Piki Piki Trip

When I get a chance to take a day off, I usually jump on the dirtbike and head off into the bush. My first trip was to Lake Eyasi, a big salt flat and soda lake about three hours away.

Last Tuesday, I went to Mbulu Mbulu, an area right on the edge of the escarpment of the central African rift. My friend Sokoine, who also works at FAME, wanted to come along too, so we had the experience of traveling with two guys on one little motorcycle on some very steep, rough tracks. We spent a lot of time in first gear at full throttle and just had to push the bike over a few of the rockier or muddier sections of trail.

The countryside was beautiful though: little farms squeezed between the Ngorongoro wilderness and the 1,500 foot drop off of the escarpment with the empty Maasai steppe beyond. We also caught a glimpse of the Oldonyo Langai volcano in the distance.

I had been in the area before when I tagged along on a mobile neurology clinic. I didn't pack a lunch because I knew a place where you could get peanuts and cookies in a little town along the way. However, Sokoine was confident that we could find peanuts at our destination, a little town at the very end of the inhabited zone along the cliff top. So we drove right by the first shop, giving a bird-in-the-hand to the wind.

We also stopped to help a man who had gotten his motorcycle stuck. It was weighed down with bags of grain, and there was no way he could get it out of the rocks by himself. After we heaved his bike back onto the path, he confirmed the presence of a store in the next community, so off we went.

There was indeed a store (read mud hut with a sign), but all they could offer us was one, dust-covered bottle of Coca-Cola. So we gave up on the peanuts, left the motorcycle at the house of a Maasai lady (Sokoine is also Maasai, and he assured me that any property we left with another Maasai would be safer than in a bank vault) and climbed the tallest hill in the area on foot to get a good look around. It was a steep, 30 minute climb, but there we found company on top because it's the only place in the area where you can get cell phone reception.

Sokoine took pictures, but he couldn't get the hang of holding the camera straight.

When we went back down, it turned out that the house we left the bike and helmets at belonged to the same guy we helped with the motorcycle earlier and he had come home for lunch. So he invited us to eat with him, corn-chowder and fresh milk, so it turned out we didn't need peanuts after all. I might have also agreed to buy 10 kilos of dried beans from him, but I'm not sure.

Sokoine's son, Ibra, also shows great promise as a future motorcycle adventurer. He will be turning one next month, but he already knows how to make motorcycle noises, and he loves to wear my helmet.

















BONUS EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHOTO

We had someone show up at the clinic today in a motorcycle ambulance, generously donated to the local government hospital by the government of Saudi Arabia.