds of elephants, and a landscape teeming with big game.

Driving into the Serengeti, we were met by axle-breaking roads. So when we came upon a large truck with its rear wheels almost ninety degrees out of their preferred orientation, it was no surprise. The truck’s driver was on the verge of tears. Bariki simply kept driving.

When we reached our camp on the Serengeti Plain, prominently displayed on a sign near the entrance was “Do not go beyond the camp as the wild animals may attact (sic) humans.”

I stared at the sign, allowing the full gravity of its message to seep into my brain, all the while trying to reconcile the message with my expectations. Nevertheless, we pitched our tents in the center of the campsite, hoping to keep the other campers’ tents as a buffer between us and the carnivores.

After dinner Bariki announced, “It is not advisable to leave your tent between midnight and 5:00 a.m.”

I asked him what we should do if we needed a nighttime winkle. “Couldn’t we just go outside of the tent, if we don’t walk across camp to the latrine?”

“It is not recommended,” Bariki replied solemnly. Shortly after we went to bed, I heard growling outside of our campground. I thought about the leopard story in the newspaper and wondered if camping was such a good idea.

Sure enough, at about 3:00 a.m. Jordan, who never needs to use the facilities in the middle of the night, informed me that he needed to use the toilet, and badly. What is a parent to do? Risk a bedwetting or risk allowing your child to become an early-morning breakfast?

I listened to the night for a good long time, poked my flashlight out of the tent, sniffed the breeze, and contemplated my next move. It is my strong desire that my finest moment in life, the moment I faced my biggest fear, will not end up being when I took Jordan out for a pee next to a tent. So I’ll have to come up with something heroic in the coming years, because that is precisely what I did, and I was terrified.

Daylight broke over our camp and I felt a wave of relief at having survived the experience. I did, however, have regrets over my choice of using the laundry bag as a pillow for the night. I woke to find Jordan’s dirty underwear pasted to the side of my face.

At breakfast Bariki told us that lions had in fact been poking around the campground during the night. So after breakfast, in the safety of our Land Rover, we went to look for them. Bariki soon located four fully grown females and four or five adolescents of both sexes.

He maneuvered the Land Rover about two car lengths away from them. Standing with my head and shoulders poking out of the viewing port in the roof, I locked eyes with one of the fully grown females, and for several seconds we considered each other, she with large, unblinking and inquisitive eyes.

How does one describe the cold stare of an animal that has only known being the top of the food chain? I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking, “Mmmmm, plump and juicy!” I wanted to shout, “I’m on top of the food chain, too, you know!” Of course that’s not saying much because with no natural predators, skunks are, too.

Awed by the scene, all I could manage to say was, “Well. This is nothing like Alaska.”

The safari was full of spectacular encounters with wildlife. Bariki kept us entertained with background information and anecdotes about the area and the animals. Some of his anecdotes seemed like the African version of an urban legend, like the German who wanted to photograph hippopotamuses up close, sneaking out of camp and wading up to his waist in a watering hole only to become dinner for same. But I wasn’t about to wade into any watering holes to refute the authenticity, either.

We got up early this morning. Tanfi already had our breakfast packed for us and we were off. We soon saw some giraffes. They were very close up, and we watched a mother eating lazily while its baby nursed. Farther down the road, we saw our next animal—a full grown male lion. I really like seeing lions, and am hoping to see all of “The Big Five,” which are lions, elephants, leopards, rhinoceros, and cape buffalo. But I like the cats the best so I want to see cheetahs, too.

After seeing the male lion, we went somewhere nearby and saw a male and a female lion together. Counting these, I think we have seen seventeen lions.

Then we drove some more, seeing nothing besides gazelles and stuff, a few warthogs, and hyenas. But we did, after a while, see a crocodile. It wasn’t very long, but I thought that it was pretty neat to see one. And after that, guess what? We saw a LEOPARD. It was kind of far away, but through the binoculars we could see that it was sitting in a tree, eating its kill. There were about ten cars surrounding the leopard, but wow. It isn’t very common to see one.

After seeing the leopard, we headed back to camp and had lunch. After that, we got back in the car and began the long drive to a new camp at Ngorongoro, where we are now. On the way we saw two lionesses, one with her kill. And we also saw a cheetah. All three big cats in one day. The cheetah was very far away and even through the binoculars I couldn’t see its spots, but I could tell by its shape that it was a cheetah.

Bariki’s ability to spot wildlife was astounding. He had an uncanny ability to sight, say, a leopard that had dragged its kill up into a tree a kilometer away. Bariki would locate a National Geographic moment for us to gawk at, and then position our Land Rover as close to the action as he could. Then he would make himself busy while we took pictures and acted like tourists.

