After the rain comes life

Why Malambo? It's in the middle of nowhere! But beautifully surrounded by scenic eye candy. We want to visit the "Help for Maasai" project where Dirk and Sahra work, whom I met on my Tanzanian road trip a year ago. But apparently, instead of being here, they chill out in Arusha over Christmas 😅. Anyway, we spend two nights camping on the project's guest compound where we are hosted by lovely Jakobo who cares for us and everything most passionately. There is a very annoying dog around, just being lonely and deserving love. And a cat, fighting and loving this very dog. Jakobo's fellow walks with us around the primary and secondary schools and is very proud of showing us the connected biogas facilities (!), the solar plant, Tanzania's first (and only?) solar corn mill and the highly modern water refinement installation featuring technology from Augsburg in Germany.

During a day's hike to Ng'abolo waterfall we are overwhelmed by the variety of different birds in this area. We are unable to catch up identifying all of them even though Franziska spends 80 % of her day switching between binoculars and field guide, squeaking bewildered sounds all the time. Some of these birds simply are not listed in our book! The recent rain lets nature overturn itself in terms of boosting new life. All birds are mating and building nests everywhere, especially these gregarious, loud and lovely weavers 🥰! The once dry soil is speckled with tiny shoots of grass, plants and flowers. It hasn't rained for 6 months here and many of the Maasais' cattle recently died. We see many stinky cadavers which – to our surprise – have been explicitly dumped in the drainage channels and streams around the Maasai bomas. The Maasai say that this will wash the cadavers out of their sight with the next rain. But where do they think these rotting juices will be washed to? Isn't the next village just a few hundred metres downstream where children are playing in the water and even drinking it? Hmmm 🤔. I am wondering that there are no vultures around to take care of the rotting meat and also the Hyenas are not able to cope with the amounts of flesh even though we hear their "whoop whoop" howls at night. Franziska is frightened but ... we have the dog guarding us and the cat guarding the dog. No animal on earth is capable of defeating this one-eyed pirate cat 😁!Read more