No, really, we saw them…

We took Sofia to the bush for the first time this week-end. She is 13 weeks old, for crying out loud! She was great, sleeping as the car bumped and crashed around Tarangire National Park. Her mosquito net kept her safe from any flying varmints. The thing with game drives is that you hear other tourists telling one another these amazing stories, which I am sure are true…”No, really, the cheetah cubs crossed the road right in front of us. We followed them to their mother, who suddenly took off after a baby impala and killed her right there, in front of us.”That never happens to us. And therefore I doubt the veracity of these accounts. They are never, ever followed by ” Yeah, look at this video.” or “Check out the photos we took of the whole thing.”Well, today we saw two beautiful bat-eared foxes. And here is the proof. Sofia was asleep. but on her first day on kindergarten I want her to tell everyone that she saw two bat eared foxes when she was 13 weeks old.

Weaverbird from the Land Rover.

The Nairobi Fly Update

Well, upon reading back on last night’s post about my encounter with the Nairobi Fly, I think I ought to return and give the insect the respect it deserves. The skin irritation has developed into a really nasty burn, as if someone has poured acid onto my arm, which is exactly what the beetle did. So I am now using the cure most commonly cited, which is to slather toothpaste all over the wound. The toothpaste has to be of the old-school variety, the chalky stuff that dries up. The latest aqua green Crest with fluorescent spinning martians suspended in it won’t work. Hooray for Tanzanian toothpaste marketing gimmicks being 20 years out of date! Toothpaste is a strong base, and so neutralizes the acid. The dry chalkiness draws the acid out of your skin. It smells nice too. Anyway, I won’t be quite as glib about the Nairobi Fly in the future. It still hurts like hell.

The Nairobi Fly

Last week-end Samantha and I went camping out over Monduli, about one and a half hours drive from home. It is a real feat here (around Arusha) to go out into the bush and camp without being found by some wandering Maasai. And one Maasai inevitably means many, many more. And amongst them all will be the local village “mkuu”, or boss. And the mkuu will charge you a camping fee, which is usually a small sum (although they start incredibly high, and you negotiate down). Then the mkuu calls the anti-poaching ranger, who will bring you a couple of local Maasai watchmen that you are “strongly advised” to hire for the night, as there are plenty of hyenas and leopards around. Anyway, the flow of humanity rarely stems for the duration of your camp out. This time, though, we drove off the road and down deep into a valley. I think that we were down wind from the Maasai boma, as we could hear their cattle bells, but miraculously no-one came looking for us. We spent a night out in the bush with some friends completely undisturbed.

Undisturbed, that is, except by a Nairobi Fly. This little bastard is not a fly at all, but a small beetle. It is one of those animals, like the honey bee, that has a form of defense that entails it losing its own life. Hmmmmm…. it’s like a warning to not mess with its kind, but not a defense that offers the individual much comfort. Anyway, the Nairobi Fly has an abdomen full of a terrific acid that, when you smash him or her against your arm, spreads all over your skin and causes your flesh to begin to bubble up and do all of the horrific things that you would expect from a bug bite in the tropics. I must have had one of these flies land of my arm during the night, because when I woke in the morning I had a pretty bad rash in the crook of my elbow. In the last three of four days it has continued to mature, and I won’t go into any sort of detail. It is certainly not as bad as you are imagining, but it is definitely an uncomfortable ailment. If you are the gory kind, here is a picture of the damage a Nairobi Fly can do (this one is not mine!) It is also fascinating to watch the battle between my immune system and this acid play itself out on my very own arm. I am well on the road to recovery now, so rest easy. Samantha, my wife, is now seven months pregnant. She is doing wonderfully, and wanted me to add at the end of this post that she has been in no way affected by the Nairobi Fly, and that she is in excellent health. Understandably, our family tends to worry about a pregnant Samantha when they read about our life on the Dark Continent.