It took me a while to figure out what was occupying Bariki’s attention while we were taking pictures; he had his cell phone out and was texting his girlfriend. I pulled my own cell phone from my pocket and noted I had five bars of coverage. Somehow, the coolness factor of being on safari in the Serengeti was diminished when I realized that my mother could call and check up on me to see if I had been eaten.

At the end of the dry season the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater are as dry as dust and just as brown. There is no replicating the sensation of slathering your skin with sunscreen and ’skeeter repellant only to have it act as a dust magnet. By the end of the day, we were nearly as brown as our guide. “I’d kill for a shower,” I said.

“Not with rations of two liters of water per day, you won’t,” September replied.

“There are water holes around here but they must be getting mighty dry about now. It’s food I wonder about,” September answered. “The lions can fend for themselves, but there seems to be nothing for the zebras, wildebeests, and antelope to eat.”

“The elephants are making runs to Costco when the sun goes down,” I said. “It’s the only way.”

We divided our days between Lake Manyara, Serengeti, and Ngorongoro National Parks. Each of the parks we visited had its own personality, and in each it was simply not possible to go more than a few moments without seeing abundant wildlife including lions, elephants, hippos, baboons, giraffes, cheetahs, crocodiles, rhinos, leopards, and what seemed like a zebra, wildebeest, or gazelle for every brown blade of grass.

In short, our experience with Bariki was nothing like my experience in Alaska and it more than met Katrina’s romantic notions of what an African safari should be.

Returning to Arusha, Bariki maneuvered the Land Rover into a shanty town for supplies. Bariki and Tanfi left us alone and a boy about ten years old approached the car.

“Bic? Bic?” Oddly enough an ink pen (known as a “Bic”) is the preferred item that children beg for.

Finally, he saw a bag of potato chips on the seat next to me and asked for those. I wondered if he was hungry. If he was, I don’t think he would have asked for my sunglasses before he asked for the chips. Nevertheless, I didn’t want the chips so I gave them to him. This turned out to be a mistake.

He quickly went over to his friends and held the bag of chips in the air like a trophy. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it was clear he was taunting his friends that he had gotten the American to give him something. Soon, the Land Rover was mobbed by kids demanding everything from the hat on my head to the kids’ clothes.

Clearly, a generation of well-off travelers before me had conditioned the kids in the area to expect handouts. This is understandable, as desperation is perhaps the only thing not in short supply in the area and well-meaning people want to relieve suffering. I want to relieve suffering. But as the scene unfolded before us, it was clear that handing out Bic pens to every kid who asks is not the answer. Within moments the scene started to devolve and we started to fear for our safety. Clearly the children from the area have learned to be brazen, and simply shooing them away wasn’t going to work. Instinct told me that the primal yell I used to disperse a near-mob scene a few days earlier would have backfired. Reacting to the growing tension, Katrina and Jordan put down what they were reading and sat erect in uncomfortable silence. Fortunately, Bariki soon returned and drove us away.

We settled back into a hostel in Arusha that evening and opened our guidebook. We were looking for someplace off the standard tourist track and decided to visit Lushoto, a town in the Usambara Mountains. Lushoto is surrounded by rain forest, in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The bus ride to Lushoto would take about seven hours and would start at 6:30 a.m. “We should get cash tonight before we leave in the morning,” September said, “because the bus leaves before the ATM opens.”

A trip to the ATM would have been a prudent move, but the thought of making a withdrawal at night was not on my must-accomplish list. On top of the incident with the intruder in our room the week prior, there had been the mob scene around our Land Rover and two unpleasant encounters with aggressive panhandling that very day.

“The guidebook says there is a bank in Lushoto—let’s wait until we get there,” I replied.

The next day our bus twisted and turned as it clung to the edge of a cliff, climbing out of the Great Rift Valley and up into the mountains. We passed small farms growing sugarcane and banana trees, and occasionally we would see monkeys climbing across the branches of an overhanging tree. We arrived in Lushoto just before 3:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. The bus pulled up into a town square of hard-packed, uneven dirt. The small square was surrounded by a number of wooden shacks selling anything from used car parts to packages of crackers.

The guidebook described Lushoto as a town of 100,000 people, with a bank. Glancing about the tiny town square, it was clear the guidebook was off by a couple of zeros.

Somehow I had acquired a card proudly advertising a hotel where we could “enjoy running hot water!”

“The bank is probably going to close soon,” I said, handing September the hotel’s card. “You take the kids and find this hotel, and I’ll go to the bank.”

