Makua Pale Ale

I decided it would be funny to start a line of beers all named after the local words for "white person" around the world.  They'd all be pale ales, obv.  So far the line is made up of 3 main brews: Mzungu, Makua & Gringo.

October Haps

I have been (and will continue to be) totally disconnected for the month of October, so will just do a quick recap of what I've been up to:

• October 1: Picked sister up in Arusha!  On-time and with (shockingly) no issues!  Met up with Giraffe at local bar where he told us he used to throw rocks at bush babies when he was little to knock them out of the banana trees.  He also said they ripen bananas by scratching through the peel and then urinating on them.  All bananas are now inspected for bush baby scratch marks before I eat them.
• October 2 - 9: Safari extravaganza.  
• Parks visited: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater.  
• Animals seen: name it and we probably saw it.  Most notable included:
• Giraffe fight! Bendy neck clashing and all.
• Explosion of what I would liken to a "lion bomb" that went off all around our car.  i.e. a huge pride (2 Mufasas, 7ish moms, 4ish "teenagers", 7ish medium cubs and 6ish tiny kitten cubs) spilling around and under our car as they were on the hunt for gazelle.
• Elephants visiting our campsites.  The first included a herd of about 10 "sneaking up" on us in the Serengeti and the second included an elephant coming to drink from our shower water reserve in Ngorongoro.
• October 10 - 15: Zanzibar relaxation.  Probably one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to (Kendwa).  Did some scuba-ing and kite-boarding.  Scuba-wise, we saw a bunch of sea creatures including turtles.  Kite-boarding-wise, I crashed their kite and then had a solid 4 face-plants at the end of the sesh.  All in all and ish-eating aside, I totally want to get certified as a kite-boarder. 
• October 16: Successful vuvuzela acquisition from Tyrone Biggums-esque characters in Stone Town.  Saw sister off, ran into scuba buddies at outdoor food market, went to cultural center for traditional Zanzibari live music followed by getting magically transported back to the USA when we happened upon a bar full of what I'd guess as the entire 20-something white tourist population in Stone Town slamming beers and dancing to Gaga.  Caught a midnight cab to the airport which turned into the unfortunate luck of sleeping there for the night.  It was closed, mind you, and the security guard showed me to a dark corner where I could set up camp for the night.  Except there were huge ants all over the ground, so I wedged myself under the armrest of a row of glued-together chairs and caught maybe 45 min of sleep before my ridiculously delayed 6:45am flight.  Narrowly made my connecting flight from Ethiopia to Zambia.  Met up with Habitat for Humanity group and head to the Zambian bush tomorrow for 2 weeks building houses, sleeping on the ground, showering from a bucket and squatting over holes in the ground.

Locals Night

As of late, my social schedule has been a slight step above that of an AARP member. Getting up at 7am, eating dinner at 5pm and getting ready for bed at 8pm. Granted, I’ve been taking part in all kinds of cultural activities that have overshadowed my need to be social, but there comes a point when you need some evening entertainment.


My bus got into Arusha around 6:00 PM yesterday, just in time for me to eek out the last bit of sunlight in order to walk over to where the cheapo backpackers are. I met Ziggy who showed me to, as asked, “the cheapest room available.” Ziggy apparently appreciated my shysterness and invited me out to play some pool at a bar around the corner. I met back up with him around 7pm and he introduced me to his friend Giraffe. Yes, the dude is rather tall.

So Ziggy, Giraffe and I hit up the local pub, where, shockingly, I was the only mzungu around. They helped me translate my dinner order of the African standard of rice, greens & meat soaked in mystery sauce. Giraffe ordered another African standard of a plate of chips (fries) with chunks of meat slapped on top. Over food & drink we chatted about our backgrounds, interests, jobs and travel before hitting up some games of pool.

Ziggy has a Chagga background and helps manage the place I’m staying when his parents are away and/or sick of managing it. Giraffe is a tour guide and has lost count of how many times he’s climbed Mts. Kili, Meru & Kenya. He’s laid off all the mountain climbing because he says he’s too lazy for that anymore. He just focuses on the safari circuit now and left his old job to start his own tour company.

We pretty much played pool the rest of the night where I got my ass kicked many times over by the locals. They ended up calling me “itsy” since a) I’m short, and b) I always came within an “itsy-bit” of the pocket, but could never seem to sink the ball.

I also met some super drunk girls that swore they were speaking English, but you could probably classify it as Engswili because I understood maybe 3 out of every 10 words. The one chick certainly enjoyed “talking” to me because there was a lot of nudging, back-patting, shoulder-slapping, hand-grabbing and hysterical laughing going on.

Overall, the experience was not unlike that of any other sports bar I've been to, except minus TVs, fat people and western toilets. You had your guys in the corner playing pool, people mingling about at the bar, sloppy chicks being super loud and your handful of overly drunk people creating their own dance party wherever there’s free floor space.

Good times, good times.