Day 7-8 - Gorongosa Park

I’m back from Gorongosa! Gorongosa is a national park here in Mozambique that is an animal reserve and the only like it in the country. It used to have one of the most diverse animal population in all of Africa, but during the civil war here in Mozambique an estimated 95% of the animal life was killed off. People got so desperate for food that they would kill and eat whatever they could find. About ten years ago, several people got together to restore the park and ecosystem here and they have come a long way since. While the park is nowhere near what it was in the early 1970’s, it was still very amazing. In the process of restoring the park, they have brought in animals from other places in the cases of the big animals—elephants, lions, cheetahs, water buffalo, etc. For the smaller animals, they have worked to reestablish the pre-existing animal populations. It was a fascinating place… felt like going into Jurassic Park :) Here are some highlights of the trip!

We ended up taking the same “highway” that we took to Nhamatanda the day before. You could porbably say that I was not super excited about the drive :) Not that I don’t love crashing through foot-deep potholes that the driver didn’t see, or narrowly missing an oncoming semi by a matter of feet, or even riding the whole way in a 1970’s hand-me-down, suspension-less van from China, it’s just that we had just had that lovely experience for a few hours the day before :) Anyway, the drive ended up going well and we made it there safely! On the way there, we stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and as I was walking around I could here the “batuque” (Portuguese for drumming) of a candomblé dance. Luckily one of the other CFL members had a pair of binoculars and we look off in the distance into this grass-hut village and see the village members all dressed up in their ritual clothing doing a ceremonial dance. I took a picture but it was so far away that you can’t even really see it… Oh well, you’ll just have to take my word for it!

Once we got inside the park gates, we still had a 29 km (about 20 miles) drive to our camp area. The roads were all dirt from that point on and even bumpier than before and on top of that, it was starting to get dark. As we got going down the path, we started seeing a bunch of warthogs and baboons! It made the drive totally worth it.

The best part of the night, though, was at dinner when I sat and had a conversation with our driver, Joaquim. Joaquim is a 73 year old man that has live in Mozambique his entire life. As we chatted for a long time, he opened up about his experience during the civil war here. Because he was a motorist (and at the time had a semi-truck), he ended up driving caravans of mortars, bombs, bazookas, land mines, etc. for the independence army. His caravan was attacked multiple times and it was bad enough to the point that one time his family was contacted to tell them he was dead, even though he was totally fine. By the time he could get home, they were having a funeral service for him. Since he wasn’t dead, the military made him repay all the expenses for the funeral :) Can you imagine for his family? It was so eye-opening to me to hear all of his experiences with something that felt SO foreign to me. On top of that, we talked for a long time about his family. He is the happy father of 14. The not so happy part is that 7 of those 14 kids have already passed away. Each of the people that I get to know here have such an amazing story to tell and each one teaches me so much. I would love to just sit down and interview some of them because there isn’t really anywhere you can find/read the people’s perspectives and experiences with the civil war. I think I would call it “Vozes de Moçambique” (Voices of Mozambique).

Africa has been a life-changing experience in the short amount of time that I have been here. I feel so humbled by what I see, yet so impressed by the happy nature of the people here. II feel like they have had an equally large, if not larger, impact on me than I have had on them. I saw a YouTube video today that I think summarizes it very well:

This morning we got up at 5:30am to start our safari. We loaded up into the jeeps and headed out. What a fantastic experience! I was expecting not to see any significant amounts of animal life, but we ended up seeing a ton. I uploaded some pics below. Now that I have he whole process figured out, I am excited to go back when Allie gets here! My jeep didn’t get to see the elephant herd, but the other group did. The video and pictures were awesome! One of the coolest things though was when I was packing up to leave and I walked out of our bungalow to find a huge baboon right outside. It scared me, but I think I scared it even more (feeling pretty macho…). It ran off and punched over a garbage can, had a snack, and then ran over to all the other garbage cans in sight and did the same thing :) I tried to get some pics, but I was a little slow at getting my camera out.

I am excited to start this new week! Dr. English, the health director for CFL, got here today so we will be able to get to work in the villages tomorrow. I can’t wait! I’ll keep you all posted on how everything goes. Thanks for reading!

Some pics from the drive over.

Some grass huts in the savannah.

Getting to Gorongosa!

This picture doesn't do this valley justice. Going over a bridge into Gorongosa.

The group. Please ignore the fact that the driver didn't focus on us :)

Our bungalows!

The safari!

Lion tracks.

This went on for as far as I could see. You can't tell here, but there are THOUSANDS of animals dotted through there. So cool.

 This monkey was the one I saw when I came out of my room :)

 Pretty sweet sunset pics. It came at a cost though... as in getting slammed into the seat ahead of me when we hit a pot hole and almost getting clipped as we passed a car. It was worth it though!

The story of our life during the drive... holding on or dear life haha.