The Lushoto Bank of Micro-Finance was just off the town’s main square. I’m not even sure if the bank had electricity. I do know the teller was unimpressed by the fact that I had both an ATM card and a credit card. He simply laughed and dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

I found September and the kids at the hot water hotel. “We have a problem,” I said.

“No,” I responded. “And it gets worse. Here’s our situation.” Katrina and Jordan were listening most intently at this point, not interrupting every few syllables as they were prone to do. “We have one ten-thousand-shilling note (about US$9.50) and a handful of coins. We can’t pay for even one night in this hotel, so we’ll have to check out right now and hope they don’t make us pay for the half hour we’ve been here. The closest bank with an ATM or Western Union is back in Arusha, and we only have enough money to cover one person’s bus fare, one way.”

“Arusha?” September exclaimed. “We just came from there! Are you proposing that just one of us take the bus 14 hours round-trip back to Arusha while three of us huddle in the forest, waiting, without food or shelter? Is that what I just heard you say?”

“Not exactly,” I replied. “The buses only run in the mornings. So, even though it’s fourteen hours of travel time, the person who goes can’t leave for Arusha until tomorrow morning, then return the day after that.”

September said “okay,” with a faraway look in her eye. After a long pause, she said, “You would have to be the one to go to Arusha because I don’t think it’s wise for me to be traveling alone. And what would you do if you got to Arusha and found that the electricity was out? Or if you couldn’t use the ATM for any other reason, like if your wallet was stolen? You would have no way to return to us here in Lushoto.”

Everything she said was true. “Look, I can’t leave until tomorrow morning anyway. First things first, we can’t stay in the hotel, so we need to check out now. Then we can spend the rest of the day searching for a hotel and a restaurant that will accept a credit card. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Jordan spoke for the first time during this discussion. He calmly asked, “Does this mean I can’t get a soda?”

Never before had we been in such a predicament. Our previous experience had taught us that to get money, you needed to go to the bank and the bank would take care of you. Now that this had failed us, we weren’t sure what to do, and were quite anxious regarding how things might work out.

I went to the front desk to check out and September went into town to the Cultural Tourism Center to see if there was a place for us to camp in the surrounding forest. We had sent our tent back to the United States, but we still had our sleeping bags, as they were invaluable in hostels.

“I’m sorry, we can’t stay here,” I explained to the clerk behind the front desk. “We have no money to pay.”

“It’s okay,” the woman helping me said as best she could, trying to overcome a language barrier. “You go to town and see owner Mr. Mkwati.”

“Katrina and Jordan,” I said, returning to the room, “wait here and tell Mom when she gets back I went to talk to the hotel’s owner.”

Exiting through the lobby a few moments later, I found a taxi waiting. The woman at the front desk had called it for me. “I have no money to pay for the taxi,” I said. “I don’t mind walking.”

“But you will never find Mr. Mkwati. The taxi driver will help you find him. I will pay the taxi driver, you pay later.”

The taxi driver helped me locate Mr. Mkwati in town. I explained our predicament, telling him we needed to check out of his hotel and why.

I suddenly remembered I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “The Lion King,” I replied. “Have you ever heard of it?”

I briefly explained that The Lion King was a children’s movie, summed up the plot and then tied it up with how hakuna matata, which loosely translates to “no worries,” was central to the plot. I felt pretty stupid, knowing full well what Mr. Mkwati was thinking—I was certifiable. I had brought my family to Lushoto from California without enough money to pay for a night in his hotel, and here I was talking about a lion cub who sang the “Hakuna Matata” song. But he was impressed that I knew a few Swahili words, such as simba for “lion.” Which of course I didn’t, but since I mentioned the name Simba in connection with the lion cub who would someday be king, he presumed I was a Swahili master.

I learned something very important. Hakuna matata is more than a line out of a movie, and more than a casual greeting—it is a way of life. I didn’t realize it then, but it would be a siren song for a new philosophy of life that we would need to make the difficult transition upon returning to Western civilization seven months later.

After listening to me talk about singing simbas named Simba, Mr. Mkwati started to fully grasp our predicament: that I couldn’t feed my family, and that I stood a good chance of ending up stranded in a strange town the following day when I went to search for a working ATM.

He then did something most unexpected. He opened up his wallet, emptied it out, and gave me everything he had: thirty thousand Tanzanian shillings, or about $29. That wasn’t a tremendous amount of money, but it was enough to feed my family, and also ensure that I would have a return ticket should my search for an ATM the following day be in vain.

I was not only deeply touched, but the experience left me pondering my own charity. Would I have done the same thing if the tables were turned? I’d like to think so, but twelve hours earlier I wanted nothing more than to get out of Tanzania altogether, motivated in no small part by the disturbing scenes around Arusha, which was, in no small part, why we ended up in Lushoto virtually broke.

“You’ll never believe what just happened to me,” I said upon returning to the hotel.

“Where have you been?” September said. “I was starting to think you had abandoned us in despair. I’ve been so anxious to talk to you. You’ll never believe what just happened to me. I went to the Cultural Tourism Center and explained our situation. They lent me everything they had in their safe. Three hundred U.S. dollars. Cash.”

I couldn’t speak. This was roughly equivalent to the annual per capita income for Tanzania. No collateral, no paperwork, no specified repayment schedule, just a “here you are ma’am, and thank you for letting us serve you.”

“Taking charity from the impoverished, it kind of puts the fine point on our predicament, doesn’t it?” September said.

“It’s more than that,” I said. “The bank here let us down and the best plan we could come up with was to try a different bank. If everyone here thought like us, that would have been the best plan. What are the chances that if the three people who lent us money today showed up in Silicon Valley with no way to feed themselves, within hours they would have the equivalent of a year’s worth of cash in their pocket?”

“I can’t help but think of the kids yesterday who all wanted Bic pens,” September said.

“I still don’t think handouts are the right answer. But neither is watching from the sidelines. Poverty is a complicated problem, with no easy solutions.”

The following day I was en route to find an ATM. September and the kids stayed in Lushoto and had a grand time hiking with Ishmael from the Cultural Tourism Center, so much so that they took me on the same hike when I returned.

Ishmael, our guide, took us through the rain forest, but he showed us much more than just the lush landscape and the green mamba snakes. He showed us that the people who live in the villages scattered throughout the hills were genuinely thrilled to see us. For the first time since entering Tanzania we felt welcomed for who we were, not because we might hand out Bic pens or buy a month-old newspaper. On a simple four-hour hike I lost count of how many families we found harvesting sugarcane by hand. Walking along we were frequently greeted with a “hakuna matata!” by women carrying into town bundles of cane balanced on their heads. Scattered among the sugarcane fields we occasionally found a group of children playing soccer with a ball made of rolled-up rags held together by string. They would run to us with their big, affable smiles shouting Jambo! (Swahili for hello) and then walk with us just for the simple novelty of holding our hands.

Ishmael was an orphan in his early twenties. He had a younger brother and sister to care for and was working hard to keep them in school. Tuition at US$100 per year was difficult to come by.

“Last year I was able to pay tuition for them but there are fewer tourists this year because of the drought. But I have my marriage cow. If I cannot save the money for their tuition, I can sell my cow.”

September pressed for details and learned that the cow was a traditional bride price. Without it, his marriage prospects were bleak.

Ishmael had Rastafarian dreadlocks and wore a Bob Marley T-shirt. Had I met him in other circumstances, I might have judged him unfavorably, strictly based on his appearance.

We learned that the Usambara Mountains are filled with orphans. The day-to-day existence of the average African is full of hardships that the typical U.S. suburbanite can’t fathom. For example, Ishmael lost his mother to a horrific bus accident. In two short weeks we had already seen the aftermath of two ugly accidents and had also witnessed how overcrowded trucks and buses become. Shortly after the accident took his mother, Ishmael lost his father to malaria. September remarked, “But malaria is so easy to treat!”

Ishmael replied, “Yes, but people are used to being sick here. We eat bad food and our stomachs hurt and we get chills. He didn’t know he had malaria. My father finally went to the clinic, but it was too late.”

Normal morning. Today is our last day in Lushoto. Tomorrow we return to Dar and then we fly to Mauritius. Since it is Halloween, we went out looking for some candy in the little shops around the town square. There was none to be found. After asking at a couple of shops I started to feel like a spoiled kid who demanded sweets.

Living in the West, it is easy to be lulled into believing that wealth can be quantified by trailing zeros on a bank account or by possessions. In Zermatt there seemed to be a Rolex dealer or a specialty chocolate shop every other door along the main street. Although I may not be a Warren Buffett or a Bill Gates, by world standards, I am still counted among the richest, and before I arrived in Lushoto, I would have described myself as a charitable person. But it was in Lushoto that I became the beggar, and the people of the town demonstrated a kind of charity that was frankly foreign to me. It took Lushoto to make me realize that what I lacked couldn’t be purchased.

What I remember most about Lushoto is not looking over the Great Rift Valley nor the beauty of the forest nor the colony of African albinos we met. What I remember is receiving aid from those who had little to give with no thought of how they might be repaid.

www.360degreeslongitude.com/concept3d/360degreeslongitude.kmz

Who knew hanging with the guy sporting the dreadlocks would be so much fun? More than any other person, Ishmael saved the day when we showed up in Lushoto virtually broke.

12.

Stranded by Our Stupidity